Most packages include their own documentation in one of the sub-directories of /usr/share/doc, which will be named after the specific package. Mandriva Linux's own documentation, when installed, is available in the /usr/share/doc/mandriva/ directory.
- Security Focus
-
Reviews current attacks and publishes vulnerability advisories for a great number of products, including Mandriva Linux.
- Linux Security
-
Entirely devoted to Linux and includes news, advisories, newsletters, and many other resources such as documentation, forums, tools, etc. Check out the site's documentation page.
- Linux dot com
-
Excellent site regularly fed with articles on present security issues. It also features articles about desktop, sound, and more. You should particularly check out the HOWTO section.
Of the many existing web sites, here are some with the most information:
- Linux Online!
-
One of the very first sites devoted to Linux, it contains a whole slew of links to other useful sites.
- Freshmeat
-
This is the place to visit to get the latest applications available in the Linux world.
- Linux Weekly News
-
One of the most exhaustive Linux publications available, it covers everything from the latest security alerts to new distributions, information about current and past kernels, books, and a weekly newsletter (for subscribers only).
And, of course, remember your favorite search engines. Generally speaking, they are the most practical information seeking tools. A few carefully chosen keywords in a search engine often produce the answers you need for your specific problem. With Google ™, you can even make a GNU/Linux-oriented search by visiting its Linux section.
Abstract
The Manual Pages (also known as “man pages”) are a set of exhaustive documents, which help you acquire better knowledge of GNU/Linux commands. The latter are usually issued through the “command line” and allow great control over your system (see the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manual see the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manual see the Introduction to the Command Line chapter of the Reference Manual ). Although these man pages might seem discouraging at first, they offer great detail and we encourage you to browse through them when a problem occurs.
This should be your primary source of information for shell commands. Almost all commands have a manual page. Other items, such as certain configuration files, library functions for programmers and others system aspects also have their own man pages.
Man page contents are arranged in different sections. References to these are made in the following manner: for example, open (2) , fstab (5) respectively refers to the open page in section 2 and the fstab page in section 5.
![[Tip]](images/tip.png)
To display a man page in a terminal (or shell), type man. The syntax to obtain a man page is:
man
<manual page>
man also has documentation, which can be obtained by typing man man. Manual pages are formatted and then displayed using the less pager.
The names of the manual pages and their relevant sections appear at the top of each page. At the bottom of the page are references to other pages with related subjects (usually in the SEE ALSO section).
You can start by consulting the pages related to the different commands covered in the Reference Manual the Reference Manual the Reference Manual : ls (1) , chmod (1) , etc.
If you cannot find the right manual page — for example, you want to use the mknod function in one of your programs but you end up on the mknod command page — make sure you spell out the section explicitly. In our example: man 2 mknod. If you forget the exact section, man -a mknod will read through all the sections looking for pages named mknod.
info pages complete the documentation included in the manual pages. The command to access info pages from a terminal is info.
Info pages are organized using a tree structure, the top of which is called dir. From there, you can access all info pages.
info may be called up in two ways: either by omitting any argument, thereby placing you at the very top of the tree structure, or by adding a command or a package name, which (if it exists) opens the relevant page. For example:
info
emacs
*
Buffers::
indicates a link. Moving the cursor to this link (using the arrow keys) and pressing Enter takes you to the corresponding info page.
You may also use the following keyboard shortcuts:
A great number of commands may be listed by pressing the ? key.
HOWTOs published by the TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project) are available in many languages and covers many aspects of your system. As long as the proper packages are installed (the howto-html-en package for the English edition), HOWTOs provide you with an answer to a specific question or a solution to a problem. The documentation is located in the /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en/ directory. These are HTML files readable and printable with any web browser.
The list is quite long. To get an idea of its length, consult the TLDP web site .
When you encounter a complex problem, start by reading the corresponding HOWTO, if available. Not only will you be given a solution to your problem, but you will also learn a great deal at the same time. Examples of what is covered range from networking (NET-3-HOWTO), sound card configuration (Sound-HOWTO), the writing of CD media (CD-Writing-HOWTO) as well as NIS and NFS configuration and much much more.
![[Note]](images/note.png) |
Note |
|---|---|
|
|