Debian help system

Jesse Goerz

         jwgoerz@users.sourceforge.net
         

This document is intended to help Debian newbies find and understand ways in which they can find information to solve problems they have with Debian. Copyright © 2001, Jesse Goerz, NewbieDoc project. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found at the Free Software Foundation.

Many thanks to Brian Potkin for his direct and accurate information about /usr/doc, man pages, and my error on what package zless belonged to. I would also like to thank Wayne Topa for his excellent contribution for using xman and his advice on the use of the mailing lists.


Revision History
Revision v0.329 September 2001Revised by: jwg
Added info pages.
Revision v0.24 May 2001Revised by: jwg
Added /usr/doc/*, xman, more info on using mailing lists, correction on zless reference, and minor corrections to info gathering progs.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. What's Installed?
2.1. /usr/share/doc/*
2.2. /usr/doc/*
2.3. man pages
2.4. xman
2.5. apropos
2.6. info pages
2.7. Using dpkg to find information
3. Online resources
3.1. Debian home page
3.2. Debian mailing lists
3.3. Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
3.4. Finding packages
3.5. Debian documentation project
4. Information gathering programs
4.1. Using a terminal
4.2. plog
4.3. /var/log/syslog
4.4. tcpdump
4.5. dump
4.6. lspci