Debugging Techniques
Basic strategy:
- Understand problem
- Find the problem's cause (not the symptom)
- Fix the problem
- Use appropriate tools
Two basic techniques:
- Successive elimination of possible causes (e.g. removing drivers)
- Successive refinement of possible causes (e.g. traceroute)
Tool examples:
- ping
- traceroute / tracert
- nslookup
- strace / truss / apispy
- grep / locate / regedit
- "Use the source Luke"