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Paulm at 19:28, 22 March 2013

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Paulm: Created page with " == Tech Support Basics == === Aims === To give a new Tech Support intern an understanding of the basic tools and procedures used in Tech Support === Objectives === # Understa…"

2013-03-22T19:26:03Z

Created page with " == Tech Support Basics == === Aims === To give a new Tech Support intern an understanding of the basic tools and procedures used in Tech Support === Objectives === # Understa…"

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== Tech Support Basics ==

=== Aims ===
To give a new Tech Support intern an understanding of the basic tools and procedures used in Tech Support
=== Objectives ===
# Understand the pupose of the ticket sytem
# Know how to create a new ticket
# " " " comment and reply on a ticket and understand the difference
# " " " escalate a ticket
# " " " resolve a ticket/change its status and when
" " " use the dashboards and how this fits in with our workflow
Be able to use command line tools including command line args
Use and interpet the output of free, du, df and top
Be able to mount an external drive
" " " ssh into a remote box
" " " view and edit files
" " " direct command output to a file or another command
" " " create and restore network backups using tstools
have a basic understanding of the manual equivalent
Be able to boot a box into recovery mode and make the hard drive writable
Be able to start a net boot
Know how to get useful debugging output from a command
Identify common logs
Have an understanding of the tools that can aid in interpreting them
Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting

Intro 5 mins 5
The First, Second and Third Line Model 5 mins 10
What it means in the real world Verbal Instruction
1st Line
support desk, log calls, answer common questions from script, assign to technicians
2nd Line
solve day to day problems, may do call backs, fix boxes
3rd Line
Guru's. Solve new problems, train + document, proactively manage potential issues
What it means in Free Geek
1st Line
Answer phones, do intake, create tickets, call people to let them know their machines are ready
2nd Line
Fix boxes, do callback for problems 1st line techs can't solve.
3rd Line
Staff
RT
Basic concepts
Ticket 15 mins 25
Purpose
Heart of all TS departments. Enables issues to be tracked over time and people.
Make a New Ticket Verbal Instruction
Click on new ticket/http://data.fglan/work_orders/new?mode=ts
Subject Format - Name, Summary
Important Fields
Phone No
Box Source, type, ticket type.
What to write and when
Everything, as soon as it happens, if not before
Owning a ticket
Important in the outside world
Who is working on this
Need to take/unown tickets
Escalating
1->2->3
When?
When you don't have the answer
When to call
Everyday until you speak to someone in person
Phone messages get three strikes
Conventions and abbreviations
Left VM -- Date
CNR
Avoid Jargon
Comments vs Replies 2.5 mins
Comments are internal
Replies go to user
Sopmetimes need to change requestor
Be careful with subject lines
Workflow 2.5 mins 27.5
New -> Open (->contact)->pending->resolved
Status 5 mins 32.5
New
untouched
be careful not to change status if you add notes
Open
actively being worked on
Contact
custom status
ready for pickup
Stalled
Pending
boxes waiting to be picked up
atypical (normally more like contact/stalled
Resolved
EXERCISE:
Create Ticket
Students to create 1 ticket in Sandbox Queue
My name is...
Comment on ticket
Comment on ticket of person to left
Resolved ticket of person to right
Custom Fields etc 2.5 mins 40
Basic
name etc
Status
fields specific to Free Geek
Links
refers to/by
merge
can not undo
depends on
parent/child
People
requestor
cc
owner
Dashboards 2.5 mins
Line 1
lists phone calls and messages, boxes ready for pickup
Line 2
Boxes on the bench, new and open
Always work in chronological order
follow list
Line 3
For staff
Working on the command line
Commands 5 mins 45
pwd, ls
Commands are like work in a sentence
simple
verbs
Fetch! list!
e.g. pwd, ls, cd, rm, mv
EXERCISE:
Open Terminal
type whoami, pwd read back and interpret results
basic arguments
nouns
fetch this box, list this directory
e.g ls /home
Options 5 mins 50
adverbs,
Fetch quickly, list fully
e.g. ls -alh
- and -- short and long (gnu) form
common options
-h, --help
-v, --verbose
-R, recursive
differ between commands
can be combined with noun form
-o [file]
EXERCISE:
type ls, ls /home, ls ~/, ls -a, ls -al, ls -alh, ls --almost-all

