Is there any actually up-to-date large-scale linux documentation resource?
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Is there any actually up-to-date large-scale linux documentation resource?
The linux documentation project was a great idea and was brilliant for someone looking for a how-to, or a quick refresher on a procedure, but most articles are now > 10years obsolete. Man pages are useful, but often times are also not as up-to-date as the software itself, or does a poor job of actually explaining things. Distro specific wiki pages are sometimes okay at explaining things (arch wiki and gentoo wiki are excellent, debian is ok, slackware is a little less than okay), but they aren't always a great place to reference for smaller tasks (or larger for that matter).
Now, while google is a great resource for people to try and find information, I know I'm not alone in the hours-long searches for a simple refresher on a command, or an explanation for a utility you've never needed until now, or whatever it is that comes up, only to be left with more questions than before. In times like that, there are always forums to turn to, but this isn't the ideal scenario. Ideally one would just type "man [program]" and all the answers would be right there with usage, option explanations, and hopefully some example uses of those options and so on.
I know this isn't exactly an easy task to keep things like that updated regularly. I mean, 1 universal wiki for *nux would be quite a large database to maintain, let alone edit, audit, and admin. But I feel like my thoughts on this matter aren't the first, so I was hoping the great people here would have more information on up-to-date documentation than google turned up, and could perhaps point me in a productive direction. I guess what I'm basically hoping for is "Wikipedia for Unix and Linux" or something there abouts.
Well, the OP has covered man however they're a tad unforgiving by complaining that sometimes man pages are out of date. That's not my experience.
I do agree that tldp.org has some very old documentation. The top level is rather unusable, instead what may happen is I find a document using Google and some results point to documents within TLDP.
IMHO there are plenty of wikipedia entries on Linux and I've never been frustrated in a search for information about a Linux topic.
For up to date cmd defns I go with man on the system in qn, although I prefer http://linux.die.net/man/ for readability/search-ability.
For how to setup/use major tools/services and lots of other stuff www.linuxtopia.org.
Man can be...dense reading, but I've never found it out to be out of date either. I use die.net as the back-up for man as well.
One of the things I've goofed around with is a bash script that runs through the FS looking for index.html files and produces a mozilla compliant bookmarks file that can be imported, giving most web browsers an "on board documentation" folder in their toolbar but I'm not really familiar with the file structure of non-Slackware distros so I'm not sure it would work,
There is actually a lot of interesting and valuable documentation included in most distros in the form of HTML pages (at least it's in Slackware) that most people don't seem aware of.
Do other distros have a similar resource?
I think one of the points made here also is that the documentation "relevant" to one's distribution is typically included in that distro. Which is a good thing, because if someone chooses to maintain an older distro, that's their choice and the documentation on their system or on their install disk is most relevant copy.
This is as far as I've been able to get with the bookmark maker.
Code:
#!/bin/bash
# a script for digging out and formatting local index.html files to a bookmarks compatible html file
# Creates the base index.html collection in bookmarks.html
# date in the bookmarking world is the number of seconds in the epoch (midnight + 1 sec, Jan1 1970)
TICK=$(date +%s)
# The boilerplate that goes atop these files
function Head_Plate(){
echo '<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1> ' > bookmarks.html
echo '<!-- This is an automatically generated file.' >> bookmarks.html
echo ' It will be read and overwritten.' >> bookmarks.html
echo ' DO NOT EDIT! -->' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<H1>Bookmarks</H1>' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
echo "<DT><H3 ADD_DATE="$TICK" LAST_MODIFIED="$TICK" PERSONAL_TOOLBAR_FOLDER='true'>Bookmarks bar</H3>" >> bookmarks.html
echo '<DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
}
# The boilderplate that closes them off
function Butt_Plate() {
echo '</DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
echo '</DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
}
# The Problem
function Grinder(){
find / -iname index.html 2>/dev/null 1> bookmarks.tmp
while read bookmark; do
echo "<DT><A HREF=file://"$bookmark" ADD_DATE="$TICK"ICON=''"$bookmark | grep -i title"</A>"
done <bookmarks.tmp
}
Head_Plate
Grinder
Butt_Plate
exit 0
Grinder makes a tmp file that gets fed into a do while loop. It reads off line by line through the temp file and formats each line to be a "bookmark" in the final file (bookmark.html). The problem is the name (or title) of the bookmark. I'm trying to pull it out of the html "Title"(<title> </title>) of the page.
Getting it to write the file is easy, we'll just put a redirector to "bookmarks.html" the end of the line, it's easier to troubleshoot with it printing across the screen though, so that's the way I've left it.
Any thoughts?
Resolves that problem but the bookmarks aren't importing...hmmmm
Chrome imports them as a folder however the folder is empty.....
This is the file it creates, btw.
Code:
!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
<!-- This is an automatically generated file.
It will be read and overwritten.
DO NOT EDIT! -->
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>
<H1>Bookmarks</H1>
<DL><p>
<DT><H3 ADD_DATE=1403919611 LAST_MODIFIED=1403919611 PERSONAL_TOOLBAR_FOLDER='true'>Bookmarks bar</H3>
<DL><p>
<DT><A HREF=file:///tmp/SBo/package-libmspack/usr/doc/libmspack-0.4alpha/html/index.html ADD_DATE=1403919611 ICON=''libmspack: Main Page</A>
<DT><A HREF=file:///tmp/SBo/package-wxPython/usr/doc/wxPython-2.8.12.1/docs/html/wx/index.html ADD_DATE=1403919611 ICON=''wxWidgets 2.8.12: A portable C++ and Python GUI toolkit</A>
<DT><A HREF=file:///tmp/SBo/package-wxPython/usr/doc/wxPython-2.8.12.1/docs/html/gettext/index.html ADD_DATE=1403919611 ICON=''GNU gettext utilities - Table of Contents</A>
<DT><A HREF=file:///tmp/SBo/package-libvirt/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libvirt/index.html ADD_DATE=1403919611 ICON=''libvirt Reference Manual</A>
I'll keep at it and post back when I have a better solution.
#!/bin/bash
#
# a script for digging out and formatting local index.html files to a bookmarks compatible html file
#
# Creates the base index.html collection in bookmarks.html
# date in the netscape world is the number of seconds in the epoch (midnight, 1970)
TICK=$(date +%s)
function Top_Plate(){
echo '<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1> ' > bookmarks.html
echo '<!-- This is an automatically generated file.' >> bookmarks.html
echo ' It will be read and overwritten.' >> bookmarks.html
echo ' DO NOT EDIT! -->' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">' >> bookmarks.html
echo '<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>' >> bookmarks.html
echo "<DT><H3 ADD_DATE="$TICK" LAST_MODIFIED="$TICK" PERSONAL_TOOLBAR_FOLDER='true'>Bookmarks bar</H3>" >> bookmarks.html
echo '<DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
}
function Butt_Plate() {
echo '</DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
#echo '</DL><p>' >> bookmarks.html
}
function Grinder(){
find / -iname index.html 2>/dev/null 1> bookmarks.tmp
while read bookmark; do
TITLE=$(grep -i -o -P '(?<=<title>).*(?=</title>)' $bookmark )
echo "<DT><A HREF=file://"$bookmark" ADD_DATE= "$TICK" ICON= > "$TITLE" </A>">> bookmarks.html
done <bookmarks.tmp
}
Top_Plate
Grinder
Butt_Plate
exit 0
Actually produces a firefox importable file...
Chrome?
Still being persnickety.
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