Knowledge United

The Sun Systems Fault Analysis Workshop teaches students fault analysis skills required to support any Sun computing environment. These skills directly translate to higher availability levels and increased uptime of the Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE). This course provides instruction about the fault analysis method and provides hands-on experience in the workshops.

Who Can Benefit:
Students who can benefit from this course are system administrators, system maintainers, second-line system support personnel, and field engineers.

Prerequisites:
To succeed fully in this course, students should be able to demonstrate six months of field system administration or system maintenance experience in Sun environments.

Skills Gained:
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Describe the fault analysis and diagnosis methodology
• Describe the OpenBoot PROM (OBP) components, features, and diagnostics
• Enable and monitor POST diagnostics
• Describe OBP device tree and boot sequence
• Perform Solaris OE diagnostics
• Diagnose faults using online tools
• Describe types of major system failures
• Analyze core dumps the mdb utility

Course Outline

Module 1 - Introducing the Fault Analysis and Diagnosis Methodology

• Describe the Fault Analysis methodology
• Describe the Diagnosis methodology
• Identify basic layers in Sun systems
• Identify the error types that occur in Sun systems

Module 2 - Introducing OBP Components, Features, and Diagnostics

• Describe the OBP components
• Modify the OBP components and run diagnostics

Module 3 - Enabling and Monitoring POST Diagnostics

• Describe the concept of power-on self-test (POST) diagnostics
• Identify ways to view extended diagnostics during POST

Module 4 - Introducing the OBP Device Tree and BOOT Sequence

• Describe the OBP device tree
• Describe the boot sequences

Module 5 - Performing Solaris OE Diagnostics

• Use the device management commands
• Use the disk and file system management commands
• Use the software package management commands
• Use the file-checking commands
• Use the central processing unit (CPU) and memory management commands
• Use the network management commands
• Use the general-purpose commands
• Use the program execution management commands

Module 6 - Diagnosing Faults Using Online Tools

• Use online man pages
• Diagnose problems by using the SunSolve Online service
• Use the Sun Explorer Data Collector utility
• Use the docs.sun.com Web site

Module 7 - Introducing Types of System Failures

• Describe the causes of system panics and dumps
• Describe the process of system crash dump generation
• Describe watchdog resets

Module 8 - Analyzing Core Dumps Using the mdb Utility

• Describe the mdb utility
• Use the mdb utility