[Computerbank] frustrated help supporter

[Craig Silva]

Sorry to butt in (some of us lurkers do once in a while)

And you're going to hate this because I'll suggest something and then go back to lurking and not do anything about it but I've always liked the model where an expert is not available of a no-brainer re-install. I've heard of one bloke who did this with a dispersed network - where rather than flying to this or that place to do it - he just gave his recips a CD - when things got to the point that he couldn't fix it by phone he just told them to plug in the CD and re-install - if done in such a way that /home is maintained and then remounted then hopefully no loss of data (or too much).

Another would be a CD that booted to a minimal non-destructive install that supported IRC and attached to the support channel without too much user intervention. Hardware differences between machines make these a little hard to do but.....

Craig

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Craig Silva, IT Infrastructure Coordinator
Moreland City Council, 90 Bell St. Coburg.
Melbourne. Victoria. 3058. Australia.
email: csilva at moreland.vic.gov.au 
http://www.moreland.vic.gov.au
Tel: +61 3 9 240 2355, fax: + 61 3 9 240 1212
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For Fun: - http://www.sysadminday.com/

>>> romana <romana at timelady.com> 01/10/02 09:04am >>>
Lately, this hath been imparted:
> On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 03:37:39AM +1100, Bruce McCubbery wrote:
> > How many help supporters do we have across Australia?
>
> Not sure, but in SA we have Dale, Romana, and myself for the unix based
> stuff, with a few others helping out with basic unix and hardware.

We now have Jenni and Marie concentrating on learning KDE, to answer those 
questions, and Anthony is working on becoming an install wiz...in other 
words, our small but growing group is learning new skills, to allow us to 
have a pool of experts in various areas. 

Also, Shaun and Dale and I are regularly in IRC, chatting with Grant, Julien, 
Penni and others, to share knowledge about technical issues, and day to day 
difficulties and solutions...these can be pressing ones, that often cannot 
wait for email...

IRC, imho, is an underutilised tool for tech support for online recips....if 
they come to an IRC support channel, during specified hours, a team of 
experts could be on duty, and could even ssh into a recips box! This won't 
solve all problems, but certainly a good percentage of them!

Romana:)
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romana at timelady.com icq no:393293 

Computerbank Australia -  SA branch coordinator 
http://www.linunix.com/cbsa/ 

"Between the idea and the reality, 
Between the motion and the act, 
Falls the Shadow..." 
(TS Eliot) 
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