Ubuntu Documentation for Advanced Users?

[Ron Scott-Adams]

manpages.

There is no better replacement for reading the manpages of a product and seeking to understand them. To start, it is helpful to understand how manpages are organized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#Manual_sections

For a nice detailed walkthrough of manpages and using them effectively, see:
http://tips.dataexpedition.com/1man.html

A brief quote from the above is worthwhile:
"Now that you know what manual pages are, there is the all important matter of understanding how to read them.  This can be a tricky task and many people give up in frustration.  The most important thing to remember about manual pages isdon't give up.  Even if you don't understand most of what is being said, at least skim through the whole thing."

To view a specific manpage section, see the below example (some facilities have multiple manpage sections):
man -S 2 syslog

Of course, this naturally leads to question: what manpages? There are thousands of them available on your system, after all.

Here are a few I suggest to start with, as they cover key aspects of your system and reference deeper manpages as well:

man man (pay special attention to how to search for manpages - this saves you time)
man -a intro (self explanatory - after you press q to quit one section, you’ll be prompted for the next)
man upstart (actually a link to init(8) - understand how processes happen on your system)
man dmesg (a friend for troubleshooting)
man cron (“scheduled tasks”)
man grub (the boot manager you are likely using)
man strace (trace system calls - see what a process is asking the system to do)
man interfaces (this is a good example of a very helpful manpage on a configuration file)

On the troubleshooting side, I can tell you I’ve learned more about solving problems by perusing /var/log than anything else, including searching the web. (Start with syslog, but check the configurations of the program you’re having trouble with to see if it is going to a specific log file.)

Beyond the applicable manpages, I can’t say a lot about configuring Unity - the visible options provide enough for me, though admittedly 99% of my Ubuntu usage nowadays is with the server product, thus no GUI.

Good luck. If you run into particularly perplexing parts, this list will still be here.

On Mar 5, 2014, at 8:39 AM, Amichai Rotman <amichai at iglu.org.il> wrote:

> Hello Fellow Ubuntuers,
> 
> I have used Ubuntu since version 5.4 (Warty Warthog?) and I feel as if I am only a bit more advanced than an average user....
> 
> I there any documentation I could read, for advanced users? i.e: the ins and outs of the system?
> 
> A run down of all system configuration files;
> An in depth guide to configuring Unity;
> Controlling the Boot process;
> Troubleshooting...
> 
> I know I could Google(tm) for these answers, but I'd like something I could read as a book, preferably free of charge. and gets updated dynamically (I have a few books, but they're a bit out of date). 
> 
> Kind of "The Ultimate Online Ubuntu Administrator's Guide" ;-)
>  
> Thanks!
> 
> Amichai.
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