Troubleshooting without help from others (was: Failed to open control device /dev/em8300-0)

[Christopher Browne]

On 3/14/07, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Last summer, a coworker of mine was a software package tester who used
> to be an auto mechanic.  He noted I turn to Google a lot for help with
> problems.  He said it was important to know how to troubleshoot
> without any help from the Web, or mailing lists, or anywhere: to know
> how to track down problems by logical troubleshooting steps.
>
> Is this true?  How important is it, really, to know how to
> troubleshoot independently?

It is the difference between competence and being helpless.

It is the difference between being briefly employed as a sysadmin and
being able to make a career of it.  It is the difference between
merely being entrusted with unimportant things and receiving
actually-important responsibility.

In an RMS-style 'utopia', it's the entire reason why he fought to
allow people access to source code.  In his world, we have source code
so that you can fix things that you find are broken.  He didn't start
the GNU project merely so that people could download CDs so they could
boot up a "GNU system" consisting of immutable components; he wanted
people to be fixing and customizing their systems, as opposed to being
led around by the nose by whatever RHAT or Novell decide to put into
their products.  That RMS is a bit of a loon does not prevent there
from being merit in this...
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
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