Characterizing the Problem

It is important to ask questions when you are trying to characterize a problem. Start with global questions and gradually get more specific. Depending on the response, ask another series of questions until you have enough information to understand exactly what happened. Key questions to ask are as follows:

Does the problem seem isolated to one user or program? Can the problem be reproduced? Did the problem occur under any of the following circumstances:
- When running a program?
- When issuing a command?
- When using a nodal management utility?
- When transmitting data?
Does the problem affect all users? The entire node? Has anything changed recently? The possibilities are as follows:
- New software and hardware installation.
- Same hardware but changes to the software. Has the configuration file been modified? Has the HP-UX configuration been changed?
- Same software but changes to the hardware. Do you suspect hardware or software?

It is often difficult to determine whether the problem is hardware-related or software-related. The symptoms of the problem that indicate you should suspect the hardware are as follows:

Intermittent errors.
Network-wide problems after no change in software.
Link-level errors, from logging subsystem, logged to the console.
Data corruption—link-level trace that shows that data is sent without error but is corrupt or lost at the receiver.
Red light on the LAN card is lit, or yellow light on the X.25/800 card is lit.

These are symptoms that would lead you to suspect the software:

Network services errors returned to users or programs.
Data corruption.
Logging messages at the console.

Knowing what has recently changed on your network may also indicate whether the problem is software-related or hardware-related.

Characterizing the Problem

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