Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux:Help Please function GetCookie (name) { var arg = name + "="; var alen = arg.length; var clen = document.cookie.length; var i = 0; while (i < clen) { var j = i + alen; if (document.cookie.substring(i, j) == arg) { var end = document.cookie.indexOf (";", j); if (end == -1) end = document.cookie.length; return unescape(document.cookie.substring(j, end)); } i = document.cookie.indexOf(" ", i) + 1; if (i == 0) break; } return null; } var m1=''; var gifstr=GetCookie("UsrType"); if((gifstr!=0 ) && (gifstr!=null)) { m2=gifstr; } document.write(m1+m2+m3);            Keyword Title Author ISBN Publisher Imprint Brief Full  Advanced      Search  Search Tips Please Select ----------- Components Content Mgt Certification Databases Enterprise Mgt Fun/Games Groupware Hardware IBM Redbooks Intranet Dev Middleware Multimedia Networks OS Prod Apps Programming Security UI Web Services Webmaster Y2K ----------- New Titles ----------- Free Archive To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux (Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing) Author(s): Manuel Ricart ISBN: 078971826x Publication Date: 12/22/98 function isIE4() { return( navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1 && (navigator.appVersion.charAt(0)=='4') ); } function bookMarkit() { var url="../../../../../www.itknowledge.com/PSUser/EWBookMarks.html@url="+window.location+"&isbn=0"; parent.location.href=url; //var win = window.open(url,"myitk"); //if(!isIE4()) // win.focus(); } Search this book:   Previous Table of Contents Next Chapter 15Help 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). Previous Table of Contents Next Products |  Contact Us |  About Us |  Privacy  |  Ad Info  |  Home Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions, Copyright © 1996-2000 EarthWeb Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited.