4.4 Troubleshooting
4.4.1 Troubleshooting
The most common issues people have with operating their UNIX workstation are:
  • Accessing applications
  • Accessing and managing files
  • Printing
  • Unresponsive terminal window
  • Unresponsive application
  • Unresponsive workstation

By the end of this course, you will be more familiar with your workstation and the ability to do basic troubleshooting yourself. For those problems you can't fix, you should contact your designated system administrator or service/help desk designated to help users with workstation problems.

If you do contact the company service/help desk, they will probably ask you some information about your system before they ask you about your problem.

Information about your workstation (type, memory, OS release, etc.) can be viewed by choosing Hosts and then Workstation Info from the Workspace Menu.

Accessing Applications
Typically applications are installed and maintained by the system administrator. If you are having difficulty starting an application, you should call the service/help desk. If you have questions regarding using an application that did not come up in a training class, you should also call the service/help desk.

Accessing and Managing Files
By the end of this course you will have worked with files and directories enough so that you should feel comfortable doing some basic troubleshooting on your own.

Printing
Most of your printing will be done from an application and is easy. Printing files and managing print jobs is covered later in this course.

If a printer is down due to repairs or other reasons and you can't print, contact the service/help desk.

Unresponsive Terminal Window
If a Terminal window's prompt becomes unresponsive to keyboard entry, you may need to enable screen scroll, enter EOF (end of file), or interrupt the process.

To check an unresponsive Terminal:

  1. Enable screen scroll using Control -Q (Ctrl + q keys). Sometimes a user turns off screen scrolling using Control-S and forgets to turn it back on and the terminal appears locked.
  2. Interrupt the process using Control -C (Ctrl + c keys). Control-C "cancels" the current task and should restore the shell prompt.
  3. Enter EOF (end of file) using Control -D (Ctrl + d keys). You may be in the middle of a UNIX command that needs to be terminated by an EOF (bc, mail, mailx, etc.).
  4. Quit the window and restart a new one.

Unresponsive Application
If an application becomes unresponsive, try to "Close" the window using the mouse. If that does not work you have two options:

  1. Determine the process ID number associated with the application and kill that process (covered in Chapter 13 - System Processes and Memory Management)
  2. Log out and log back in again then restart the application.

Unresponsive Workstation
If the window environment or system in its entirety becomes unresponsive, there is a series of steps you can perform.

When attempting to unlock an unresponsive system, the first thing to do is to go to another system and do a remote login and terminate the login shell program. The rlogin, ps, and kill commands are covered in more detail later in this curriculum.

If the above procedure does not work, you will have to reboot your system using one of the following:

  • The Stop-A (Stop + A key) keyboard sequence on a Sun workstation is used to Abort and should only be used when the system is completely unresponsive to keyboard and mouse input for a period of minutes. The Stop-A sequence abruptly aborts and does not bring down the system cleanly. The Stop-A brings the system down to a ">" (greater than) prompt where you can issue the "b" (boot) command to reboot.
  • If the abort (Stop-A) does not work, your last resort is to power-off the system, wait ten seconds, then power-on the system. 
Note: It is best to contact a system administrator or the service/help desk before attempting this procedure.