Little Girl

Phil Buchman wrote:

<SNIP>

> Does anyone know a website where a complete list of Terminal commands
> (and full details for each command) for Gibbon 7.1 can be found?

Hey Phil, good to see you again, and welcome to Ubuntu! I think I've got
just the thing(s) for you. Try typing this in a terminal window:

man -k . > ~/Desktop/manfiles.txt

This will give you a text file named manfiles.txt (you can give it a
different name if you like) on your desktop that contains a list of
every man page on your computer. The commands will be on the left and a
short description of each will be on the right. A small snippet from
the one I just now created:

----------
apt-key (8) - APT key management utility
apt-secure (8) - Archive authentication support for APT
apt-sortpkgs (1) - Utility to sort package index files
apt.conf (5) - Configuration file for APT
apt_preferences (5) - Preference control file for APT
aptitude (8) - high-level interface to the package manager
AptPkg (3pm) - interface to libapt-pkg
AptPkg::Cache (3pm) - APT package cache interface
AptPkg::Config (3pm) - APT configuration interface
----------

You can type:

man command

substituting the base name (without the information in brackets) of
any of the commands on the list to get more detailed information.

To give you an idea of the size of this list, I opened it in OpenOffice
and mine is 146 pages. That should be enough to keep you busy for
almost a lifetime! Something like this might be a little overwhelming,
though. Also, as you install and/or remove additional software, the
list will change.

You might want to start with a smaller list of many of the more commonly
used commands. There's a nice one here that I printed out when I first
began with Kubuntu, and still use from time to time. This one prints
out in four pages at 12 point font:

http://www.ss64.com/bash/

A nice feature of Kubuntu is the KDE Help Center, which is accessed by
clicking on the little lifesaver icon in the main menu that's labeled
"Help." This is an often overlooked treasure trove of information which
happens to contain the large list I described above, nicely formatted
for your browser. In the KDE Help Center, that list is under UNIX
manual pages --> (1) User Commands. I'm not sure if you have something
similar in Ubuntu, but you probably do. Maybe someone else in here can
jump in and give the Ubuntu equivalent. (:

--
Little Girl

There is no spoon.

Moe Trin

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.ubuntu, in article
<fijf0h$14d$1@nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com>, Josef Moellers wrote:

>Phil Buchman wrote:

>> I have spent this evening searching for a list of CLI commands in
>> Ubuntu(Gnome) Terminal. The problem that I have is that I get plenty
>> of lists and great tutorials and explanations---but I can't find a
>> *complete* list. For example, when I am in Terminal and type s tab
>> tab, I am asked: "Display all 148 possibilities? (y or n)" and I'm
>> not seeing 148 commands that begin with the letter S in any of the
>> command-lists that I've found online.

>As others have pointed out, a "complete list of Terminal commands"
>does not exist.

In practice - true. A lot depends on how you installed, and to a
lesser extent, who you are (root has access to more commands than
the average user - but individual users may have a ~/bin directory
with some number between zero and 'a lot' of commands therein only
usable by that individual user.

You could start with the 'Linux Standard Base' documents[1], or
perhaps POSIX -and maybe hit the 'Filesystem Hierarchy Standard' [2]
but you'd come up woefully short of "what's on _your_ system". I have
seen systems with over 5000 commands in the PATH.

>OTOH I doubt that any more than a very few people (if any) know each
>and every command available on their machine and use it appropriately.
>It's like wanting to know "a complete list of all words in a native
>language".

Excellent example. Some years ago, the 'Voice Of America' short wave
radio service started using "Simple English" in newscasts - allowing
people who had very limited skills with the language to hear the news.
"Simple English" used a vocabulary of just 900 words. But then, the
"American Herititage Dictionary of the English Language" (a 1" thick
paperback) has 55000 entries. If you really want to go to the extreme,
there is a BSD tarball of the "Webster's Second International" from
1934, which has 234936 words, and the tarball adds to that:

[compton ~]$ wc -l /usr/local/share/dict/[pw]*
1308 /usr/local/share/dict/propernames
235882 /usr/local/share/dict/web2
237190 total
[compton ~]$

>The main question is: what do you want this list for?
>A number of the programs available on your machine serve some very
>special purpose and might be of no use for you (e.g. if you do not do
>image processing, the pbm suite of programs is of no use to you, but
>might have been installed).

[compton ~]$ find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f | wc -l
1222
[compton ~]$ find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -atime -90 | wc -l
361
[compton ~]$

So with a mere 1222 commands in my PATH on this workstation, only 361
have been accessed in the last 90 days.

[compton ~]$ ^90^365
find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -atime -365 | wc -l
459
[compton ~]$

and 459 in the past _year_ (which seems high, but what can I say).

