Identifying problems
Troubleshooting is the process of finding and eliminating the cause of a problem. The first steps for identifying a problem include recording the symptoms, re-creating the problem, and eliminating potential causes.
Recording the symptoms
When you get an error message in the product, make sure that you record this message. You might also receive multiple error messages that look similar, but have subtle differences. By recording the details of each one you can learn more about where your problem exists.
You can get error messages in the following sources:
- Problems view in the Eclipse workbench
- Console view in the Eclipse workbench
- Error Log view in the Eclipse workbench
- Error dialogs
- Log files in your workspace: <workspace>/.metadata/.log
Re-creating the problem
To reproduce the problem, try to identify the steps that you performed. If you have a consistently repeatable test case, you can have an easier time determining what solutions are necessary.
You can ask yourself the following questions:
- How did you first notice the problem?
- What was the first symptom of this problem?
- Were there other symptoms occurring around that time?
- Did you do anything different that made you notice the problem?
- Is this process a new procedure, or has it worked successfully before?
- If this process worked before, what has changed?
The change can refer to any type of change made to the system, ranging from adding new hardware or software, to configuration changes you might have made to existing software.
- Does the same problem occur elsewhere?
The problem could be on one machine only or on multiple machines.