How to use 'man' command in Puppy?

[Texaspilot]

I’m totally new to any computer use other than ipad and flip phone. I was intrigued about learning linux. I have puppy 6.0.5 loaded to an old laptop i was given running through a usb drive that i bought. I struggled through the install.

Ive been running some basic learn linux lessons i found online. I got to the part about learning the “man” command. It doesnt seem to work in puppy’s console. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? Thank you.

[williwaw]

welcome Tex,

if you have a running puppy, you are already learning about linux :)

puppy does not include many man pages as it seeks to keep the install size down. This is a bit of a throwback to the "fit everything on a cd" days. I assume you are typing "man appname" at the command line? many apps in puppy have links to online manpages where needed, and help for apps run at the command line can often be had by running appname -h or appname -help or appname --help.

what resource are you using for your "basic learn linux lessons" online?

[Texaspilot]

Thanks for the reply! I am using guru99.com. I just skipped down to command line lessons as I dont have the ubuntu. I installed it, but a friend mentioned puppy to me, and I vastly prefer it’s speed on my laptop. I was not able to install firefox on my puppy linux and the palemoon it comes with does not seem to be working, so when i entered the man command, it came up to a broken web page. Possibly that is the link you are referring to. If i can get the laptop online, I will see if the command then works as advertised...

I think this will be a steep learning curve, and perhaps I am going down a rabbit hole, but it seems very interesting to me.

[williwaw]

Lots of stuff there at guru99. One of the challenges to running older laptops with modern browsers is that browsers are constantly changing, and the older pups need fixes. Newer pups might work out better for you. If you want to see what might be a good choice, you could mention if your laptop is capable of 64 bit, and some specs about your make and model and memory amount. there is most likely a pup sys info app of some sort to help look up how much memory you have onboard or you could run cat /proc/meminfo in the terminal. (the first line seems to be the installed memory in kb when I run it on my version)

[Texaspilot]

It is an acer aspire one with an atom processor. I have no idea what kind of memory it has. I also have access to another acer with a dual core and two gigabytes of ram, however, i have been advised that the video card in that computer will likely fail within a few months, so ive been sticking to the little guy. I like it’s nostalgic looking video. If you can recommend a newer version of puppy, i will buy a new usb drive and give it a shot..

[williwaw]

while you were posting, I updated my previous post with a command you can run from the terminal to find the memory amount. Is your 6.0.5 the 32 or 64 bit version? If 64 bit you have more options. If 32 bit, your atom may be limited to running a 32 bit pup.

[mikewalsh]

@Texaspilot :-

Hallo, and to the "kennels"!

You're using Puppy for exactly the right reasons.....keeping elderly hardware useful. Good for you.

Tahr 6.0.5 has a pretty old version of PaleMoon. It has a separate updater facility, which was deprecated a couple of years ago. Current PaleMoon has its updater built-in, a la Firefox. If you're running the 32-bit Tahrpup, do be aware that the current 32-bit release of this browser is the very last one. Period. With the next release Moonchild Productions are going 64-bit only.

I have 'portable' versions of PaleMoon available, built specially to work with Puppy. These are totally self-contained, profile held internally, and the whole thing can be moved from one location to another if desired.

Please let williwaw & myself know which version of Tahr 605 you're running. We can take it further from there.

Mike.

[Texaspilot]

Cat /proc/meminfo yields a first line of swapfree 0. There are a bunch of others, next is dirty 136kb. The biggest on the list is directmap4k 909304. Was hoping to see something straight forward like sysmem... but I’m new to all this. I need to learn to speak the language...

[Texaspilot]

I looked up pup sys info and it says my processor has 512 cache address sizes 32 bits physical and virtual. Sys specs says build from woof 32 byte...

Under memory allocation I see total ram 993mb used 439.

[williwaw]

hoping to see something straight forward like sysmem

yes, a bit more info than you need. The first line on mine is "MemTotal".

The sys spec woof 32 indicates you are running the 32 bit version of Tahr. This does not mean you have 32 bit hardware. However,

I looked up pup sys info and it says my processor has 512 cache address sizes 32 bits physical and virtual.

