Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere"

[Frank Miles <fpm@u.washington.edu>]

On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 16:10:01 +0200, 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?
> 
> 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?

One built-in way with your example is simply:
    man -k tree

(so ok, not exactly the info format)