User Support, Getting Help

• Refer to the wiki (this site); accounts can be made available for people who would like to add add suggestions or comments.

• Email the systems admin: help@…

Manual pages

An important source of written information is the Unix/Linux manual pages. These are specially formatted text files that are conveniently viewed using the man-program. To get information about a particular command type:

man <command>

Very useful is the -k option which will print out one-line summaries on any of the given keywords:

man -k <keyword>

man man

gives you information about the man program itself. If you prefer a point-and-click interface you might want to try xman. Beware that these manual pages sometimes can be rather obscure (the standard example being the manual pages to the command find). But they usually adhere to a structure with first a description of the command, then a listing of the command line options and an explanation of the usage (which usually merits repeated reading), a list of environment variables supported by the program and finally some examples of use.