Fedora Linux

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2324 Aug 16 2004 shape.dtd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 501 Aug 16 2004 sheet.dtd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1379 Aug 19 2004 THANKS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2545 Aug 16 2004 TODO
$ less KNOWN_BUGS

The less command will enable you to scroll through the specified file ( KNOWN_BUGS ) in the same way that you would move through a manpage, using the arrow keys and Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll and q to quit.

Note that this directory also contains a sample directory, which includes some sample files for use with the dia program.

4.2.2. What About...

4.2.2.1. ...printing a manpage?

The man command's -t option will format a page into PostScript; you can then send the PostScript output to your printer with the command lpr using a pipe. This command prints the manpage for ls :

$ man -t ls | lpr

4.2.2.2. ...making a PDF or HTML version of a manpage?

It's easy to convert manpages into PDF or HTML formats.

For PDF, use the -t option with man and then pipe the PostScript output into the ps2pdf program. This command places the manpage for ls into the file ls_man_page.pdf :

$ man -t ls | ps2pdf - ls_man_page.pdf

The commands to convert a manpage to HTML are more complex:

$ zcat $(man --path ls ) | man2html | tail +3 > ls_man_page.html

This uses man --path to find the compressed, unformatted manual page; zcat to decompress the page; man2html to convert the page to HTML; and tail to strip off the unneeded httpd Content-type header.

4.2.3. Where Can I Learn More?

Other sources of information about Fedora and Linux:

? The Fedora Project at RedHat: http://fedora.redhat.com/

? The Fedora Project Wiki: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/

? The Fedora Forums: http://www.fedoraforum.org/

? Links to Linux-related news at LinuxToday: http://linuxtoday.com/

? O'Reilly Network: http://www.oreillynet.com/

4.3. Managing Files

A large part of system administration involves dealing with files and directories: creating directories, copying files, moving files and directories around, and deleting them. Fedora provides a powerful set of tools for managing files from the shell prompt as well as graphically.

4.3.1. How Do I Do That?

Linux, like most modern operating systems, uses a tree-like hierarchy to store and organize files. To manage files effectively, extend the hierarchy to organize your data.

4.3.1.1. Understanding Linux directory names

Fedora's master directory (or folder , as it would be referred to by other operating systems) is called the root directory ; it may contain files and directories. Each of those directories may in turn contain other files and directories.

For each user, one directory is designated as the home directory , and that is where that user stores her personal files. Additionally, each process (a running copy of a program) has a current working directory on the system, which is the directory that it accesses by default unless another directory is explicitly specified.

The root directory is always the same system-wide; the home directory is consistent for a particular user, but varies from user to user; and the current working directory is unique to each process and can be changed anytime.

A pathname specifies how to find a file in the file hierarchy. There are three different pathname schemes that can be used, based on the three different starting points (root, home, and current working directory); each scheme specifies the path from the selected starting point to the desired file, separating directory names with the forward slash character ( / ). These three schemes are summarized in Table 4-4 .

Table 4-4. Absolute, Relative, and Relative-to-Home pathnames

Scheme