Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2000 23:03:02 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.osd.bsdi.com> To: Joe Warner <jswarner@uswest.net> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Newbie Learning Experience Message-ID: <12863.965628182@localhost> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 05 Aug 2000 08:32:57 MDT." <398C2599.FB356E7E@uswest.net>
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Well, part of the problem here is that you're not breaking the problem
up into smaller, more manageable pieces as you attempt to diagnose
just what the heck is going on. You have two smoking guns pointing at
your serial port somehow causing a system lock-up whenever something
manages to successfully open it, so why not first test that? Use the
cu(1) command or install kermit just to see if you can talk to your
serial ports at all without hanging the system. If they do hang the
system, start doing your hardware troubleshooting dance where you look
for IRQ / port conflicts with the serial port(s) in question.
Once you've worked all that out, THEN go back to trying to make upsd
and friends work. :)
For what it's worth, I see this more generic kind of problem with
newbies a lot. You need to *always* be asking yourself two very
fundamental questions when you're trouble-shooting any problem:
1. "What do I know, for an absolute, provable fact, actually works here?"
Running through such a checklist should include everything from
the power cord running into your PC to the software you're trying
to configure or fix. Don't assume anything! The point isn't
to make yourself feel silly for actually checking things like
the power cord, the point is to go down a checklist to *ensure*
that you're not missing something silly, just as a pilot performs
a checklist before flying an aircraft. It doesn't matter if the pilot
has 3 or 3,000 hours of flying experience, he does the checklist
each and every time.
2. "Can my tests be in any way simplified?"
In other words, can the problem you're trying to trouble-shoot
be broken down to any smaller steps in order to have a more
granular list of things to check (see question 1). This is one
people very frequently get wrong. They do things like try to use
netscape instead of "ping" to check basic network connectivity, or
they test their mouse configuration by trying to start up an
entire X session with 30 tools launching (or trying to launch)
from their .xsession file rather than just starting the X server
by itself and trying to move the mouse. I'm sure you get the
idea. ;)
- Jordan
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