SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration Chapter 3 Locate and Use Help Resources

Objectives Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages Objective 2—Use info Pages Objective 3—Access Release Notes and White Papers Objective 4—Use GUI-Based Help Objective 5—Find Help on the Web SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages man command The most important command for online help All manual pages are available in English And many have been translated into other languages To display the English version of the man page for the man command LANG=en_EN man man SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages (continued) The first page of the manual pages SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages (continued) Parts of a manual page Table 3-1 Parts of a manual page SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages (continued) The program man uses the program less to display the manual pages Within less, the display of text is controlled by the keys shown in Table 3-2 The manual pages are organized in the sections shown in Table 3-3 It is especially important to know to which section a command belongs When the command has more than one manual page SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration Table 3-2 less command keys SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages (continued) Table 3-3 Sections in manual pages SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 1—Access and Use man Pages (continued) You can display a brief description of all the available manual pages for a command or utility By using the whatis command Manual pages are located in the directory /usr/share/man/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Exercise 3-1: Access and Use man Pages In this exercise, use the whatis and man commands to get information on the info command In the manual page, look for filename SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 2—Use info Pages A whole series of programs are no longer provided with manual pages Instead, info files are used, which can be read with the info command info files are located in the directory /usr/share/info/ Advantages of the info file format: It uses a structured document setup Specific sections can be reached directly from the table of contents Specific sections can be linked SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 2—Use info Pages (continued) The beginning of the info file for the info command SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration Table 3-4 Most commonly used key commands for the info command SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Exercise 3-2: Access and Use info Pages In this exercise, use the info command to get information on info and navigate through the info text SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 3—Access Release Notes and White Papers Release notes, white papers, and other sources of helpful information Stored in the directory /usr/share/doc/ This directory contains the following: Release Notes Manuals Help for Installed Packages HOWTOs SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Release Notes When you complete the installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server The release notes appear in a window See Figure 3-1 You can find them in various languages in the directory /usr/share/doc/release-notes/SUSE_Linux Enterprise_Desktop__10/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration Figure 3-1 SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop release notes SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Manuals A PDF version of the manual is in /usr/share/doc/manual/sled deployment_en/ If you prefer HTML, an HTML version is available in the manual/subfolder SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Help for Installed Packages Help files are available in the following directory for most installed packages: /usr/share/doc/packages/package-name/ These help files are written by the programmers of the package Therefore, the format of these files is not standardized SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

HOWTOs You can find additional information (including background material) in the howtos A howto is available for almost every imaginable topic in Linux You can find a list of all current howtos at www.tldp.org SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 4—Use GUI-Based Help An online help tool is available for graphical applications See Figure 3-2 To start the online help, select Computer > More Applications > System > Yelp Use the links to navigate through the content You also can use the search function to speed up your search for help The online help is available in most GNOME applications and can be started by pressing F1 SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration Figure 3-2 GUI-based help SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Objective 5—Find Help on the Web Some of the more frequently used Linux sites: www.novell.com/linux www.tldp.org www.cert.org (especially for security issues) www.securityfocus.com (especially for security issues) www.kernel.org (especially for issues in connection with the Linux kernel) www.novell.com/coolsolutions/ (follow the links on Linux) SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Exercise 3-3: Access Release Notes and Find Help on the Web In this exercise, you access release notes and find help on the Web Use the Nautilus file manager to access the release notes in /usr/share/doc/releasenotes/ Start Firefox and access the Linux Documentation Project at www.tldp.org Look for updates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on the Novell support Web site Then, use the Google Linux search engine to find information on GNOME and SLED10 in the Internet SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration

Summary There are several help resources available locally on your SUSE Linux system as well as on the Internet The manual pages contain the syntax and usage of most commands and files on your system The info pages are an alternative to the man pages that format information differently and can contain links to other sections The /usr/share/doc directory contains the manual and release notes for the SUSE Linux installation SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Administration