Under memory allocation I see total ram 993mb used 439.

could mean you have 32bit hardware with 1 gig ram. If this is true, you will need Mikes advice, as he knows way more than I about which browser will run in which pup and how much ram you need.

The most definitive way to let us know your specs is to cut and paste the whole pup sys info report. It will be quite a wall of text, but that is OK. Of course you are posting from a different machine so.....

in my pup sysinfo under mainboard > cpu, I see a line "64-bit capable: Yes" If you see a similar line, it would be more definitive.

http://puppylinux.com/ has later versions of 32 bit if that is what you need. I will defer to others to advise best.

[JASpup]

Hi TXP,

6.0.5 is my favorite Puppy and I'm using this version now myself:
https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linu ... hr-2.0.iso

The main difference is the graphics are a little more refined and it's more user-friendly.

There's acknowledgement, but most serious Puppy users use the version you have.

If you have broad general questions about how Linux works (not Puppy-specific), there's another good resource for you over at: https://www.linuxquestions.org/

[Texaspilot]

it took a bit, but here is what I've got.

From cat /proc/meminfo memtotal 1017104

from pupsysinfo computer id:
▶—— Computer Identification ——◀

Computer Vendor: Acer
Product Name: AOA150
Version: 1
Serial Number: LUS050B11184360F582535
UUID: 00225306-38E4-D411-97D9-00238B13ACFA

Motherboard Vendor: Acer
Product Name:
Version: Base Board Version
Serial Number: Base Board Serial Number
Asset Tag: Base Board Asset Tag

BIOS Vendor: Acer
Version: v0.3305
Release Date: 05/09/2008
ROM Size: 1024 kB

Chassis Information
Manufacturer: Chassis Manufacturer
Type: Other
Lock: Not Present
Version: Chassis Version
Serial Number: Chassis Serial Number
Asset Tag:
Boot-up State: Safe
Power Supply State: Safe
Thermal State: Safe
Security Status: None
OEM Information: 0x00000000

and mainboard cpu
▶—— CPU ——◀

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
Socket Designation: CPU
Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
Voltage: 1.6 V
External Clock: 533 MHz
Max Speed: 1600 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:800 MHz, 1:1600 MHz

Frequency governor : ondemand
Freq. scaling driver : acpi-cpufreq

▶—— /proc/cpuinfo ——◀

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
microcode : 0x208
cpu MHz : 1333.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm
bogomips : 3191.65
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
microcode : 0x208
cpu MHz : 1066.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm
bogomips : 3191.65
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

i appologise for too much info!

[s243a]

If you install pkg then you can install the man command as follows:

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HIDE_BUILTINS=false pkg --get man-db_2.9.3-2 -f

** Example done via upupGG+D. On tahr you can see what version of "man-db" is available using the command "pkg --names-all man-db"
** Also if you use set "HIDE_BUILTINS=false" then make sure that you add libc6 to your blacklist.

Installing man-db (which contains the "man" command) , will overwrite the following symlink

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/man -> /usr/bin/pman

the overwritten symlink points to pman, which looks up a url for the manpage on the internet via the default browser. As an alternative to this script you can type in google something like "man bash" or "manpage bash" as an alternative to using this pman script. Also for abbreviated instructions you can type something like "bash --help" on the command prompt.

Anyway, once you install "man" command, then you will likely want to install some documentation packages which can be installed via the ppm (puppy package manager) or via pkg as follows:

Code: Select all

pkg --get manpages_5.09-2 manpages-posix_2013a-2

However, for many packages the manpages are bundled in with the package. If the package was already installed in puppy first then these files will likely have been striped from the package. So what we can do is create a new package that just has the documentation or even just the manpages. To do this first download the deb file and create a directory to put the files that you want to add into your system:

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# pkg --download bash #download the package
# cd ~/pkg
# ls ./bash*
./bash_5.0-6ubuntu2_i386.deb  ./bash_5.0.deb
# mkdir -p /root/extract/bash_doc-5.0-ALL #Make a folder to extract the files that you want (i.e. the manpages)

