OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Software => Topic started by: gbrocks on April 28, 2005, 03:57:29 am
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I'm just starting to learn Linux. I've tried accessing the manual pages by using the man command. This doesn't work. Are the man pages available on the zaurus? If so, how would one access them? Or are help screens available in some other way?
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man pages are in general not available on the Zaurus. In order to save a bit of space the package contains the bare minimum. ie no docs.
Note also the many basic tools (cd ls maybe grep wget) are in fact provided by busybox.
Busybox provided these utils in a much more compact form than the "regular ones". But
it also remove from time to time the less common options.
So you might found that some options from say "man ls" on a regular linux desktop machine are not working on the Z.
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I am also a linux newbie (my Z is the first and the only Linux machine I have). I just happen to find that "command -h" (e.g. tar -h) or "command -m" (e.g. ls -m) or "command --help" (e.g. grep --help) will show help-like info for many (basic) commands. Hope this helps.
... Or am I just mistaken?
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Yes, -h and --help options are standard ways for Unix and GNU programs to display a brief help message, usually a one-line description of the program with argument syntax.
If you are using bash, it provides a 'help' command for information on bash subcommands, which is what many of the most basic Un*x shell commands really are: cd, echo, fg, kill, etc.
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Using the -h switch on a Zaurus (which as pgas said uses busybox to provide most of the above commands) will result in not much extra info.
Again, this is done to save space. Take a look at the busybox web site, they have an html file which describes all of the switches supported by their binary.
Si