Ask Ubuntu
Ask Ubuntu

Questions tagged [info]

The info command to read documentation in GNU info format.

The info command is used to read documentation in the Info format (GNU Texinfo).

It is mostly used for the documentation of the GNU project. Often documentation is available in both "man page" and "info" format. In this case, the info documentation is often more detailed. This is the case for the coreutils package, containing cp, mv and cat, for example.

52 questions
121
votes
3 answers

What is the difference between "man" and "info" documentation?

Regarding man-pages and info help documentation: Why do two such similar sources of documentation exist? Sometimes a man-page is available and the info is not; or vice-versa. I haven't yet latched on to the rhyme and reason behind it. Maybe there…
Peter.O
  • 25,251
53
votes
7 answers

How do I find my network IP address, netmask, and gateway info?

I'm trying to make my IP address static as I hear it fixes slow browsing issues. When I click on connection information under the networking menu of the gray taskbar, it tells me about the IP address, subnet mask, and DNS, but nothing about the…
jeff
  • 533
  • 1
  • 4
  • 4
38
votes
9 answers

How can I get help on terminal commands?

I often see things like read man xyz For more information read xyz's man page. see info xyz so I wonder: How can I get help on terminal commands generally? What exactly are these man and info pages? How can I find and view them?
dessert
  • 40,956
34
votes
4 answers

How do I add a directory to MANPATH or INFOPATH?

I think I understand the instructions given in How to add a directory to the PATH? about adding directories to $PATH. But I don't understand how to add directories to $MANPATH or $INFOPATH. Also -- in googling around for help I have noticed that…
isomorphismes
  • 1,846
32
votes
6 answers

Get package description using apt

How do I get the prosaic description of a package using apt? I tried both apt-cache show and apt-cache showpkg but no luck. Using synaptic it's easy as typing the package name and the description is given by the standard view, but sometimes I'd…
Paolo
  • 1,798
25
votes
1 answer

In 'apt-cache depends' output, what is the meaning of Suggests, Recommends, |, <>?

I've checked the man/info page, but there is no reference to some aspects of the output fomat of apt-cache depends The man/info page tried to be helpful (in an obtuse manner); quote: "For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it is…
Peter.O
  • 25,251
14
votes
1 answer

What are the hotkeys to find the next and previous occurrence of a search term in man and info?

Let's say you wanted to search the documentation for mplayer: # man mplayer To search for "length" you would type "/length" while in man and press enter. To go to the next occurrence of "length" you would type "n". What is the hotkey to get to…
user784637
  • 11,465
9
votes
2 answers

How do I distinguish between a command, utility, or builtin for getting documentation?

I'm running Bash scripting, but sometimes I get confused which of these commands I use belong to who. Sometimes man xxx works, sometimes doesn't, so I use --help or info, mostly one of these works to show description of the command. Can anyone tell…
user198436
  • 169
8
votes
5 answers

how do I check coreutils version?

How do i check the version of coreutils? gnu coreutils says they are at version 5. Im sure Ubuntu is a variation on that. I tried: info coreutils File: coreutils.info, Node: coreutils invocation, Prev: Standards conformance, Up: Common…
j0h
  • 15,365
6
votes
3 answers

Is there a way to print info/man pages to PDF?

I would like to see info or man pages in PDF format so the formatting displays correctly. I see texi file can be converted (with texi2pdf) but I don't find any texi files with locate. In this case, I'm interested in the Gpg2 info page.
userDepth
  • 2,040
6
votes
1 answer

How do I look up man page references with square brackets?

Sometimes man pages contain references to other information pages, for example Everyday Git[1] and gittutorial(7) are referred to in the man page for git. Those with round bracketed numbers refer to other man pages, so for the gittutorial man page I…
drevicko
  • 4,523
6
votes
1 answer

In what way are doc, info, man, help different?

What's the difference between Documentation(doc), Manuals(man), Help, and Information(info)? I've seen these four different words used across different system but mostly in Ubuntu. for the most part they seem to be interchangeable, but what is the…
zeitue
  • 2,226
6
votes
7 answers

Istat menu 3 of Mac equivalent?

With Mac, I have istat that shows computer info (memory/cpu/network ...) in real time. Does Ubuntu have a similar application?
prosseek
  • 1,905
6
votes
1 answer

Why are the man pages for gvfs-commands not in Ubuntu?

Here on unix.com, there are man pages for gvfs-cat gvfs-less gvfs-monitor-dir gvfs-move gvfs-rm gvfs-trash gvfs-copy gvfs-ls gvfs-monitor-file gvfs-open …
Pili Garcia
  • 61
5
votes
3 answers

Info documentation may be missing

I just started learning Linux. I'm trying to read through all the documentation contained in the Info files. I first noticed them on a Mac (running Mountain Lion) when I typed the "info info" command. It brought up a handy tutorial on how to…
0dyss3us
  • 71
  • 4
1
2 3 4