** Note, I'm using the pound sign to denote the prompt here rather than a comment.

To extract the files you can use the following command:

Code: Select all

# uextract ./bash_5.0-6ubuntu2_i386.deb -o ~/extract/bash_5.0-6ubuntu2_i386

uextract is available in the puppy package manager. If you do that then you will have to copy the extracted files into the folder we created above. You want to copy the following files (keeping the directory structure)

Code: Select all

/usr/share/man/man1/bash.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/bashbug.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/clear_console.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/rbash.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/bash-builtins.7.gz
/usr/share/menu/bash

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/i386/bash/filelist

into /root/extract/bash_doc-5.0-ALL. This can be done using either: a file manager, the cp commoand, rsync or the cpio -d commoand. Alternatively, you can move the files that you want into this folder either via the mv command or via the file manager.

However, we can skip this intermediate step by directory extracting the files from the deb that we want into this folder but this likely requires both the full version of dpkg and the full version of tar, which we will likley also need "pkg" to install.

Assuming we have both the full version of tar and dpkg then we can do the following:

Code: Select all

cd /root/extract/bash_doc-5.0-ALL 
dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile ../bash_5.0-6ubuntu2_i386.deb | tar -x --wildcards './usr/share/man/*'

Another command that we could have used to extract the .deb file was the "ar" command, which is available via the devx package. Anyway, regardless of how we extracted the file, now we create a pet file.

Code: Select all

cd /root/extract/
dir2pet bash_doc-5.0-ALL

The pet file will be cretead in the /root/extract directory. You can either click on it and select install, or alternatively use one of the following commands:

Code: Select all

petget bash_doc-5.0-ALL.pet #I need to verify this

or alternatively

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dpkg -i bash_doc-5.0-ALL.pet

The above procedure requires a package manager called "pkg" which was developed by Scottman. You can download the package manager at:
https://gitlab.com/sc0ttj/Pkg/-/wikis/home

You can download this program as a tar.gz file:
Pkg-master.tar.gz

Extract the file and then run the installer.sh script to install it.
**It might require further setup. Let me know if you have issues.

Note that you can skip the process of creating a pet by copying the files you want from the .deb directly into your system. If you do this though then there won't be a record of what you installed, so you can't ask the package manager to uninstall these files at a future date.

[JASpup]

▶—— CPU ——◀

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
Socket Designation: CPU
Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
Voltage: 1.6 V
External Clock: 533 MHz
Max Speed: 1600 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:800 MHz, 1:1600 MHz

Frequency governor : ondemand
Freq. scaling driver : acpi-cpufreq

similar going here http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Atom-N455 ... -Atom-N270

▶—— CPU ——◀

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N455 @ 1.66GHz
Socket Designation: CPU
Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
Voltage: 1.6 V
External Clock: 667 MHz
Max Speed: 1666 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:1666 MHz, 1:1666 MHz
Core Count: 1
Thread Count: 2
64-bit capable

Frequency governor : ondemand
Freq. scaling driver : acpi-cpufreq

[bigpup]

You need to understand that Puppy is Linux, but it does things the Puppy way.
General Linux information, is just that, general information.
Some of it applies to Puppy Linux, but some of it does not.

Not all Linux commands are in Puppy.
Puppy only has the ones it needs.

If you are going to use Puppy Linux.
It would be best to specifically learn how to use the programs that come installed in the Puppy version you are using.
No two Puppy versions are exactly alike.
The core Puppy stuff is usually the same, but after that, it is up to the person that developed the Puppy version, how it works.
Many programs in Puppy are Puppy specific, designed and developed by people in the Puppy community.
They are very much Puppified.
They more or less follow Linux norms for software, more or less!

If you want to stick with Tahrpup 6.0.5 (32bit version)
Quickpet icon on desktop.
Need to run Quickpet->Info->Tahrpup updates
Reboot and save so the new changes are being used.
Do this a few times.
There are several updates and it may not get them all the first time.
This may help with the browser running issues.

