The following resources provide help, advice, and support for Debian. Try your best to use self-help resources before crying out loud in the mailing lists. :)
Note that you can access a lot of documentation on your system by using a WWW
browser, via the dwww
or dhelp
commands, found in
their respective packages.
The following references are available for Debian and Linux in general. If their contents conflict with each other, always rely more on primary information sources than on secondary ones such as this document.
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual
http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/installmanual
(work in progress, sometimes this may not exist)
Not available in install-doc: Bug#155374
Debian CD under /doc/
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/releasenotes
http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/releasenotes
(work in progress, sometimes this may not exist)
Not available in install-doc: Bug#155374
Debian CD under /doc/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/
doc-debian
/usr/share/doc/debian/FAQ/index.html
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/
debian-reference-en
/usr/share/doc/Debian/reference/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/
apt-howto
/usr/share/doc/Debian/apt-howto/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/
harden-doc
/usr/share/doc/harden-doc/html/securing-debian-howto/
dselect
Documentation for Beginners (secondary)
dselect
http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/dselect-beginner
Not available in install-doc: Bug#155374
Debian CD under /doc/
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
debian-policy
/usr/share/doc/debian-policy/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/
developers-reference
/usr/share/doc/developers-reference/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
maint-guide
/usr/share/doc/maint-guide/
packaging-manual
package in Potato. (Moved into appendix of
Developer's Reference.)
http://www.tldp.org/
doc-linux-text
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/
http://www.debian.org/doc/
http://www.debian.org/devel/
The following references are available for Unix in general. Please note that there are some minor differences between different Unix systems. Device names and init methods need extra attention.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/papers.html
Debian Planet
debianHELP
Linux.com
The Linux Home Page at Linux
Online
Red Hat (commercial Linux
vender)
(RPM, Sys-V init)
SuSE, Inc. (commercial Linux
vender)
(RPM, Sys-V init)
Slackware
(TGZ, BSD-style
init)
Many words used in Debian are cryptic jargon or acronyms. The following will solve most questions:
$ dict put-a-weird-word-here
Many packages exist in Debian and it is sometimes difficult to know which one
to try first. See Debian Popularity Contest
Results
to get insight into what others are using. Also install the
popularity-contest
package to contribute.
The Debian distribution has a bug
tracking system (BTS)
which files details of bugs reported by users
and developers. Each bug is given a number, and is kept on file until it is
marked as having been dealt with.
You should check to see whether your bug report has already been filed by
someone else before submitting it. Lists of currently outstanding bugs are
available on the World Wide
Web
and elsewhere
. See also Check bugs in Debian and seek help,
раздел 6.3.1.
There may be many release-critical bug reports marked with FTBFS. This means "Fails To Build From Source".
Instructions for reporting a bug are given at http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
.
Read at least "debian-devel-announce" (English, read-only and low-traffic) to stay current with Debian.
The mailing lists of most interest to Debian users are "debian-user" (English, open and high-traffic) and other "debian-user-language" lists (for other languages).
For information on these lists and details of how to subscribe, see http://lists.debian.org/
. Please
check the archives for answers to your question prior to posting and also
adhere to standard list etiquette.
If you do not wish to get CCed for the reply to your mailing list posting, use
the Mail-Followup-To: header which is a very effective measure.
This is the informal convention of mailing lists as explained in http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html
.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a way to chat with people from all over the world
in real time. IRC channels dedicated to Debian can be found on the freenode
IRC network. To connect,
you need an IRC client. Some of the most popular clients are XChat, BitchX,
ircII, irssi, epic4 and KSirc, all of which have been packaged for Debian.
Once you have the client installed, you need to tell it to connect to the
server. In most clients, you can do that by typing:
/server irc.debian.org
Once you are connected, join channel #debian by typing
/join #debian
To leave channel #debian type
/part #debian
You can quit the irc client by typing
/quit
To send a private message "Hello Mr. Foo" to foo type
/msg foo Hello Mr. Foo
Note that anything you type without the preceding / is sent to the channel as a message.
Note: clients like XChat often have a different graphical user interface for joining servers/channels.
There are many search engines that serve documentation related to Debian:
Google
: include
"site:debian.org" as a search term.
Google Groups
: a search
engine for newsgroups. Include "group:linux.debian.*" as a search
term.
For example, searching on the string "cgi-perl" gives a more detailed explanation of this package than the brief description field in its control file. See Check bugs in Debian and seek help, раздел 6.3.1 for related advice.
The following are a few random URLs I collected for specific issues.
Справочник по Debian
CVS, Пон 3. Апр 2005, 22:59:13 UTCosamu@debian.org
dsewell@virginia.edu