OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => Off Topic forum => Topic started by: Jon_J on February 06, 2006, 05:16:47 pm

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: Jon_J on February 06, 2006, 05:16:47 pm

I'm new to Linux and have been reading a lot of howtos and newbie guides to get acquainted with Linux. I've been finding many refrences to "man" and "info" documents that are supposed to be in "most"? all Linux installations. When I use my Zaurus SL-C3100 with cacko 1.23 and use the console, I always get "command not found" when trying to use the "man" or "info" command. If these documents aren't included with my Zaurus, where can I find suitable replacements? I have found a directory named "man" in this location on my 3100, but it is an empty directory: /usr/man
I also noticed many commands mentioned in these tutorials are not found either. I just assumed that a lot of commands are not included to save space on this machine since it's so small.
I just downloaded a copy of "The Linux Cookbook" by Michael Stutz and "Introduction to Linux A Hands on Guide" by Machtelt Garrels.
These seem to be very good refrences, and the "man & "info" documents are mentioned quite often in these books.

Thank you for reading this,
Jon
Edited topic for spelling...opps

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: scheck.r on February 06, 2006, 05:26:04 pm

I am not an expert but I have seen the ipk "man" for PdaXrom in this thread
linux development tools thread (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=17474)

Hope it helps

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: Mjolinor on February 06, 2006, 05:28:51 pm

All the Linux man pages are online so if you google for "man ls" for example, you will get a web page with the man entry for the ls command.. It's a lot easier to read it online anyway.

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: speculatrix on February 06, 2006, 05:34:13 pm

what's "linex" (the subject?)

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: Jon_J on February 06, 2006, 05:42:17 pm

Thank you for all your replys. I'm not always online. And my 'Z' has no online connection, so a downloaded version would help me better. I couldn't see dialing up a connection just to look up a command switch.

Thank you,
Jon

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: metal9966 on February 06, 2006, 08:04:12 pm

I had the same problem, here was my solution (kind of a work around):

I download one of the many web pages that has a listing of all the bash linux command line apps. like this one: http://www.ss64.com/bash/ (http://www.ss64.com/bash/) ( I think this is what i used) Use wget or something to download the index and all the links for the specific commands.

Then I put it all in one openoffice.org text document (arrange to your liking), and save to a PDF file.

Then use one of the PDF viewers and the search function. works great. and probably takes up less space than the actual man pages take up.

as to the rest of the missing commands on the Z, I installed busybox?? package I think, and it added all I needed.

I also did the same with the Perl documentation.

later

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: Jon_J on February 07, 2006, 11:59:54 am

Thank you metal9966,
I'll try to get the page http://www.ss64.com/bash/ (http://www.ss64.com/bash/) and all the links and save as html.
I find web pages much easier to read than PDF. PDF are nice, but if you zoom in to make the fonts bigger, you have to scroll horizontally to read the text. Web pages word wrap, and you can use (almost) any font size you want.

Jon

Title: Linux Newbie, "man" & "info"
Post by: metal9966 on February 12, 2006, 04:12:22 pm

ya, I need to convert some of this stuff to a help file, and try it on the Z.