Are you getting the browsers by using Quickpet->Browsers?
Those should run.
Being older versions of browsers, probably not going to work very well on all web sites.

to make sure your install on the USB is correctly done for how Puppy works.
Give use some specific details on what you did to do the install?????

[bigpup]

Here is the Puppy reference card.

PLRC-0.01a.doc

(136 KiB) Downloaded 50 times

Just download file to a location.
Navigate there in Rox file manager.
Left click on file to open in Abiword.

[Texaspilot]

bigpup, thanks for the reference document. I saved it to my desktop! I've finally got a browser working. The update feature would not work before, but now it has and it allowed me to get a working version of firefox. I never got palemoon to work and I believe that I accidentally deleted it...

s243a, I can't seem to get the pkg command to work, and I don't see it in the ppm. I wish I could use it as you gave me a great deal of good stuff to do with it.

[Texaspilot]

bigpup, when I update, it repeatedly downloads tahrfix8.zip.

then, i get this same message:

getflash updated ...rerwin

fix to get kde desktop working from PPM
extract-pet updated to work with pets that have xz compression ...rerwin
wget updated (as woof needs a newer version)

for the complete list of fixes
see quickpet > help > installed bugfixes

[bigpup]

Ok, you probably got everything.
That one, being the last update, seems very big in size, so it probably has all the other updates and the new ones it provides.
That info statement only shows what are new for that update package.

To make sure.
Look in Quickpet > help > installed bugfixes
Should be a big list of updates that have been added.

[Texaspilot]

yes, there is an extensive list of bugfixes. Does it make sense that the last one is dated 2016?

[s243a]

bigpup, thanks for the reference document. I saved it to my desktop! I've finally got a browser working. The update feature would not work before, but now it has and it allowed me to get a working version of firefox. I never got palemoon to work and I believe that I accidentally deleted it...

s243a, I can't seem to get the pkg command to work, and I don't see it in the ppm. I wish I could use it as you gave me a great deal of good stuff to do with it.

I might get around to making an sfs file for you but if you want, you can try a newer puppy that has pkg included. For example:
DpupBuster CE 64 and 32 bit

yes, there is an extensive list of bugfixes. Does it make sense that the last one is dated 2016?

You are using an old version of puppy and that is why there aren't recent bug fixes for it.

[Texaspilot]

Which version of dpupbuster should i get for my old system? Choices are good but are bewildering to someone with only enough knowledge to be dangerous... thanks so much to y’all for all of the help so far.

[mikewalsh]

@Texaspilot :-

For that machine, DPup 'Stretch' 7.5, by radky.....without a shadow of a doubt. I know 'Buster' is newer, but it's also more resource-intensive than 'Stretch'; not by much, maybe, but when you've only got a gig of RAM to play with, every little bit counts. You're about where I started off; my 18-yr old Dell lappie (which is still going strong, believe it or not..!) has a single-core, non-HT Pentium 4 with only SSE2s.....and a gig-and-a-half of DDR1 RAM. You may have a bit less RAM, but that Atom not only has far newer instruction sets but is also way more energy-efficient (and dual-core into the bargain). It'll run rings round my old P4!

I'm going to recommend the version with the k4.1.48 'legacy' kernel, from radky's repo over at smokey01.com; this is a direct link:-

http://smokey01.com/radky/Woof/stretch- ... 4.1.48.iso

You can read all about it on the original DPup Stretch thread over at the old, archived Murga-Linux forum:-

http://oldforum.puppylinux.com/puppy/vi ... 4f779b0123

Let us know how ya get on with it, please.

Mike.

[Texaspilot]

Thanks Mike,

I will buy a new thumb drive today and see how the install goes. The 6.0.5 I’ve got came pre loaded, so I will need to find a good resource to make a bootable usb drive. Ive seen a bunch of threads like that while looking for other stuff, so it shouldnt be hard to find, unless you can recommend a good one. I’ll post how it goes!

[s243a]

Which version of dpupbuster should i get for my old system? Choices are good but are bewildering to someone with only enough knowledge to be dangerous... thanks so much to y’all for all of the help so far.

