man manual-page
— the manual page usually goes by the same name as the command whose documentation is sought. For example, to learn about the possible options for the cp
command, you would type the man cp
command at the shell prompt (see sidebar FONDAMENTALI La shell, un interprete a riga di comando).
read
command has the same name as the read
system call. This is why manual pages are organized in numbered sections:
/dev/
directory);
read
, si scriverà man 2 read
. Quando non è esplicitamente specificata una sezione, verrà mostrata la prima sezione che ha una pagina di manuale col nome richiesto. Perciò, man shadow
restituirà shadow(5) perché non ci sono pagine di manuale per shadow nelle sezioni da 1 a 4.
apropos
command, which helps you conduct a search in the manual pages, or more specifically in their short descriptions. Each manual page begins essentially with a one line summary. apropos
returns a list of manual pages whose summary mentions the requested keyword(s). If you choose them well, you will find the name of the command that you need.
Esempio 7.1. Trovare cp
con apropos
$
apropos "copy file"
cp (1) - copy files and directories cpio (1) - copy files to and from archives gvfs-copy (1) - Copy files gvfs-move (1) - Copy files hcopy (1) - copy files from or to an HFS volume install (1) - copy files and set attributes ntfscp (8) - copy file to an NTFS volume.
man
non è l'unico modo di consultare le pagine di manuale; infatti, anche konqueror
(in KDE) e yelp
(sotto GNOME) offrono questa possibilità. Esiste anche un'interfaccia web, fornita dal pacchetto man2html
, che permette di vedere le pagine di manuale in un browser web. Su un computer su cui è installato questo pacchetto, si può usare questo URL:
info
) is also slightly more complex. You would be well advised to use pinfo
instead (from the pinfo package).
pinfo
without parameters, it will display a list of the nodes available at the first level. Usually, nodes bear the name of the corresponding commands.
pinfo
navigating between these nodes is easy to achieve with the arrow keys. Alternatively, you could also use a graphical browser, which is a lot more user-friendly. Again, konqueror
and yelp
work; the info2www
also provides a web interface.
man
page system. info documents are thus almost always in English. However, when you ask the pinfo
program to display a non-existing info page, it will fall back on the man page by the same name (if it exists), which might be translated.
README
che contiene informazioni interessanti o importanti. Questa documentazione è installata nella directory /usr/share/doc/pacchetto/
(dove pacchetto rappresenta il nome del pacchetto). Se la documentazione è particolarmente grande, potrebbe non essere inclusa nel pacchetto principale del programma, ma piuttosto separata in un pacchetto dedicato che di solito di chiama pacchetto-doc
. Di solito il pacchetto principale raccomanda il pacchetto con la documentazione, dimodoché è facile trovarla.
/usr/share/doc/package/
directory also contains some files provided by Debian which complete the documentation by specifying the package's particularities or improvements compared to a traditional installation of the software. The README.Debian
file also indicates all of the adaptations that were made to comply with the Debian Policy. The changelog.Debian.gz
file allows the user to follow the modifications made to the package over time: it is very useful to try to understand what has changed between two installed versions that do not have the same behavior. Finally, there is sometimes a NEWS.Debian.gz
file which documents the major changes in the program that may directly concern the administrator.
debian
to limit results and target relevant information.
Homepage
field in the package's meta-information (apt-cache show package
). Alternately, the package description may contain a link to the program's official website. If no URL is indicated, look at /usr/share/doc/package/copyright
. The Debian maintainer generally indicates in this file where they got the program's source code, and this is likely to be the website that you need to find. If at this stage your search is still unfruitful, consult a free software directory, such as FSF's Free Software Directory, or search directly with a search engine, such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.