Documentation Resources

If you have the Official Red Hat Linux boxed set, remember to take a look through the Red Hat Linux 7.3 Documentation CD. All of the Official Red Hat Linux manuals are on this CD. Once you have logged in to your Red Hat Linux user account, inserting the Documentation CD in the CD-ROM drive should automatically open the file manager (Nautilus on the GNOME desktop or Konqueror on the KDE desktop). If the file manager does not open automatically after a minute or so, refer to the Section called CD-ROMs in Chapter 4 for details on mounting a CD-ROM.

When the file manager opens, click on the RH-DOCS directory to open it. You can view the Official Red Hat Linux manuals using three methods:

View in PDF format

The RH-DOCS/pdf-en directory on the Red Hat Linux Documentation CD contains files that end in pdf. To view the PDF versions of the manuals, use the xpdf program. Refer to the Section called Viewing PDFs in Chapter 12 for details.

View in HTML format from the CD-ROM

Look under RH-DOCS in the file manager tree. Open the index-en.html file in a Web browser (the en language abbreviation might vary for your language). Click on the name of the manual you want to read.

You can also go to http://www.redhat.com/docs/ and read the documentation online. All of the Red Hat Linux 7.3 manuals are available online in PDF, HTML, and RPM formats on the website.

View in HTML format after installing to your hard drive

The manuals are also available in RPM format. Installing the RPM packages copies the HTML versions of the manuals to your hard drive so that you can view them without the CD-ROM or an Internet connection. For more information on using RPM, refer to the Official Red Hat Linux Customization Guide.

GnoRPM provides a graphical interface for installing RPM packages on your computer. To install the RPM files for the manuals, insert the Documentation CD in the CD-ROM drive (this prompts the file manager window to open automatically, but you can close or minimize it). For a graphical interface, use GnoRPM to install the RPM packages. To start it in GNOME, go to Main Menu => Programs => System => GnoRPM. In KDE, go to Main Menu => System => GnoRPM to start the program. You can also start it from a shell prompt by typing the su - command, entering the root password when prompted, and typing the command gnorpm. The screen as shown in Figure 1-8 appears.

Figure 1-8. GnoRPM

Click on the Install button in the upper left corner of this window. Another screen appears, similar to Figure 1-9.

Scroll through the list of documents on the left. Files beginning with rhl are Red Hat Linux manuals. The letters ig, gsg, cg, and rg follow rhl, corresponding to the Installation, Getting Started, Customization, and Reference guides respectively.

Select the manual(s) you want to install by clicking on the checkbox to the right of the filename. Then, click on the Install button. An installation status screen appears and closes when installation is complete.

The manual(s) you installed now appear on the main menu under Programs => Documentation => Official Red Hat Linux.

The manuals can also be installed from a shell prompt. Open a shell prompt, and type the following at the command line:

su -

Press [Enter]. You will be asked for your root password. Enter the password at the prompt and press [Enter]. You are now logged in as root. To install all four manuals, type the following:

rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/rhl-*.rpm

Press [Enter].

To install only certain manuals, replace rhl-*.rpm with the full file name of the manual that you want to install. For example, the file name for the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide will look something like rhl-gsg-en-7.2-5.noarch.rpm, so you would type the following to install the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide on your computer:

rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/rhl-gsg-en-7.2-5.noarch.rpm

Press [Enter]. Type exit at the command line and press [Enter]. This takes you out of the root login and back to your user account.

Now go to Main Menu => Programs => Documentation => Official Red Hat Linux and select the manual you want to open.