Hello Will! On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 09:30:50PM -0500, Will Trillich wrote: > On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 04:13:54PM -0000, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > > what about invoke-rc.d ? > > aha! perfect! > > i've been using debian since 1997 or so, and until four minutes > ago (thank you) i never knew "invoke-rc.d" existed. > [...] > how could i have discovered invoke-rc.d on my own, except by > stumbling into it by mistake?
Well, AFAIK the original intent when providing invoke-rc.d was to give package maintainers a generic interface to System V init scripts, so _from this point of view_ there is no real reason why a newbie user should know about it. Dang, arrogance again. :( OTOH it can be used a convenient tool for admins (even though they are newbies) as well, so they should know about it. Dang, deadlock. :) I think the only place where a recommendation of its use is documented is the Debian Policy Manual (please see http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s9.3.3), so I concur, it is rather hard to find... > ================= > here's a question -- perhaps THE question -- is it possible > to put in place some system that'll NOT ONLY point a newbie > in the right direction, but have a high likelihood of BEING > FOUND by such a newbie? > > [help, man, apropos, info, command-completion, debian-user snipped] These are IMVHO already great resources, I might also add the Debian Documentation from http://www.debian.org/doc/, especially the wonderful Debian Reference which got me started when I came to Debian, as well as all the documents from the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org/, but I bet you know this already) and the Newbiedocs (http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/) and, last but not least, google. Almost all of this can also be installed on any Debian system, packages are available and can be accessed via dwww or dhelp. I think you have a valid point: the information is there, but rather often hard to find. But Debian provides some mechanisms to make this step easier for newbies (once they've found the beginning of Ariadne's thread). Cheers, Flo, who actually thinks Debian and Linux are wonderfully documented -- somewhere...
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