Network troubleshooting

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi Steven,

> I'm sorry if it came over negative. I wasn't intending that, I was just
> trying to report step by step what happened when I used the
> troubleshooter. I'm sure it has helped some people, but it didn't solve
> my
> problem, and I think it is of vital importance that if we want more
> people
> to use Ubuntu we solve their problems before they give up.

Of course but there has to be a point where online help stops and people
need to move onto other support channels. The most predominant of which is
the forums. Going through the guide as is prior to posting there (assuming a
working connection elsewhere) means a familiarity with the steps that are
going to be asked of the poster and saving time for those replying if the
poster states they went through the help file.

> To summarise my problems:
> 	* It asked me to run a program that wasn't there.

Fair enough - this is a simple change to the menu definitions. This happens
a lot here - last minute menu name changes post string freeze (remember the
link from the main help page in 7.10 that didn't work anyone?!). 

> 	* It asked me to run a program to check if there was a driver,
> but I
> didn't know how to tell from the output if there was a driver or not.

Perhaps this could be a little clearer - if there is a driver then there is
output, otherwise there isn't.

> 	* It asked me to look at the same output and see if the device
> was on,
> but I didn't know how to tell if it was off or on

Same as above we've covered expanding this already.

> 	* I also saw the word "UNCLAIMED" next to my device, but I
> couldn't find
> out what that meant, nor how to fix it if it needed fixing.

I suspect, especially as you had error 14, that there is a problem in
DBUS/HAL with your card - is this a USB one or PCI?
 
> Now I'm not a complete noob. I wrote part of gcc, for instance, but I
> know
> nothing about installing Ubuntu, so I would like some hand-holding
> during
> troubleshooting; people who have no computing experience are going to
> need
> even more help than me. At least I had a vague idea where to look for
> .inf
> files.

Nobody is suggesting you are a "noob". Wireless is an area that every
Ubuntero wants to work, every new user cannot believe doesn't work and that
every IT columnist jumps on as a major failing. The problem is simply
drivers in most cases and a lot of the community are uncomfortable with NDIS
and wrappers. Personally I think Ubuntu needs to bite the bullet and use
ndisgtk by default.

> But the page it links to is titled "Network and Internet", so it is
> clearly the troubleshooter for those two things. When I was looking for
> help, I was trying to find help on networking. I only clicked on
> "Internet" when I couldn't find anything better.

I'm not sure which link you refer to, "troubleshooting.xml" is a subset of
"wireless.xml" and is very much designed as a wireless troubleshooting guide
in the structure I designed. Is this from the main help page in Yelp? If I
remember, there was a bug in 7.10 - initially with this link not working,
you may well have a point - I tend to validate the sections I work on
independent of the root page.

Phil, Matt and I discussed this a lot last time and in an ideal world there
would be the facility to select help on a Q&A based system as the one used
within Windows 2k on wards.

FMI, did you mention the card/chipset etc. you are having problems with?

Cheers,

Dougie Richardson