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Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Manuel Ricart
ISBN: 078971826x
Publication Date: 12/22/98

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Chapter 15
Help Please

In This Chapter

  Accessing the UNIX Manual Pages
  Searching for Help by Keyword
  The Whatis Database
  Getting Online Help
  Finding Your Answer with HOWTO Documents
  The Linux Documentation Project (LDP)
  Reading Info Pages

So far, you have been relying on this book for information about Linux. The commands discussed represent only a tiny fraction of what are available. This book doesn’t explain how to configure or use many things that you will eventually want to run on your system; for that I would need an additional 400 pages.

Before you despair, remember that this book is intended to get you up to speed with many basic topics related to both Linux and UNIX. In order for you to gain a full understanding, you will have to supplement the information you find here with additional sources. Some of these sources are already in your computer; others are available from other books or from resources freely available over the Internet.

In this chapter, you’ll take a short tour on the various resources you can utilize to get up to speed with Linux. This will empower you to find and solve problems on your own. You will learn a great deal by reading and tinkering as your needs require.

One interesting thing about Linux is that it is well documented. Whereas other operating systems (OSs) provide you with detailed information about certain aspects of your system, you will soon realize that Linux provides abundant information on just about everything installed in it. This is mostly due to the open nature of Linux. In a world where the tools are added by a distributed collection of programmers, the only way to bring order is through documentation. Linux has tons of it—if you know where to look.

Linux is a fairly “standard” UNIX as unices go. There are several generic UNIX books that can help you with additional depth and more advanced topics. A list of recommended readings is included at the end of this chapter. Also, if you have access to the Internet, there are several valuable sources of information that you can tap into, including mailing lists and Usenet news groups. Knowing how to use them properly will help you get the answers you need.

UNIX Manual Pages

Your first stop for information is the UNIX man pages. If you are having trouble with a command or some other tool in the system, it is very likely that the tool comes with documentation in the form of a man page. A man page is the standard UNIX online documentation format used by the man program.

The UNIX manual is slowly becoming a dinosaur, because better programs exist for reading documentation. The one positive thing about the UNIX manual is that it exists in all unices, Linux or otherwise. For this reason, it’s important that you learn how to use it properly.

To read the UNIX manual, you use the man command, and as an argument you give it the name of a program you want to know something about. The following example shows a section of what man prints out if you ask for information about the bash shell:

     [alberto@digital alberto]$ man bash
     BASH(1)                                                   BASH(1)

     NAME
            bash - GNU Bourne-Again Shell

     SYNOPSIS
            bash [options] [file]

     COPYRIGHT
            Bash  is  Copyright (c) 1989,  1991 by the Free Software
            Foundation, Inc.

     DESCRIPTION
            Bash is an sh-compatible command language interpreter that
            executes  commands  read from the standard input or from a
            file.  Bash also incorporates  useful  features  from  the
            Korn and C shells (ksh and csh).

            Bash is ultimately intended to be a conformant implementa-
            tion of the IEEE Posix Shell and Tools specification (IEEE
            Working Group 1003.2).
     :

As you can see, the man command provides a formatted version of the online manual. The colon (:) at the end of the listing indicates that there’s more information. Man information is passed through a pager program called less. You may recall that less displays information one screenful at a time. Here are a few things you can do with less:

  Press the Spacebar to view the next page.
  Type /word where word is a term that you are looking for. This will search the document for the word you specify and stop the pager at word’s first occurrence.
  Type q to return to the command prompt.

Try the man command to read some information about the man command (man man).


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