Troubleshooting

The purpose of this page is to provide users, in particular new ones, with a set of tools to allow them to troubleshoot and fix problems with their Gentoo setups on their own. In addition, for those problems which are more complicated, this article seeks to provide users with the skills to collect information that will aid them and their supporters in resolving their issues with a greater degree of expediency.

This article assumes that you have read the Gentoo Handbook and understand the basics of using Gentoo.

Where to Get Help

 * IRC
 * For general issues, #gentoo is the recommended channel. This is probably the fastest way to get an answer.


 * Forums
 * Mailing Lists

Programs
This is a collection of tools that are highly recommended:

Package Management

 * app-portage/gentoolkit
 * provides a collection of tools for interacting with Gentoo


 * app-portage/eix
 * provides eix, a tool for querying portage for packages


 * app-portage/pfl
 * provides e-file, a tool for querying what package contains a given file.


 * app-portage/genlop
 * provides genlop, a tool for parsing emerge logs.


 * app-portage/elogv
 * provides elogv, a ncurses based interface for browsing emerge logs.

Hardware

 * sys-apps/pciutils
 * provides lspci, a tool for gathering information about pci devices.


 * sys-apps/usbutils
 * provides lsusb, a tool for gathering information about usb devices.

Monitoring

 * sys-process/htop
 * provides htop, a tool for monitoring processes. Like top, but more advanced.


 * sys-process/iotop
 * provides iotop, a top-like tool for monitoring IO activity by process.


 * net-analyzer/net-top
 * provides net-top, a top-like tool for examining network traffic by protocol, port, and process.

Miscellaneous

 * app-text/wgetpaste
 * provides wgetpaste, a tool for uploading text directly to a pastebin.


 * net-irc/weechat
 * provides weechat, a simple text based IRC client.