Common commands 20 mins 1hr 10
man
free
df
df -h
du
du -sh
du -ch --max-depth=1
EXERCISE:
Use df and du to determine total size of hard drive and size of usr directory
ps
ps aux
kill, killall, pkill, pgrep
top
uses ncurses
half way to gui
EXERCISE:
Use ps and top to idntify processes running under your user
mount
mount (-t option) device mountpoint
ssh
used for connecting to remote machine securely
log into a box anywhere
ssh me@there
scp
secure copy
scp here me@there:
note colon
otherwise works as cp
sftp
secure ftp
less, view etc
head
head file
head -10 file
tail
tail -f
pager
used to view files
less is more
go backwards and forwards, search
view
vi in readonly mode, usefull for syntax and commands
editors 10 mins 1hr 20
nano
easy(ish)
only standard on Debian
vi
on nearly every *nix box
vi(m) -- vi (i)m(proved)
steep learning curve but very powerful
worth the effort
EXERCISE: 05 min 1hr 25
open vim:
vim hello-world
write hello world
i...
duplicate line
yy... ESC..p
delete world
dw
write and quit
(colon)wq

TS Tools
ts_network_backup 15 mins 1hr 40
basic backup
ts_network_backup -c [ticket no]
does everything for you
advanced backups
backing up when a drive is attached to another box
-p option
alternative path to home
command line options
-a
other things to back up
-u, -d
backup less
restoring backups
ts_network_backup -r [folder]
EXERCISE:
create command line for backup using one option, say what you would use to restore it.
ts_identify 5 mins 1hr 45
identifies backup folder
ts_identify_backups (-t) ticket number
others
do what they say on the tin, no options except -h
File system basics 10 mins 1hr 55
/
/bin etc
bin, sbin,opt, root, tmp, lib
var
cache, mail, www
where servers store things
usr
for users
repeats hierarchy
also doc share src
/etc
config files
/etc/apt
filesystem
/etc/fstab & /etc/mtab
network
/etc/host
/etc/resolv.conf
users and groups
passwd, shadow, group, gshadow
/var/log
where log files are stored\
whats going on
/home
where you live
users files
/proc & /sys
not really files
contain system info
cat /proc/cpuinfo
/mnt & /media
mount discs
Manual Backups 10 mins 2hr 05
Go over page,
backup config
backup users and groups
get list of installed packages
transfer data
rsync -avzh here me@there:/var/tsbackup
backup name
ticket -iso date
iso date
why its important

Rooting a box 15 mins 2hr 20
why
password security
if you have physical possesion of box there is no security
recovery mode
press shift
when
after bios screen
1st menu
recovery mode
2nd menu
rootshell
not networking
remounting
makes file system writable
mount -o rw,remount /
starting networking
dhclient eth0 etc
network booting
the network boot menu
change bios settings, go
tech support -> debian rescue
why use a recovery disk
specialist tools
efficient
mounting a hard drive
mount (-t) drive mountpiint
chroot'ing
chroot /mnt
for i in dev proc sys dev/pts; do mount $i /mnt/$i; done
EXERCISE:
In pairs,Root box and netboot to debian rescue
Diagnosing problems through log files and error message
running in the terminal 5 mins 2hr 25
verbose mode
-v --verbose
multiple levels
debug modes
log levels
warn, info, error
dmesg 5 mins 2hr 30
/var/log/syslog
essential info
what the system does
EXERCISE:
tail -f /var/log/syslog
I/O Redirection 5 mins 2hr 35
pipe to command
|
pipe to file
< > >>
stdout & stderr
1 > /dev/null
redirect std out
(makes it disappear
2 > error.file
redirect stderr
&> log
both to log
EXERCISE:
with ls send stdout and stderr to /dev/null and observe results
grep 10 mins 2hr 45
search tool
global regular expression parser
'Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.'
no need to use regex for most things
a word is a regex that says match this word
awk (and sed)
sed was the cause of the regex quote
can be very useful but unlikely you will need to use it
command line search and replace
awk was the source of the quote
whole programming language for dealing with tabular data
you only need to know tow things
awk '{print $1}'
awk '{print NF}'
cat /var/log/apache2/access.log | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c |sort -g
EXERCISE: use grep and awk to get time and date of kernel events using awk
(as group on board, use questions and prompts)

