Self-Service Linux®: Mastering the Art of Problem Determination

Appendix B. Data Collection Script

Overview

There are two main challenges for collecting data when a problem occurs. The first challenge is collecting the right data. This is a challenge because it is often hard to know what type of problem you’ve encountered and therefore what data to collect for it. The second challenge is to collect data quickly when you are under pressure to solve the problem immediately (or to get the system back up and running). Collecting all of the important information manually will lengthen the time to resolution and potentially increase the duration of an outage—and humans tend to make mistakes that can jeopardize the usefulness of the information. Addressing these two challenges is the purpose of a data collection tool ...