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Debian Tutorial
Chapter 5 - Reading documentation and getting help


5.1 Kinds of documentation

Unfortunately documentation on Unix-like systems is a little disorganized. On Debian, you can find documentation in at least the following places:

The confusing variety of documentation sources exists for many reasons. For example, info is supposed to replace man, but man hasn't disappeared yet. However, it's nice to know that so much documentation exists!

So where to look for help? Here are some suggestions:

Using man pages is discussed above in The command line and man pages, Section 4.1. (It's very simple: press the spacebar to go to the next page, and press q to quit reading.) info, viewing files in /usr/doc, and asking for help from a person are all discussed in this chapter.


5.2 Using info

A brief keystroke summary/tutorial, mention TkInfo, apologize for ridiculous keystrokes.


5.3 Viewing text files with more and less

Use these to view some docs. Mention zless and when to use it.


5.4 HOWTOs

In addition to their books, the Linux Documentation Project has made a series of short documents describing how to set up a particular aspect of GNU/Linux. For instance, the SCSI-HOWTO describes some of the complications of using SCSI --- a standard way of talking to devices --- with GNU/Linux. In general, the HOWTOs have more specific information about particular hardware configurations, and will be more up to date than this manual.

There are Debian packages for the HOWTOs. doc-linux-text contains the various HOWTOs in text form; while the doc-linux-html package contains the HOWTOs in (surprise!) browsable HTML format. Note also that Debian has packaged translations of the HOWTOs in various languages that you may prefer if English is not your native language. [9] If you've installed one of these, you should have them in /usr/doc/HOWTO. However, you may be able to find more recent versions on the net on the LDP Project home page.


5.5 Getting help from a person

The correct place to ask for help with Debian is the debian-user mailing list [email protected]. If you know how to use IRC (Internet Relay Chat), there is a #debian channel on irc.debian.org. You can find general GNU/Linux help on the comp.os.linux.* Usenet hierarchy. You can search past Usenet questions and answers with the DejaNews service. It is also possible to hire paid consultants to provide guaranteed support services. The Debian web site has more information on many of these resources.

Again, please do not ask the authors of this tutorial for help. We probably don't know the answer to your specific problem anyway; if you mail debian-user, you will get higher-quality responses, and more quickly.

Always be polite and make an effort to help yourself by reading the documentation. Remember, Debian is a volunteer effort and people are doing you a favor by giving their time to help you. Many of them charge hundreds of dollars for the same services during the day.


5.5.1 Dos and Don'ts of asking a question


5.6 Getting information from the system

When diagnosing problems or asking for help, you'll need to get information about your system. Here are some ways to do so.

/var/log/*, dmesg, uname -a


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Debian Tutorial


17 June 2006

Havoc Pennington [email protected]