Chapter 21. Troubleshooting

Introduction
A Boot Disk
Creating a Boot Floppy from the Console
Testing the Boot Disk
Backup
Why Backup?
Preparing your System
What to Backup?
Where to Back Up?
When to Back Up?
Backup Example Using tar
Restore
Restore Example Using tar
Making a Recovery CD-ROM
Problems Arising at Boot Time
System Hanging during Boot
File-System Check on Boot Fails
X Doesn't Start
Bootloader Issues
Bootloader Reinstall
Backing Up and Restoring the MBR
File System Issues
Repairing a Damaged Super-Block
Recovering Deleted Files
Recovering from a System Freeze
Killing Misbehaving Apps
From the Console
Using Graphical Monitoring Tools
Miscellaneous
Mandrakelinux's Specific Troubleshooting Tools
General Guidelines for Solving a Problem under Mandrakelinux
Search the Internet
Mailing Lists and Newsgroups Archives
Directly Contacting the Person in Charge
Mandrakesoft Business Services
Final Thoughts

Abstract

This chapter will guide you through some troubleshooting basics, that is: what to do when everything goes wrong or, better yet, what to do to be prepared if something goes wrong and how to fix it.