Introduction



Being a system administrator is full of interesting challenges. We like this. However, some of these challenges can be problematic, if they cause service interrupts on production systems. Most system administrators have run into the situation where something is wrong, the server is down, and we don't know what is going on. This project attempts to help.



There are a lot of tools out there to make the system administrator's life easier. However, no tool is a replacement for properly understanding the system and experience in troubleshooting unknown situations. This is where Trouble-Maker comes in. Unlike other projects, we do not attempt to solve problems -- we cause them.



When installed and run, this project will randomly select a problem from its set of issues and make it happen on your system. This can give you experience dealing with:





Dealing with partially accurate user reporting of problems

Troubleshooting boot problems

Troubleshooting service configuration problems

Troubleshooting (simulated) hardware problems

It should be obvious, but we shall say it anyway. . . DO NOT INSTALL THIS SYSTEM ON A PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!!