There are times when you may need help with a specific command, setting up
a program, or getting a piece of hardware to work. Luckily, there are a
variety of ways that you can get help. If you installed the packages from
the F software series, you have a wealth of help already installed. Programs
also come with help about their options, configuration files, and usage.
Finally, you can check the official Slackware website for help.
man (short for “manual”) is a traditional form
of online documentation in Unix and
Linux operating systems. Specially formatted files, “man pages”,
are written for most commands and distributed with the software. Running
man somecommand will display the man page for (naturally)
the command or program somecommand.
Because there are so many of them, man pages are grouped into enumerated
sections. This system has been around so long that you will often see
commands, programs, and even programming library functions referred to with
their man section number. For instance, you might see
man(1). This tells you that man is
documented in section 1 (user commands); you can specify that you want the
section 1 man page for “man” with the command
man 1 man. Specifying the section that man should look in
is useful in the case of multiple items with the same name.
Table 2-1. Man Page Sections
Section
Contents
Section 1
user commands (intro only)
Section 2
system calls
Section 3
C library calls
Section 4
devices (e.g., hd, sd)
Section 5
file formats and protocols (e.g., wtmp, /etc/passwd, nfs)
Section 6
games (intro only)
Section 7
conventions, macro packages, etc. (e.g., nroff, ascii)
Section 8
system administration (intro only)
In addition to man(1), there are the commands
whatis(1) and apropos(1), whose shared
purpose is to make it easier to find information in the man system.
whatis gives a very brief description of system commands,
somewhat in the style of a pocket command reference.
apropos is used to search for a man page containing a given
keyword.
The source for most packages that we build comes with some sort of
documentation. README files, usage instructions, license files... any
sort of documentation that comes with the source is included and installed
on your system in the /usr/doc directory.
If man pages don't provide enough information,
/usr/doc should be your next stop.
It is the true spirit of community that brings you the HOWTO/mini-HOWTO
collection. These files are exactly what they sound like-- documents
describing how to do stuff. If you install the HOWTO collection package,
HOWTOs will be installed to
/usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs and the
mini-HOWTOs to
/usr/doc/Linux-mini-HOWTOs.
Also included in the same package is a collection of FAQs (Frequently Asked
Questions lists-- with answers) which are installed to the same place.
These files are well worth reading whenever you're not quite sure how to
proceed with something. An amazing range of topics are covered in sometimes
surprising detail.