Chapter 21
Troubleshooting Linux
In any complex operating system, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. You can fail to save a file because you are out of disk space. An application can crash because the system is out of memory. The system can fail to boot up properly for, well, a lot of different reasons.
In Linux, the dedication to openness and the focus on making the software run with maximum efficiency has led to an amazing number of tools you can use to troubleshoot every imaginable problem. In fact, if software isn't working as you would like, you even have the ultimate opportunity to rewrite the code yourself (although we don't cover how to do that here).
This chapter takes on some of the most common problems you can run into on a Linux system and describes the tools and procedures you can use to overcome those problems. Topics are broken down by areas of troubleshooting, such as the boot process, software packages, networking, memory issues, and rescue mode.
Boot-Up Troubleshooting
Before you can begin troubleshooting a running Linux system itself, that system needs to boot up. For a Linux system to boot up, a series of things has to happen. A Linux system installed directly on a PC architecture computer goes through the following steps to boot up:
- Turning on the power ...
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