Red Hat System Administration I
Performance Checklist
In this lab, you will look up information to help you complete tasks in man pages and GNU Info documents.
Outcomes
You should be able to:
Locate relevant commands by searching man pages and Info nodes.
Learn new options for commonly used documentation commands.
Use appropriate tools to view and print documentation and other non-text formatted files.
Log in to workstation as student using student as the password.
On workstation, run the lab help-review start command.
[student@workstation ~]$lab help-review start
On
workstation, determine how to prepare a man page for printing. Specifically, find what format or rendering language is used for printing.Create a formatted output file of the passwd man page. Call the file
passwd.ps. Determine the file content format. Inspect the contents of thepasswd.psfile.Note
Create formatted output of the passwd man page using the following command:
[student@workstation $]$man -t passwd > passwd.psThe > symbol redirects the contents of the man page to the
passwd.psfile. This command is taught in more detail in a following chapter.Use the man -t command to create a formatted file of the passwd man page.
[student@workstation ~]$man -t passwd > passwd.ps[student@workstation ~]$ls -al...output omitted... -rw-rw-r--. 1 student student 19947 Feb 26 11:14 passwd.ps ...output omitted...Use the file command to determine the file content format.
[student@workstation ~]$file /home/student/passwd.pspasswd.ps:PostScriptdocument text conforming DSC level 3.0Use the less command to view the
/home/student/passwd.psfile.[student@workstation ~]$less /home/student/passwd.ps%!PS-Adobe-3.0 %%Creator: groff version 1.22.3 %%CreationDate: Tue Feb 26 11:14:40 2019 %%DocumentNeededResources: font Times-Roman %%+ font Times-Bold %%+ font Times-Italic %%+ font Symbol %%DocumentSuppliedResources: procset grops 1.22 3 ...output omitted...Note
The output of file asserts that the file is in the PostScript format, and you have confirmed it by viewing its contents. Notice the header lines of PostScript information. Use q to quit the less command.
Using man, learn the commands used for viewing and printing PostScript files.
Using man learn the commands used for viewing and printing PostScript files.
[student@workstation ~]#man -k postscript viewerevince (1)- GNOME document viewer evince-previewer (1) - show a printing preview of PostScript and PDF documents evince-thumbnailer (1) - create png thumbnails from PostScript and PDF documents gcm-viewer (1) - GNOME Color Manager Profile Viewer Tool gnome-logs (1) - log viewer for the systemd journal grops (1) - PostScript driver for groff pango-view (1) - Pango text viewer pluginviewer (8) - list loadable SASL plugins and their propertiesNote
Using multiple words with the -k option finds man pages matching either word; those with "postscript" or "viewer" in their descriptions. Notice the evince(1) commands in the output.
Learn how to use the evince(1) viewer in preview mode. Also, determine how to open a document starting on a specific page.
View your PostScript file using the various evince options you researched. Close your document file when you are finished.
Use the evince command to open
/home/student/passwd.ps[student@workstation ~]$evince /home/student/passwd.psUse the evince -w /home/student/passwd.ps command to open the file in preview mode.
[student@workstation ~]$evince -w /home/student/passwd.psUse the evince -i 3 /home/student/passwd.ps command to open the file at page 3.
[student@workstation ~]$evince -i 3 /home/student/passwd.psNote
While normal evince mode allows full screen and presentation style viewing, the evince preview mode is useful for quick browsing and printing. Notice the at the top.
Using the man command, research lp(1) to determine how to print any document starting on a specific page. Without actually entering any commands (because there are no printers), learn the syntax, in one command, to print only pages 2 and 3 of your PostScript file.
Use the man lp command to determine how to print specific pages of a document.
[student@workstation ~]$man lp...output omitted...Press q to quit the man page.
Note
From
lp(1), you learn that the-Poption specifies pages. Thelpcommand spools to the default printer, sending only the page range starting on 2 and ending on 3. Therefore, one valid answer is lp passwd.ps -P 2-3.
Using pinfo, look for GNU Info documentation about the evince viewer.
Use the pinfo command to look for GNU Info documentation about the evince viewer.
[student@workstation ~]$pinfo evinceNote
Notice that the
evince(1) man page displays instead. The pinfo document viewer looks for a relevant man page when no appropriate GNU documentation node exists for the requested topic. Press q to quit.
Using Firefox, open the system's package documentation directory and browse into the
man-dbpackage subdirectory. View the provided manuals.Use firefox /usr/share/doc to view system documentation. Browse to the
man-dbsubdirectory. Click on the manuals to view them.[student@workstation ~]$firefox /usr/share/docNote
Bookmarks can be made for any frequently used directory. After browsing to the
man-dbdirectory, click to open and view the text version of the manual, then close it. Click to open the PostScript version. As observed earlier, evince is the system's default viewer for PostScript and PDF documents. You may wish to return to these documents later to become more knowledgeable about man. When finished, close the evince viewer.
Using the Firefox browser, locate and browse to the
initscriptspackage subdirectory. View thesysconfig.txtfile, which describes important system configuration options stored in the/etc/sysconfigdirectory.
