Linux Neophyte

Man pages are a great place to start when you need help using a program, however they don’t always get the point across in an easy to follow manner. This is especially true if you’re new to Linux. Most of the packages that you install will come with a man page (or several) as well as additional documentation. Both Fedora and Ubuntu tuck all of this additional information away in sub-directories off of the /usr/share/doc/ directory. There you can find such gems as FAQs, examples of configuration files, changelogs and more (depending on what the package offers). I should note here that I’ve found considerably less extra documentation in Fedora than I’ve found in Ubuntu.

Open up your file manager (for many of you it will be Konqueror or Nautilus) and browse to /usr/share/doc/, there you will find hundreds of folders named after the packages installed on your system. Find an application you’re familiar with and enter the folder. You can now view all of the extra documentation associated with that application.

Note: Depending on your distribution, many of these files might be kept in .gz (compressed) files. Double-click on the file to open it in your default archive manager, this will display the actual text file contained there-in. You can now double-click on the text file to read it’s contents.

written by \\ tags: Getting Help

In my last post I covered reading man pages via the console. Depending on your distro, you may find that man pages are available via your desktop’s GUI help center.

Ubuntu does this very well, while Fedora had some wonkiness.

Ubuntu/Gnome users can select System > Help > System Documentation. The Help Topics page contains a few categories dedicated to Ubuntu specific documentation, scrolling down will show Other Document Categories. Here you will want to click the Command Line Help link. You will be shown two more categories; GNU Info Pages and Manual Pages. Info pages tend to be more in depth where man pages give you the basics and then leave you to experiment. Once you select one of these categories, you’ll find yet another collection of categories, you can select one of them or simply enter the command you’re interested in learning about into the search field. Entering shutdown will give you the man page for the shutdown command.

Note: When I first entered the help center and attempted to search for some common commands, the results didn’t include any man pages. Once I browsed through some of the available man pages, the search results began including manuals. YMMV.

Fedora works much the same way, within Gnome you select System > Help. You’ll have fewer categories, but the command line help is there. I’ve found that browsing the command line help works perfectly, however I usually prefer to just search for what I want. Here is where Fedora has some issues. Entering shutdown into the search field results in the help center displaying a link to the man page, clicking on that link gives nothing more than an error about an invalid uniform resource identifier. My Google-fu might be lacking today, I just can’t locate any fixes for it.

If you’d rather not read your man pages via the terminal, this is the graphical way to get it done.

written by M@ \\ tags: Desktop, Edgy, FC6, Fedora, Getting Help, Gnome, Ubuntu

Before I started using Linux I heard about all of the help you couldn’t get on-line, the rumor was that many times when you asked for help, you got the standard response; RTFM (an acronym for read the fine manual – family friendly blog folks). For the record, I have never once received that response, I have many times been given assistance and then a follow-up suggestion to check the man page for further info. Maybe it’s just the distros I’m using, but I’ve had great experiences with forums and IRC. Anyway, that isn’t really the topic here, before you can RTFM, you need to know how.

Reading man pages is easy but it requires a bit of command line interaction. Open up your terminal program (most likely konsole or gnome-terminal) and enter the command:

man shutdown

What this will show you is the man page for the shutdown command. The man page will give you the name, synopsis, description and options for shutdown.

You can scroll through the man pages using page up/page down as well as the up and down arrow keys. When your finished press q to dismiss the page and return to the prompt.

Within the shutdown man page (and many others) you will find a See Also section, this will refer you to other man pages related to the command:

SEE ALSO

fsck(8), init(8), halt(8), poweroff(8), reboot(8)

You can return to the prompt and enter man reboot for more information on that command. Don’t enter the (8) following the command (but if you want to, you would enter it as man 8 reboot). The numbers in parenthesis following the commands indicate the category the command is assigned to (8 is the system administration category). For more information on manual pages visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page or enter man man at your prompt.

written by \\ tags: Getting Help

Before I *really* start posting I should tell you a little bit about my methods and myself. I want to keep this blog as easy to understand as possible while still providing useful information. For example, if I’m posting a how-to, I’ll always try to go with the graphical method for getting the job done. In some cases however that’s not always the best way to do something. Installing several applications from a GUI package manager might take a whole lot longer, and be more hassle, than entering a command into a terminal window.

Linux will, at times, require you to enter a few commands at a prompt. It’s not as scary as you might think and once you get used to it, I hope that you’ll find it a handy and fast way to get something done. I know from experience that the command line can be intimidating, there are so many commands to remember, the syntax and options are not the same for every application and switching a -r to a -R will impact the results. Patience is key, I keep telling myself that, over and over.

Now a little bit about me, I’ve been a Windows user since the days of DOS 6.?? and Windows 3.1. It all started when I found myself wondering why certain shareware games just wouldn’t play on my girlfriend’s Packard Bell (remember those?). That (fortunately for me) snowballed into an obsession with computers that carried me through to today. I just find computers fascinating, I enjoy making them communicate with each other and forcing them to do my bidding. I love taking a misbehaving application or piece of hardware and cor-r-r-r-recting it. FYI: I don’t have any formal training, I just read what I can and apply it to my daily work and play.

I’ve never owned a MAC and I haven’t used one since the mid 90s. Other than my recent foray into Linux I haven’t used many other operating systems. I did spend some time in a shop that employed a VMS mainframe and while that was fun and interesting I was a Windows guy and thought the world of terminal computing was at an end (so I never really focused on learning the ins and outs).

When I decided to become a Linux user I basically immersed myself in the OS. I built a speedy multi-boot machine at home for desktop Linux (Ubuntu is the only installed distro at the moment), I converted two old machines into servers (Debian & Ubuntu), and I set up a multi-boot layout on my laptop (Ubuntu, Fedora, XP) and finally, I set up a multi-boot machine at work (Fedora, XP). I have two XP machines at home, one is my home theater and the other is a desktop machine that pretty much gets ignored these days.

Note: I used an article in one of the early Tux magazine publications for setting up the multi- boot machines

As you can see I’m familiar with a few distributions, I’m an expert in none. For the most part when I attempt new things, I’ll be trying them on Ubuntu and Fedora. I’ll include notes on both distros when applicable. When I do try other distros I’ll post about my experiences here and hope that it benefits you.

written by M@ \\ tags: About