On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:58:01 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/23/2011 20:47, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> But maybe I'm an abberation.
> 
> You do all that if one web page times out, before you try just
> refreshing the page? Yes, you're an abberation. :)

Well, OK, I'll try a refresh first, but if it's reproducible, then I go 
further with it.  Reproducing a problem is a valid troubleshooting step.

> I bet you disassemble the door of your car every time you hit the remote
> and it doesn't lock on the first try, too. ;-)

Damn, have you got a camera in my garage or something? ;)

>> Well, I can tell you that when I run into trouble, I actually do take
>> the time to try to figure out what's going wrong rather than just
>> refreshing or rebooting.
> 
> Well, sure. But it takes knowledge of what's happening inside the
> machine and what might likely be wrong. If you don't really know the
> difference between RAM and disk, you're not likely to try
> trouble-shooting a fragmented page file or something.

Yes, and that's the point.  People trained in the management and 
operation of server operating systems should damned well know the 
difference between RAM and disk.  It's kinda their job to know that. ;)

>> Because I would far rather not run into a preventable issue over and
>> over again.  I get bored with the same problems cropping up, so I try
>> to resolve them.
> 
> Sure. But we're talking about a one-off, for the most part. If it keeps
> happening, people go back and complain it didn't get fixed with a
> reboot.

It's been my experience that in far more cases with Windows admins than 
with those of other systems, "reboot the system" becomes the "fix" rather 
than trying to troubleshoot it.

Once upon a time, I worked for a Fortune 50 company with several thousand 
Windows servers.  Informix was running on them, and there was a memory 
leak.  "Reboot the system" was the "fix", to the extent that the reboot 
was scripted and scheduled to run nightly.

Now, part of the reason for that was that Informix was taking their time 
fixing the problem - but the fact that the 'troubleshooting' got pushed 
up the chain to the developer doesn't eliminate the fact that Informix's 
developers also felt that rebooting thousands of servers nightly (or 
weekly, perhaps, it's been almost 10 years since this situation happened) 
was better than actually fixing the problem.  A problem that was fully 
reproducible.

Jim

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