This month we have a great invite from Joe Fleming, a first time host of T-SQL Tuesday. Joe reached out when I requested some hosts and I’m glad he did. He’s got a great challenge for people and I’ll answer in two ways, for work and non-work.
I manage the T-SQL Tuesday site and I’m always looking for hosts, so if you want to host one month from your blog, send me a note on Twitter, Blue Sky, or at SQL Server Central.
Troubleshooting SQL Server
In my career, I’ve had all sorts of issues come up. Here’s a description of one of the stranger issues. This isn’t the exact issue, but it was similar to this.
A user reported they couldn’t log into the server. They were logged on earlier, but can’t connect now through an application. What could be the problem?
When looking at this type of issue, I usually think there is some sort of network issue here, or perhaps a service issue. My thoughts are:
- Can I connect? Or can others? (trying to determine if it’s this user)
- Can this user connect with another app that might give an error message?
- Is the server instance up? (check the basics and isolate if this is networking)
- Has this login had a change to permissions/password/etc. Perhaps an AD change.
- Has something else changed on the server?
- Has something changed on this user’s machine?
At some point, I’ll isolate where the issue is and determine how to fix it. In this case, I managed to determine the user was a DBA that was playing with a logon trigger and locked themselves out.
The UTV Won’t Move
On the ranch we have to learn to handle lots of things ourselves. YouTube has been a boon, but it’s also a bit of common sense and problem solving that we need to get things done. It can be hard to get people out to the ranch, especially for small things.
Sometimes big things.
Awhile back I came back home from a trip to find the spare UTV we have in one of the fields. I asked what had happened and a kid said that it died.
That’s not a good description, so I asked how it died. What was going on? what was happening? This kid said they’d stopped the vehicle to do something and put it park. When they went to shift into drive, it wouldn’t move.
Did the engine run?
Yes, but the UTV didn’t move.
Now that I had a better story, I could debug further. I knew that it ran and went out to start it myself. Sure enough, it starts and the shifter didn’t do anything, but it felt loose.
Sometimes hands-on helps. I knew immediately a cable had broken.
First thing, get this out of the field. I knew there was a way to shift it without the cable, I just had to figure out. (YouTube to the rescue). Once I did that, it’s research to figure out how hard this is to replace and where I can get the part.
I logically move through the steps of how can I practically get things done.
From here, I saw someone talk about this on YT and show me this isn’t hard. I learned how to shift into Drive with a pair of vice grips, got it up to the house, and I found the part online. I ordered it, send the YT link to the kids, and tasked them with fixing the cable.
They did, after some problem solving from me.