Service Desk Knowledgebase: Linux

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This is the Linux content page of the CL Wiki Service Desk Knowledgebase. Its purpose is to provide information to the Service Desk team on how to handle problems and requests about this CL service. If you are involved with the provision of this CL service please feel free to add to the knowledge about that it.

If CL staff need to tell the Service Desk team about problems with this service please email
sys-admin-aside@cl.cam.ac.uk.

Return to the Service Desk Knowledgebase SERVICE PORTFOLIO

Key Service Description & URLs

CL Customer Documentation

Further CL Sys-Admin Resources

Underpinning Services

  • ??? - Any supporting or underpinning services

Customer-base for this Service

  • Linux boxes are available to all staff and post-graduates, and well as some on the Part III Under-graduates.

Costs

  • Hardware is charged for if you are a Research Assistant or a University Teaching Officer, but free to Post-graduates.
  • Support is free.

SLA

  • ??? - Timeframes or service level agreement for fulfilling the service

Service Desk Call Handling Procedure

  • RT tickets can be escalated to the unix-admin by changing the Queue to unix-admin with the Owner set to Nobody & Status set to new. Tell the requestor:
    I am passing this request over to our Unix Admin team who, I'm sure, will be in contact shortly.

Contacts

Primary

Other

Availability

  • Monday: 09:00-17:00
  • Tuesday: 09:00-17:00
  • Wednesday: 09:00-17:00
  • Thursday: 09:00-17:00
  • Friday: 09:00-17:00
  • Saturday: Closed
  • Sunday: Closed

Hints, Tips & Known Issues

Title Person (Date)

Can't login on console

Symptoms: user can't login using graphical interface, they enter username and password and get a blank screen then back to login

A common cause of this is a failure to access the home directory, X (the window manager) needs to plant a capability there when it starts the user session. To diagnose if this is the problem do the following:-

  1. Remote login to the machine using ssh -K hostname@cl.cam.ac.uk form a CL machine - check if your home directory is present (ls -al ~). If is is look to see if the users home directory is present (ls -al ~crsid).
  2. If the home directory is missing then try to restart the auto mounter (cl-asuser service autofs restart).
  3. Look at the mounted filesystems (grep ldap /proc/mounts - will show which systems have bene auto mounted using data form the LDAP).

An alternative is to ask the user to check if it is the machine failing to log them in or a problem with X by getting them to try on the text console (Select with Ctrl-Alt-F2). If they can login there but have no home then it is probably a problem with the filesystem. If they cannot login at all then it is an authentication problem. They should then try from another machine that is known to work to check their login works.

Categorising Keywords

  • Linux Ubuntu PC Person Computer
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