Tech Support Intern Training Lesson Plan

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Tech Support Basics

Media:Presentation.pdf


Aims

To give a new Tech Support intern an understanding of the basic tools and procedures used in Tech Support

Objectives

  1. Understand the pupose of the ticket sytem
  2. Know how to create a new ticket
  3. " " " comment and reply on a ticket and understand the difference
  4. " " " escalate a ticket
  5. " " " resolve a ticket/change its status and when
  6. " " " use the dashboards and how this fits in with our workflow
  7. Be able to use command line tools including command line args
  8. Use and interpet the output of free, du, df and top
  9. Be able to mount an external drive
  10. " " " ssh into a remote box
  11. " " " view and edit files
  12. " " " direct command output to a file or another command
  13. " " " create and restore network backups using tstools
  14. have a basic understanding of the manual equivalent
  15. Be able to boot a box into recovery mode and make the hard drive writable
  16. Be able to start a net boot
  17. Know how to get useful debugging output from a command
  18. Identify common logs
  19. Have an understanding of the tools that can aid in interpreting them
  20. Be able to identify a consistent approach to trouble shooting


Intro -- The First, Second and Third Line Model

Time Total
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

    • Comments are internal
    • Replies go to user
      • Sopmetimes need to change requestor
      • Be careful with subject lines
  • 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)
    • 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
    • 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
      • FG use is atypical (normally more like contact/stalled in regular Tech Support)
    • 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

Basic Commands

  • 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

Linux File System

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

Manual Backups 10 mins 2hr 05
    • Go over wiki 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

Working Without Passwords

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)

Trouble Shooting and Problem Solving

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 including a break.