Troubleshooting on Samuel Matildes - Knowledge Base

How Antivirus Software Can Prevent Linux Boot: Troubleshooting Guide

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding Antivirus Boot Interference

Antivirus software, while crucial for system security, can sometimes interfere with the Linux boot process. This occurs when security modules become overly aggressive during system initialization, potentially causing boot failures, readonly filesystem mounts, or service startup issues.

Common Symptoms

System fails to boot completely
Filesystem mounts as readonly (ro) instead of read-write (rw)
Critical services fail to start
Boot hangs at specific points
SELinux/AppArmor policy violations during boot

Filesystem Readonly Issues

One of the most common problems occurs when antivirus software causes the root filesystem to mount readonly. This prevents the system from writing critical boot files and can halt the initialization process.

How to Enable Azure Serial Console and GRUB on Linux VMs

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Serial Console is invaluable when SSH or the network is unavailable. This guide shows how to configure Linux distributions to expose the GRUB menu and kernel boot logs over the VM’s serial port on Azure, fixing cases where migrated images or some distros don’t show GRUB or any serial output.

For proactive setup, follow Microsoft’s official guide: Proactive GRUB and serial console configuration for Linux on Azure. This article is intended for cases where you’re facing issues getting serial console and the GRUB menu to display and need troubleshooting-oriented configuration.

How to Troubleshoot Linux Performance — Field Playbook

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A field-ready reference for Linux performance investigations — keep it open in a second terminal.

How to use this playbook

Linux performance problems split cleanly into two very different investigations, and picking the wrong one wastes hours:

Situation	Track	What you do
The problem is happening right now (or you can reproduce it on demand)	Track A — Live Triage	Interactive tools, sample at 1s intervals, follow the bottleneck
The problem is intermittent / random (happens overnight, once a week, only under load you can’t reproduce)	Track B — Background Collection	Arm continuous loggers before the next occurrence, then mine the logs afterwards

Rule of thumb

If you can’t reproduce it, do not keep staring at top. Stop, deploy collectors, walk away, and analyse later. Otherwise you’ll miss the event every single time.

How to Analyze Linux sosreport and supportconfig with SOSParser

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GitHub • Docker Hub •

Parse, analyze, and understand Linux diagnostic reports with automated intelligence.

What is SOSParser?

SOSParser is a powerful web application designed to automatically parse and analyze Linux sosreport and supportconfig diagnostic files, converting them into comprehensive, interactive HTML reports. Created to streamline the often tedious process of manually reviewing system diagnostic data, SOSParser transforms raw diagnostic archives into structured, searchable insights that accelerate troubleshooting and system analysis.