Getting Started Further documentation

The Linux distribution includes quite a lot of documentation, but its not always obvious where to look for it. This page gives a few hints for possible sources of information.

RPM packages

A good starting point is the RPM package itself. The packages include a small amount of information which at least gives a textual description of the package, as well as some details of when it was built. To see this use the command:

host% rpm --query --info package-name

Other --query options include --list, to display a list of the files which are in the package. Use rpm --help to see some of the other options, or see the rpm man page.

Man pages

Many applications provide documentation of their commands or libraries in the form of man pages. Man pages are installed into three places depending on which class (target, host or cross) they fall into:

• Cross programs (which run on the host, but target a particular target) have their man pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/man.
• Host programs (which run on the host and are target independent) have their man pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/host/man.
• Target programs (which run on the target) have their man pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/target/usr/share/man.

You can view the target man pages when logged into the target using the man command, for example:

target% man sleep

It is also possible to use the man command on the host to look at any of the man pages, by specifying to the path to the root of the man pages. So for example to look at a cross program's man page:

host% man -M /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/sh4/man sh4-linux-objcopy

You can also set the MANPATH environment variable to avoid having to pass the -M option each time.

Info pages

Many of the GNU programs which as supplied with the Linux distribution use a different documentation system called info pages. These are a form of hyper-text documentation, which can be read by a number of programs.

info pages are installed along side man pages, and so you need to consider the type of program you are interested in:

• Cross programs (which run on the host, but target a particular target) have their info pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/info.
• Host programs (which run on the host and are target independent) have their info pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/host/info.
• Target programs (which run on the target) have their info pages in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/target/usr/share/info.

The easiest way to read info pages is to use the text based info command. As with man, you can run this directly on the target to look at the target info pages:

target% info

displays the top level info directory. You can also select a node from the command line, simply by providing it as an additional option. Not surprisingly, the info documentation is provided as info pages, so for more information on how to use info, simply run:

target% info info

Briefly, you can navigate around in the info reader using the cursor keys, and when positioned over a link press the return key to read it. Press "U" to go up a level.

It is also possible to use the host's info command to look at target info pages in the same way, for example:

host% info --directory /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/sh4/target/usr/share/info

To avoid having to specify the full path every time, you can use the INFOPATH environment variable.

Other programs which can be used to read info pages include emacs.

Note that in the 1.0 distribution, info pages were not always added to the appropriate directory file when the package was installed. In this can it may be necessary to specify the file directly using the --file command line option, for example:

host% info --file /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/host/info/ddd

Documentation files

Finally, many packages come with documentation which does not fit into one of the above categories. In this case the documentation is installed into a per-package documentation directory. Again, this is located in a different place for each of the classes of packages:

• Cross programs (which run on the host, but target a particular target) have their documentation files in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/doc.
• Host programs (which run on the host and are target independent) have their documentation files in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/host/doc.
• Target programs (which run on the target) have their documentation files in /opt/STM/ST40Linux-1.0/devkit/cpu/target/usr/share/doc.

The format of these files is entirely dependent on the package. However most will be text files, which can be read using a text editor.