Re: Debian glossary?
On 04/30/2018 08:20 AM, Brian wrote:
On Mon 30 Apr 2018 at 06:46:01 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
Debian documentation NOT written for hoi polloi.
Strong words.
BUT true!
[...]
Output of "ls -Rdl /media/richard/rco1" is
"drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 28 23:49 /media/richard/rco1".
{ In "drwxr-xr-x 3", what do "d" and "3" tell me? }
At the end of ls(1) it says:
Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ls>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ls invocation'
You have identified a documentation bug!
The relevant line of the HTML of
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/coreutils/ls.1.en.html is
</a></h1>
GNU coreutils online help: <<a
href="http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/";>http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/</a>
and www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ gives no navigational guidance.
Drilling down to
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/What-information-is-listed.html#What-information-is-listed
does indeed identify "d".
I think "Full" would imply more detail than in the manual. I'd use
'pinfo ls' for something more friendly than info.
Hadn't heard of pinfo and it wasn't installed. Looks interesting.
Will read man page online later.
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/mount/mount.8.en.html says in part:
/begin quote
strictatime
Allows to explicitly request full atime updates. This makes it possible
for the kernel to default to relatime or noatime but still allow userspace
to override it. For more details about the default system mount options see
/proc/mounts.
/end quote
{ Having used a file manager to look at /proc/mounts without comprehension,
I interpreted the context of "/proc/mounts" to indicate that there would be
a reference to it elsewhere in https://manpages.debian.org . Nope. }
'cat /proc/mounts' doesn't necessarily improve your comprehension but it
is probably quicker. For a reference, you want proc(5);
You have identified ANOTHER bug. "/proc/mounts" should read "proc(5)".
that takes you to fstab(5).
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/mount/mount.8.en.html makes several
references to "block special device".
{ "block special device" ??? }
I thought that was well explained.
I admit the author would claim so. But it left me head scratching.
What does the internet say about it?
Various pages say various things while raising more questions clouding
the issue.
Man pages by their nature/purpose assume a certain level of expertise.
They can be daunting for the uninitiated.
Not a novel observation - but you are not uninitiated or a newcomer. Then
there is always a search engine at hand or the ever-helpful debian-user. >
<ROFL> Unwarranted assumption implied by "but you are not uninitiated or
a newcomer".
As to computers generally - true.
As an E.E. student in the 60's took "Introduction to Computers" followed
by a semester of FORTRAN. In the 70's I did work for DEC. *BUT* I was in
"Power Supply Engineering". My name (or at least my initials) appear on
some H720-E documentation.
BUT, until abandoning WinXP for Squeeze I was only a USER without any OS
background. Since then I've been self-taught, there not even being a
local LUG.
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