Use a JWM version because it's lighter weight and use the no-pae version because you only have 1GB of ram.
Dpupbuster 32 no-pae JWM
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dpup/f ... 072020.iso

@Texaspilot :-

For that machine, DPup 'Stretch' 7.5, by radky.....without a shadow of a doubt. I know 'Buster' is newer, but it's also more resource-intensive than 'Stretch'; not by much, maybe, but when you've only got a gig of RAM to play with, every little bit counts. You're about where I started off; my 18-yr old Dell lappie (which is still going strong, believe it or not..!) has a single-core, non-HT Pentium 4 with only SSE2s.....and a gig-and-a-half of DDR1 RAM. You may have a bit less RAM, but that Atom not only has far newer instruction sets but is also way more energy-efficient (and dual-core into the bargain). It'll run rings round my old P4!

I'm going to recommend the version with the k4.1.48 'legacy' kernel, from radky's repo over at smokey01.com; this is a direct link:-

http://smokey01.com/radky/Woof/stretch- ... 4.1.48.iso

You can read all about it on the original DPup Stretch thread over at the old, archived Murga-Linux forum:-

http://oldforum.puppylinux.com/puppy/vi ... 4f779b0123

Let us know how ya get on with it, please.

Mike.

May bad, I should have looked at the computer specs. Yes Dpup Stretch would be a better choice for a 1GB ram system and this is what I personal use on a computer that only has 1GB of ram. The puppy is installed on the hard drive. Without a hard drive I'd consider going even older. I suggested buster because it has pkg preinstalled. Pkg is tested on stretch though, so it should work well on stretch. It's just that it will need to be manually installed.

That said Texaspilot could still try buster to see how it works on said system or alternative try some other puppies recommened for system with less ram such as TazPup, of Slacko 5.7.1. A nice thing about Slacko 5.7.1 is that mikewalsh's portable version of the iron browser will work.

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=771

I know this because his chrooted version of Iron 84 uses slacko 5.7.1.

Anyway, since buster is the only puppy I mentioned above with pkg pre-installed; let us know if you need any help installing iron on one of the other puppies mentioned above. As a side note TazPup uses a different package manager than puppy and it might be possible to install puppy via tazpkg (i.e. the package manager for TazPup). The puppy package manager blocks the installation of man-db because it will overwrite the symlink to pman. You can trick the ppm by extracting man-db, renaming the package and using dir2pet to create a new package.

[Texaspilot]

I got the dpup stretch and got it installed. Formating usb and using unetbootin were a good learning experience. I will see how it goes and post some more as i play with it a bit. Thanks guys.

[Texaspilot]

dpup stretch seems to be working nicely. The palemoon seems to work fine as well. I am using it right now! I was able to find and update the repositories in the package manager, but I could not find where to check for a general system update.

Now back to figuring out the linux command line. That seems so fascinating to me. Reminds me of msdos when I was a kid...

[s243a]

dpup stretch seems to be working nicely. The palemoon seems to work fine as well. I am using it right now! I was able to find and update the repositories in the package manager, but I could not find where to check for a general system update.

I presume that you found the "puppy package manager", which is located in the Setup Menu. Once you open it up, then you will see on the top left there is a wrench icon. Click on it. Then select the "update database" tab. Finally, select the button on the right which says, "Update Now". A terminal window will come up and you have to press the "enter" key a few times (Once for each repo that you are updating).

Now back to figuring out the linux command line. That seems so fascinating to me. Reminds me of msdos when I was a kid...

The linux command line is much nicer than msdos. You might be interested in "Midnight Commander" which is a file manager that works in the terminal.

[Texaspilot]

S243a. Thank you. I found that in the package manager. Is there a button for a general system update, or is that it?

I will check out the midnight commander. I generally think I prefer working through the command line...

[Texaspilot]

I like midnight commander! It will be a bit of a learning curve, but the way my brain works, I prefer text. I was always better at algebra than geometry...

I am currently running from a bootable usb that I made. Can I make it run from the hard disk? I would like to keep my usb so I can bring my operating system with me, but I may like to leave it as the main system on my wife's laptop as well? She doesn't want to lose her old windows xp stuff though, so I can't just start over on it...