Workshop

Printing is one of the most important and aggravating functions on your network. Understanding the print
process can help you to quickly pinpoint where a problem is. Printer-oriented documentation helps
tremendously, particularly when it’s slapped on a label on the physical printer. Knowing how to trace a
print problem is really helpful for complex problems.
File errors aren’t always necessarily accurate—someone who opens a read-only file might be opening a
file that’s only read-only to him or her because of security attributes on that file. Knowing how to
navigate your particular server’s security is really important here. You can rule out security-related
problems by trying the same operation after assigning super-user rights to a user—and then quickly
removing them.
Disk space problems can bring your entire operation to a halt. Apart from finding the culprit, you can
alleviate the problem by keeping some spare disk space on the side.
Socket-level troubleshooting is the keystone of client/server application troubleshooting after you’ve
ruled out network-level problems. The netstat -a command is one of your best friends here.
Knowing your service numbers, as well as socket states, can help in diagnosing a problem. In particular,
performing the Telnet trick can quickly point out whether a service is running on a given host, and it can
sometimes show you whether it’s serving up content properly.
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