[compton ~]$ ^ati^mti
find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -mtime -365 | wc -l
229
[compton ~]$

Oh, some of them _updated_ in the past year. Surprise, as that also
sets the 'atime'. Point is, you really don't use that many of the
available commands.

>Even after more than 25 years with Unix and Linux, I often learn about
>new commands and/or command options that make life a tad easier.

I absolutely agree. I'm often tripping over new stuff that way.

Old guy

[1] http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/
[2] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

Chris F.A. Johnson

On 2007-11-28, Mark South wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:04:16 -0500, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
>
>>> Does anyone know a website where a complete list of Terminal commands
>>> (and full details for each command) for Gibbon 7.1 can be found?
>>
>> man $( ls ${PATH//:/ } )
>
> Sorry, won't do - rubric failure. The OP wants a website.

{
echo '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">'
printf "<title>%s</title>\n" "Linux man pages"
echo "<h1>Linux man pages</h1>"
echo "<ul>"

{
ls ${PATH//:/ } |
while read cmd
do
page=$( MANWIDTH=60 man "$cmd" 2>/dev/null ) || continue
htmlpage=$cmd.html
{
echo '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">'
printf "<title>%s man page</title>\n" "$cmd"
echo "<pre>"
printf "%s\n" "$page" | col -b
echo "</pre>"
} > "$htmlpage"
printf "<li><a href=\"%s\">%s</a></li>\n" "$htmlpage" "$cmd"
done
} | sort
echo "</ul>"
} > index.html


<http://cfaj.siteholding.net>

> PS :-)
>
> PPS I think your response deserves the "most laconic and simulataneously
> complete response" award for November.



--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author | <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes: | My code in this post, if any,
A Problem-Solution Approach | is released under the
2005, Apress | GNU General Public Licence

Dave Cohen

Phil Buchman wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:36:12 +0100, Mark South wrote:
>
>
>> Sorry, won't do - rubric failure. The OP wants a website.
>
>
> Hello Mark!
> Good to see you again!
>
> Honestly, I thought that there would be a website or a webpage on
> ubuntu.com that would carry all of the commands but I guess that such a
> thing doesn't exist. That is okay though because of the great replies
> that I have received in this thread. I really appreciate the responses
> that I get to my questions.
>
Try http://www.ss64.com/
Dave Cohen

CBFalconer

Little Girl wrote:
>
.... snip ...
>
> Hey Phil, good to see you again, and welcome to Ubuntu! I think
> I've got just the thing(s) for you. Try typing this in a terminal
> window:
>
> man -k . > ~/Desktop/manfiles.txt
>
> This will give you a text file named manfiles.txt (you can give it
> a different name if you like) on your desktop that contains a list
> of every man page on your computer. The commands will be on the
> left and a short description of each will be on the right. A small
> snippet from the one I just now created:
>
> ----------
> apt-key (8) - APT key management utility
> apt-secure (8) - Archive authentication support for APT
> apt-sortpkgs (1) - Utility to sort package index files
> apt.conf (5) - Configuration file for APT

How about simply:

man -k . | less

which will give you an up-to-the-minute list. If you want to cut
its content back to ensure some word is included, use:

man -k . | grep <name> | less

replacing <name> with whatever is of interest. And, whenever you
like your display, you can replace the final "| less" with ">
myfile.txt" to save that result.

To see what you are doing, look up the various commands above, i.e
look up man, less, grep. The art of unixing is to combine commands
to do just what you want.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

jellybean stonerfish

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:11:52 -0700, Phil Buchman wrote:

>> find -L `echo $PATH | sed 's/:/ /g'` -perm /+x > command_list
>
> Thanks for the tip jellybean! I'll try this command later this morning!

be sure to pay attention to the single quotes ' and backticks `

jellybean stonerfish

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:46:01 +0000, jellybean stonerfish wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:11:52 -0700, Phil Buchman wrote:
>
>>> find -L `echo $PATH | sed 's/:/ /g'` -perm /+x > command_list
>>
>> Thanks for the tip jellybean! I'll try this command later this morning!
>
> be sure to pay attention to the single quotes ' and backticks `

Even better, thanks to Chris Johnson....

find -L ${PATH//:/ } -perm /+x > command_list

Mark South

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:24:30 -0600, Phil Buchman wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:36:12 +0100, Mark South wrote:
>
>> Sorry, won't do - rubric failure. The OP wants a website.
>
> Hello Mark!
> Good to see you again!

Hey, Phil, good to see you too, you seem to be one of the few people in
here who's keeping their temper and sanity despite the COLA garbage
leaking in here.

> Honestly, I thought that there would be a website or a webpage on
> ubuntu.com that would carry all of the commands but I guess that such a
> thing doesn't exist. That is okay though because of the great replies
> that I have received in this thread. I really appreciate the responses
> that I get to my questions.

