LinMin Support's Goal

Our goal is to minimize the amount of time it takes to understand your questions, reproduce your incident and provide you an answer, fix or workaround. Too often, incomplete information from customers requires that we ask for additional information or clarifications, a process further delayed by time zones.

Before contacting LinMin Support, please consult the User's Guide "Troubleshooting" section and see if you can resolve the situation on your own. Alternatively, use the "Search" feature in the User's Guide. These LinMin troubleshooting resources should always be your first recourse, as we continuously enhance them based on customer experiences. If you are unable to resolve the situation this way, LinMin Support is here to help!

Our troubleshooting methodology requires a solid understanding of your environment and the issue. While completing the entire list below may not be realistic, it may help you in understanding the different elements that come into play in provisioning or imaging a system. Clearly, not every item below is required to answer every question, but the more relevant information you provide, the better we can respond in a timely manner. Providing a current support ".help" file created immediately following a fault or problem is key to our understanding your situation.

1) In addition to the applicable details below, it is important to include your personal observations, past related experiences, conjectures, and even guesses as to the probable, potential, or possible cause(s). These are important and valuable but no substitute for details that clearly define the environment, configuration, and messaging of the issue.
1.1) When your question is concerning incomplete or incorrect functioning, supplement your observation and details with a freshly generated .help file (this is extremely important!)

2) Incident Specifics
2.1) Type of operation attempted: Provisioning (MAC-Independent or MAC-Specific?), Imaging (Backup, Restore or Clone?), Rescue (Debian, CentOS/RHEL?), LinMin or Provisioning Module Installation?
2.2) The MAC address for relevant clients (so we know what to look for in the .help file or screen shots)
2.3) Number of times it has occurred (should be more than 1)
2.4) Detailed description of the failure with actions and events leading to it
2.4.1) Include things like MAC Indy menu selection, MAC Spec role
2.4.2) If installation-related, please cut and paste the text displayed above the final error message. Did you do follow the instructions in the Quick Start Guide (If running CentOS, do you have Internet connection or if running RHEL, do you have an RHN subscription? Is your LinMin server IP address static? Did you edit ifcfg-eth0 file?) When installing LinMin, did you review and agree with the automatically-discovered network settings before accepting them?
2.5) Generate and email a .help file:
cd /usr/local/linmin
./linmin-bmp-support-help.sh
2.5.1) if using VMware snapshots with restore, it is recommended to generate a .help file and copy it to the host for safe-keeping
2.5.2) generation of a .help file is also advisable if you are going to continue to test and may alter or remove parts that are involved in the reporting incident, e.g. changes to MAC Spec role or role template, removing MAC Indy menu items...
2.5.2.1) Hint: the .help files can be renamed to anything to tie them to an incident, but please retain the date-time and .help suffix
2.6) Screen Shots of client side failures whenever possible
2.7) if no screen shot possible
2.7.1) quote error/displayed messages verbatim
2.7.2) describe the message presentation, e.g. pop-up dialog box with OK and Cancel options, Command window with command line, no window black background and white text, no window blue background and white text, etc.
2.7.3) When screen shot/image captures are not possible, digital pictures of the console showing the error condition have provided the insight for a fast and comprehensive solutions

3) LinMin Server Information
3.1) If information below in this section has been previously provided then state that it is unchanged since previous submission or note just the differences e.g. upgraded to LinMin {release-number}
3.2) VM or physical system
3.3) OS and version, e.g. CentOS 5.5, Red Hat 5.4
3.4) Monitor and KB type; direct connect, headless ssh access only, KVM...
3.4.1) if direct cabled KVM note hardware name/model
3.4.2) If browser-based KVM note software/version
3.4.3) If switch based note hardware name/model and any software/version
3.5) If your LinMin Server is running in a Virtual Machine
3.5.1) VM type (VMware, Xen, Hyper-V, KVM...)
3.5.2) Host OS and version, e.g. CentOS 5.4, Windows Server R2
3.5.3) Host designated arch; 32 or 64
3.6) If your LinMin Server is running on a physical system
3.6.1) HW arch: 32-bit or 64-bit
3.7) Internet connection active? yes or no
3.8) LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning release id, e.g. 5.5.2-5
3.8.1) LBMP release number can be found on the web GUI Help > About page

4) Provisioning/Imaging Client System Information
4.1) If information below in this section has been previously provided then note that it is unchanged since the previous submission
4.2) VM or physical machine
4.3) OS and version, e.g. CentOS 5.4, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Core
4.4) Monitor and KB type; direct connect, headless ssh access only, KVM...
4.4.1) if direct cabled KVM note hardware name/model
4.4.2) If web based note software/version
4.4.3) If switch based note hardware name/model and any software/version
4.5) If VM
4.5.1) VM type (VMware, Xen...)
4.5.2) Designated arch: 32-bit or 64-bit
4.6) if physical hardware
4.6.1) HW arch: 32-bit or 64-bit
4.6.2) System description, brand, model number

Thank you!

linmin-support at linmin.com