Problem Tracking

From Sysadmin

Tracing problems properly by documenting the is an essential component of system administration.

Documenting problems offers several advantages:

• Easier to track the problem as you can make notes to yourself as you work the problem. I routinely record URLs that may help with the resolution so that they are easy to find again later. I even write down any educated guesses or thoughts I have on the problem or possible resolutions.

• Useful for providing continuity in the hours & days after the event so that others can do follow-up. Eg, you may stay up all night solving a problem. In the morning a related problem may be found or cleanup may be needed. Good notes in RT may mean that you don't need to be woken up to provide additional information.

• Useful later for providing continuity in tracking trends. Alerts could be false positives but a ticket in RT shouldn't be. If a false positive does sneak into RT we can tag it as such.

• If the problem occurs again later your ticket may explain the solution and allow for faster resolution.

• Ownership of a ticket implies that this person is either working on the ticket or coordinating others to work on the ticket. This reduces the likelihood of two people trying to solve the problem at the same time (which can be potentially disastrous).

• If there are questions later about what you did RT can be documentary evidence to support your position. "CYA".

Where possible I prefer to copy-n-paste commands in rather than simply describe it. Additional description never hurts of course.