[aklug] Debian documentation

Chris,

I'm not sure if this has come up on the mailing list since you've decided to
try out Debian. If it's a repeat, that's probably fine since it will just be
another hit in the archives for people googling Debian's documentation
system.

Every Debian package is supposed to drop documentation of some sort
into /usr/share/doc/[package name]. This can be pretty basic, but sometimes
this documentation is very comprehensive with complete http or pdf versions
of manuals. (Although it might be in it's own foo-doc package, like samba
and samba-doc.)

You can browse through these docs with a file manager, but an easier way of
doing it is by using one of the various documentation managers Debian has
available.

My favorite is dwww. If you have a default installation of Apache on your
system and install dwww, all of your documentation will become visible at
http://localhost/dwww/ -- and it will be organized and searchable.

Try a quick `apt-get install dwww`. It will pull in some dependencies (such
as Apache if you don't already have it, and I think htdig). Then in addition
to the documentation provided by packages, make sure you grab some general
purpose references like debian-reference-en and abs-guide.

Every time you update a package that has documentation installed, it will
update any changes. Today I got a new version of debian-reference with new
chapters and some moved contents, and the apt-get log shows the update with
dwww.

Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying you might want to install dwww and
use it as your first point of reference for Debian problems. Because you
know your system better than anyone else, you can filter out things like
whether or not you have ntfs-3g install easier than we can. As you read the
built-in udev documentation, maybe you'll find a reason udev isn't creating
your /dev/sde1 device and how to fix it.

(For Ubuntu users, I think dwww is in Universe)

Cheers,

James
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Received on Sat Oct 18 10:52:33 2008