I need to take my own advice more often. Someone comes to me with a computer issue? First think I’ll ask is, “Did you reboot it yet?” Heck, it is written at the top of the big whiteboard in my office.
I don’t care if it is Windows, Mac or Linux. That’s where I always prefer to start. Funny how often that’ll solve the issue.
Sometimes I forget though…
Saturday night I flashed a WatchGuard firewall to a new major release (v11.0.1 for those curious) and initially had all sorts of grief. Nothing worked. But after a drive to the data center and a few hours I had it all back in place except for the VPN tunnel between that router and another WatchGuard back at the office. It just wouldn’t cooperate.
Spent all day Sunday trying various things to get that VPN going but I just couldn’t seem to hit on the right combination of parameters. Worked with WatchGuard support on and off for a couple days earlier this weekl trying even more radical things and getting more error info. Still no luck.
Then I noticed the uptime on the device. It had been up ever since the initial reboot after the firmware flash.
::facepalm::
I rebooted it and sure enough, that VPN tunnel instantly popped up and stayed up.
Reboots aren’t just for PCs. If it has a processor or some sort of OS then reboot the damned thing before getting days into trying to fix it.
Maybe I can remember that as I plan the upgrade of four more of those WatchGuards…
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October 16th, 2009 
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