How to troubleshoot 15 mins 3hr
Importance of consistency
Not your machine
Do not break it
Repeatable solutions
Needs to diagnose problem not just fix it
reinstall is not the answer
Problem solving
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving
Read this page(write on board)
OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
Comes from military/fighter pilots
designed for stressful situations and quick reactions
important part it is a loop
constant feedback
ability to change course
Observe
what is going on
Orient
where might the problem lie
Decide
how can we test this
Act
run test
Observe
what where the results
Orient
what did they tell us
Decide
whats the solution to fix the problem
Act
apply solution
Observe
did it work?
etc...
PDCA (Plan Do Check Act)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA
Plan
Study the problem, establish the objectives, devise test
Do
Carry out test, collect data
where there any error meessages?
what did the log files say?
Check
Study results, compare to what was expected
Act
Analyse differences, determine root causes, corrective actions, next steps
repeat if necessary
RPR (Rapid Problem Resolution)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPR_Problem_Diagnosis
Discover, Investigate, Fix
IT Specific
Discover
Gather and review information
Build model
Investigate
Create and carry out plan to gather data
analyse results and iterate
Identify root cause
Fix
Determine and implement fix
check root cause worked
Example
The Facebook isn't working'
Discover
is it facebook or the internet
Investigate
ping facebook
No -- iterate
ping google
No -- iterate
ping router
No -- the internet is down
Fix
reboot router
open browser
visit facebook
EXERCISE:
A box comes in that the user reports is not booting
In pairs, Chose one method and outline the steps to solve the problem

Total Time 3 hours, not incrluding a break.
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 == Tech Support Basics ==
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 # Have an understanding of the tools that can aid in interpreting them
 # Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting
 === Intro -- The First, Second and Third Line Model ===
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+|
 |}
-Total Time 3 hours, not incrluding a break.
+Total Time 3 hours, not including a break.

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	== Tech Support Basics ==		== Tech Support Basics ==

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 # Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting
+{|
-Intro														5 mins		5
+| Intro	| 5 mins | 5 |-
 The First, Second and Third Line Model 						5 mins		10
 	What it means in the real world							Verbal Instruction

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == Tech Support Basics ==
@@ Line 11: / Line 10: @@
 # " " " escalate a  ticket
 # " " " resolve a ticket/change its status and when
-	" " " use the dashboards and how this fits in with our workflow
+# " " " use the dashboards and how this fits in with our workflow
-	Be able to use command line tools including command line args
+# Be able to use command line tools including command line args
-	Use and interpet the output of free, du, df and top
+# Use and interpet the output of free, du, df and top
-	Be able to mount an external drive
+# Be able to mount an external drive
-	" " " ssh into a remote box
+# " " " ssh into a remote box
-	" " " view and edit files
+# " " " view and edit files
-	" " " direct command output to a file or another command
+# " " " direct command output to a file or another command
-	" " " create and restore network backups using tstools
+# " " " create and restore network backups using tstools
-	have a basic understanding of the manual equivalent
+# have a basic understanding of the manual equivalent
-	Be able to boot a box into recovery mode and make the hard drive writable
+# Be able to boot a box into recovery mode and make the hard drive writable
-	Be able to start a net boot
+# Be able to start a net boot
-	Know how to get useful debugging output from a command
+# Know how to get useful debugging output from a command
-	Identify common logs
+# Identify common logs
-	Have an understanding of the tools that can aid in interpreting them
+# Have an understanding of the tools that can aid in interpreting them
-	Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting
+# Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting