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Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere"

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  Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2017-04-19 16:10 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2017-04-19 16:30 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2017-04-19 16:40 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-04-19 16:40 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> - 2017-04-19 16:50 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" Frank Miles <fpm@u.washington.edu> - 2017-04-19 17:20 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2017-04-19 18:10 +0200
    Re: Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere" davidson@freevolt.org - 2017-04-19 20:40 +0200

#180274 — Efficiently finding information 'known' to exist "somewhere"

I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed 
information, but they are samples of more generic problems.

1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing an 
application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got "command not 
found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using Synaptic's search 
function -- there is a package named "tree".

However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command 
not found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall the 
specific command). It turned out it was one utility command among many 
provided by a package with an unrelated name.

Is there a general way to find such a package?

2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info" 
command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I 
would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it 
locally to desired format - usually HTML.

If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the 
associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or 
zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

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#180275

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 08:59:18AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
>I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed 
>information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
>
>1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing an 
>application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got "command not 
>found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using Synaptic's search 
>function -- there is a package named "tree".
>
>However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command 
>not found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall 
>the specific command). It turned out it was one utility command among 
>many provided by a package with an unrelated name.
>
>Is there a general way to find such a package?

There is a package called "command-not-found" which hooks into the shell
such that, instead of a message like "blah: command not found", you get
something more informative along the lines of "blah was not found, but
there's an executable called blah in the 'libblah-bin' package".
"command-not-found" is, I believe, installed by default on Ubuntu.

>
>2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info" 
>command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I 
>would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it 
>locally to desired format - usually HTML.
>
>If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the 
>associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or 
>zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

I believe the standard location for these is /usr/share/info.

>
>

-- 
For more information, please reread.

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#180276

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Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 08:59:18AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed
> information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
> 
> 1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing
> an application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got
> "command not found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using
> Synaptic's search function -- there is a package named "tree".
> 
> However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a
> "command not found" message for a command that had a man page (do
> not recall the specific command). It turned out it was one utility
> command among many provided by a package with an unrelated name.
> 
> Is there a general way to find such a package?

apt-file, in the same-named package: it keeps an index of file names
(not only binaries) to package names containing them.

Don't forget to do "sudo apt-file update" from time to time, to keep
your cache current.

> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info"
> command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I
> would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it
> locally to desired format - usually HTML.

If PDF counts as "desirable format", texi2pdf might be your solution.
Otherwise there's pandoc.

Note that you lose something: the texinfo files are usually cross-linked.

> If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find
> the associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred
> or zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

Try apt-file search .texi 

For "apt-file", see above :-)

regards
- -- tomás
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#180277

On Wed 19 Apr 2017 at 08:59:18 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info"
> command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I would
> prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it locally to
> desired format - usually HTML.

Why waste time and effort? Use pinfo.

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#180278

On Wed, 19 Apr 2017, Richard Owlett wrote:
> However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command not
> found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall the specific
> command). It turned out it was one utility command among many provided by a
> package with an unrelated name.
> 
> Is there a general way to find such a package?

Yes.  Although it is best practice to list all higher-level components
(e.g. programs) in "collection" packages such as util-linux, devscripts,
debian-goods and such, so that you could easily find them using
apt-cache search/aptitude search/synaptic search or
https://packages.debian.org searches, this is not always done properly.

We have other alternatives, though.  Some that come to mind:

Debian package contents search:
https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents

Debtags search (very high-level, but there are way too many packages
still untagged):
https://debtags.debian.org/

apt-file package:
https://wiki.debian.org/apt-file

> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info"
> command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I would
> prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it locally to
> desired format - usually HTML.

Yeah.  info is annoying at best, unusable for anyone that can't stomach
the emacs keybindings at worst.  Try "pinfo" from the pinfo package,
many find it to be less an annoying browser for info files than "info".
There's also tkinfo, and hopefully others will chime in and share the
names of other info browsers.

I am told that Konqueror is a decent info viewer, too (use the
"info:<full path to info file>" scheme).

That said, you can format info files en-masse to html, see if texi2html
works (YMMV).  There are cgi scripts (not packaged AFAIK) that can also
do it, etc.

> If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the
> associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or zipped
> file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

The package contents search can do an approximate match.  I just tested,
and it can find everything that ends in "info.gz" easily enough.  But it
will limit the results to the first 100 matches.

apt-file should be able to do that search.  Failing everything, look for
the "Contents-*" files in your closest Debian mirror, download them and
search using grep.

For installed packages, there's "dpkg -S", and "dgrep" (debian-goodies
package).

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

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#180282

On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 16:10:01 +0200, Richard Owlett wrote:

> I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed 
> information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
> 
> 1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing an 
> application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got "command not 
> found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using Synaptic's search 
> function -- there is a package named "tree".
> 
> However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command 
> not found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall the 
> specific command). It turned out it was one utility command among many 
> provided by a package with an unrelated name.
> 
> Is there a general way to find such a package?
> 
> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info" 
> command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I 
> would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it 
> locally to desired format - usually HTML.
> 
> If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the 
> associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or 
> zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

One built-in way with your example is simply:
    man -k tree

(so ok, not exactly the info format)

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#180283

On Wed 19 Apr 2017 at 08:59:18 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed
> information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
> 
> 1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing
> an application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got
> "command not found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using
> Synaptic's search function -- there is a package named "tree".
> 
> However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a
> "command not found" message for a command that had a man page (do
> not recall the specific command). It turned out it was one utility
> command among many provided by a package with an unrelated name.
> 
> Is there a general way to find such a package?
> 
> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info"
> command. I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I
> would prefer to access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it
> locally to desired format - usually HTML.

If you ever just want all the text in all the nodes for foo
as one continuous file, you can use

$ info --output=/dev/stdout --subnodes foo | less

(or wrap that up in a function).

> If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find
> the associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred
> or zipped file). How to search for all TeXInfo files on debian.org?

Cheers,
David.

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#180289

On Wed, 19 Apr 2017, Richard Owlett wrote:

> I've had two instances recently. I've found the "immediately" needed 
> information, but they are samples of more generic problems.
>
> 1. Today's problem was easily solved. I had seen a post discussing an 
> application of the "tree" command. When I tried it, I got "command not 
> found". In _this_ case it was easily solved by using Synaptic's search 
> function -- there is a package named "tree".
>
> However that is not always the case. Some months ago I got a "command not 
> found" message for a command that had a man page (do not recall the specific 
> command). It turned out it was one utility command among many provided by a 
> package with an unrelated name.

It is unclear to me what state of affairs you describe here.

When you say you "got a 'command not found' message" for "a command
that had a manpage", do you mean the man page was, at the time,
already *installed* on your system?

In such a case, my first assumption would be that the executable in
question was already installed, but simply wasn't in the user's path.

> Is there a general way to find such a package?

To this particular question, I have nothing to add that has not
already been said.

> 2. There are many commands whose man pages point to using the "info" command. 
> I personally find that format more annoying than useful. I would prefer to 
> access the TeXInfo formatted document and convert it locally to desired 
> format - usually HTML.
>
> If the command is on my machine (i.e. GRUB), I can generally find the 
> associated TeXInfo formatted file (usually concealed in a tarred or zipped 
> file).

Doing

  $ info -w COMMAND

should tell you the location of COMMAND's info files, painlessly,
provided its info files are correctly installed locally already.

The '-w' stands for '--where'.

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