Troubleshooting

To help you understand, isolate, and resolve problems with your IBM® software, the troubleshooting information contains instructions for using the problem-determination resources that are provided with your IBM product.

The first step in the troubleshooting process is to describe the problem by using the following basic questions:

  • What are the symptoms of the problem?
  • Where does the problem occur?
  • When does the problem occur?
  • Under which conditions does the problem occur?
  • Can the problem be reproduced?

Answers to these questions typically lead to a good problem description, which can then lead to a problem resolution.

What are the symptoms of the problem?

Following questions help you create a more descriptive picture of the problem:

  • Who, or what, is reporting the problem?
  • What are the error codes and messages?
  • How does the system fail?
    For example, is it a loop, hang, crash, performance degradation, or incorrect result?

Where does the problem occur?

Following questions help you to focus on where the problem occurs to isolate the problem layer:

  • Is the problem specific to one platform or operating system?
  • Is it common across multiple platforms or operating systems?
  • Is the current environment and configuration supported?

Describe the problem environment, including the operating system and version, all corresponding software and versions, and hardware information. Also, confirm that you are running within an environment that is a supported configuration.

When does the problem occur?

You can easily develop a timeline by working backward: Start at the time an error was reported (as precisely as possible, even down to the millisecond), and work backward through the available logs and information.

Following questions help you develop a detailed timeline of events:

  • Does the problem happen only at a certain time of day or night?
  • How often does the problem happen?
  • What sequence of events leads up to the time that the problem is reported?
  • Does the problem happen after an environment change, such as upgrading or installing software or hardware?

Under which conditions does the problem occur?

Following questions about your environment can help you to identify the root cause of the problem:

  • Does the problem always occur when the same task is being performed?
  • Does a certain sequence of events need to occur for the problem to surface?
  • Do any other applications fail at the same time?

Remember that just because multiple problems might have occurred around the same time, the problems are not necessarily related.

Can the problem be reproduced?

From a troubleshooting perspective, an ideal problem is the one that can be reproduced. Following questions can help you with this question:

  • Can the problem be re-created on a test system?
  • Are multiple users or applications encountering the same type of problem?
  • Can the problem be re-created by running a single command, a set of commands, or a particular application?