Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere"
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 08:59:18AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed
information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing an
application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got "command not
found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using Synaptic's search
function -- there is a package named "tree".
However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command
not found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall
the specific command). It turned out it was one utility command among
many provided by a package with an unrelated name.
Is there a general way to find such a package?
There is a package called "command-not-found" which hooks into the shell
such that, instead of a message like "blah: command not found", you get
something more informative along the lines of "blah was not found, but
there's an executable called blah in the 'libblah-bin' package".
"command-not-found" is, I believe, installed by default on Ubuntu.
2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info"
command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I
would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it
locally to desired format - usually HTML.
If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the
associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or
zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?
I believe the standard location for these is /usr/share/info.
--
For more information, please reread.
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