Group Project on PC Troubleshooting

"A lot happens when you stand up and promise yourself that you will do it however tough it is",

that is how I will describe my project.

When we(I and my group partners Jatin and Aishwarya) took up this project, we thought this was not going to be too tough,at least the name can make anybody believe that but things happen when they are least expected.

Troubleshooting in Windows was not too tough but the challenge began when we went on to Linux. We simply could not find anything to troubleshoot in Linux. It took days research and sleepless nights to get something meaningful and presentable.

Now, since a lot of you guys had a query or another about kernel I would explain what a linux kernel is.

A Kernel is not particularly made for Linux, it can be for any OS. It is basically just a medium between the software and the hardware of a computer. It contains some codes that allow your software to communicate with your hardware. Mostly it contains the drivers for your hardware and a process management system that determines what application will interact with the hardware at what point of time.

For more information on kernel visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(computing)

In Linux this kernel determines what drivers you are running for your hardware. So, if you install some new hardware to your computer it may or may not happen that the OS recognizes the hardware. If it doesn't, that you have an option of upgrading the kernel. You just have to be careful that you download the correct upgrade for your version of Kernel.

Then the other confusing part of the log files comes. The log files that are stored in \var\log are not always meant to be understood as they contain some words that we are not well acquainted to right now. We are just required to deduce which were the processes that failed when an error occurred, then we need to find the possible reason that could have caused the problem. We all know that a problem becomes simpler if we can break it into smaller parts and that is what is happening over here. While trying to troubleshoot a problem you just need to find out which are the log files which would contain the logs related to that software or hardware and go through its latest records, and that may well solve your problem.

I hope, I was able to solve your queries to as much extent as possible.

BEST OF LUCK FOR EXAMS