As others have pointed out, there are several really good resources on
using the shell available on the web. I would add that there is a lot of
good stuff at

http://tldp.org

and you could do worse than to start with

http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html

> Well, great replies---all but one. You've probably already read about
> the fictional-magic-script that is being withheld (and doesn't really
> exist). Do you have a list of the trolls in this newsgroup so I know who
> to ignore?

To a first approximation, *everyone* here is a troll. But you can reduce
the number of posts you have to scroll through by plonking a handful of
obvious ones.

> I love this newsgroup. It is a joy to converse with helpful and
> knowledgeable professionals and experienced Ubuntu/Linux users!

That's the part I like too :-)

Mark
--
Signature is away on autumn vacation in South East Asia.

John F. Morse

Little Girl wrote:
> Phil Buchman wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
>
>> Does anyone know a website where a complete list of Terminal commands
>> (and full details for each command) for Gibbon 7.1 can be found?
>>
>
> Hey Phil, good to see you again, and welcome to Ubuntu! I think I've got
> just the thing(s) for you. Try typing this in a terminal window:
>
> man -k . > ~/Desktop/manfiles.txt
>
> This will give you a text file named manfiles.txt (you can give it a
> different name if you like) on your desktop that contains a list of
> every man page on your computer. The commands will be on the left and a
> short description of each will be on the right. A small snippet from
> the one I just now created:
>
> ----------
> apt-key (8) - APT key management utility
> apt-secure (8) - Archive authentication support for APT
> apt-sortpkgs (1) - Utility to sort package index files
> apt.conf (5) - Configuration file for APT
> apt_preferences (5) - Preference control file for APT
> aptitude (8) - high-level interface to the package manager
> AptPkg (3pm) - interface to libapt-pkg
> AptPkg::Cache (3pm) - APT package cache interface
> AptPkg::Config (3pm) - APT configuration interface
> ----------
>
> You can type:
>
> man command
>
> substituting the base name (without the information in brackets) of
> any of the commands on the list to get more detailed information.
>
> To give you an idea of the size of this list, I opened it in OpenOffice
> and mine is 146 pages. That should be enough to keep you busy for
> almost a lifetime! Something like this might be a little overwhelming,
> though. Also, as you install and/or remove additional software, the
> list will change.
>
> You might want to start with a smaller list of many of the more commonly
> used commands. There's a nice one here that I printed out when I first
> began with Kubuntu, and still use from time to time. This one prints
> out in four pages at 12 point font:
>
> http://www.ss64.com/bash/
>
> A nice feature of Kubuntu is the KDE Help Center, which is accessed by
> clicking on the little lifesaver icon in the main menu that's labeled
> "Help." This is an often overlooked treasure trove of information which
> happens to contain the large list I described above, nicely formatted
> for your browser. In the KDE Help Center, that list is under UNIX
> manual pages --> (1) User Commands. I'm not sure if you have something
> similar in Ubuntu, but you probably do. Maybe someone else in here can
> jump in and give the Ubuntu equivalent. (:


I use Ubuntu (GNOME instead of KDE), but I haven't a clue as to where
any such thing might be. However GNOME does have a Help menu item under
the System Menu.

However, I would like to add the all-mighty "apropos" command, which
will find all of the commands that are apropos, by searching the manual
page names and descriptions. I have always felt this command is the one
that should be written on your wall so you will never forget it.

It provides the same info as the "man -k . > ~/Desktop/manfiles.txt"
idea above, but searches and filters the output on only what matches.

From a terminal, simply enter "apropos {command}" such as for "clock":

john@ubuntu:~$ apropos clock

QTime (3qt) - Clock time functions
clock (8) - query and set the hardware clock (RTC)
FcAtomicLock (3) - lock a file
hwclock (8) - query and set the hardware clock (RTC)
kclock.kss (1) - Clock screen saver for KDE
kworldclock (1) - earth watcher for KDE
oclock (1x) - round X clock
qtime (3qt) - Clock time functions
xclock (1x) - analog / digital clock for X


--
John

No Microsoft nor Apple products were used in the preparation or transmission of this message.

The EULA sounds like it was written by a team of lawyers who want to tell me what I can't do. The GPL sounds like it was written by a human being, who wants me to know what I can do.

Phil Buchman

On 11/28/2007, Dave Cohen wrote:
> Phil Buchman wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:36:12 +0100, Mark South wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Sorry, won't do - rubric failure. The OP wants a website.
>>
>>
>> Hello Mark!
>> Good to see you again!
>>
>> Honestly, I thought that there would be a website or a webpage on
>> ubuntu.com that would carry all of the commands but I guess that such a
>> thing doesn't exist. That is okay though because of the great replies that
>> I have received in this thread. I really appreciate the responses that I
>> get to my questions.
>>
> Try http://www.ss64.com/
> Dave Cohen

Wow! That page is great! (I wonder why Google didn't give it to me when
I searched for it yesterday?) Thanks!