Web-Based Troubleshooter Generation for System Administration

This paper proposes a method for generating a Web-page based troubleshooter, which diagnoses troubles about computer system administration. This troubleshooter digs out several possible causes (hypotheses) from the current status of a trouble, and then examines those hypotheses in turn. After the cause is identified, it will present a solution to fix the trouble. To illustrate the status of a trouble, possible causes,examination methods and presentation of a solution, WebPages (hereafter, info pages) are used, which are defined in HTML code. From the info pages that explain each status of troubleshooting, the method this paper presents generates troubleshooter client/server interface, a stack of status history and titled links to the next info pages. This paper also describes two ways to easily implement this method on both of a client side and a server side.