Aaron Gaudio wrote:
> Unfortunately, if you call the init script 'alsactl' and expect to be
> able to find a man page on the init script by typing 'man alsactl' you
> will be sorely disappointed.
I'd better clarify this.
man alsactl shows what the alsactl command can do, and (by extension)
what the service might expect it to do. "Description: alsactl is used to
control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard drivers" isn't so bad:
it's a good deal better than just calling the service "alsa"...
> The only way around this is to introduce a
> new man page section for init scripts, and like someone else in this
> thread pointed out, if you have a user that could find this
> documentation, it's probably a user that could 'less' the script itself.
I think that was me...
> Now, aside from the aforementioned system-config-services type of
> contextual documentation, there could be a 'help' argument in addition
> to the standard 'start|stop|restart|reload' commands. Now someone needs
> to only know how to use /sbin/service, which they should already know if
> they plan on starting or stopping the service from a terminal anyway.
The big problem is "how do they find the documentation"?
We really do need a man page for service, which points to other
documentation. But many people (including me) have got used to
/etc/init.d/whatever commands.
Apart from using Google or reading the shell code, how would *you* go
about finding information about a service?
James.
--
E-mail address: james | "Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating
@westexe.demon.co.uk | gun. And when it disintegrates, it disintegrates.
| (pulls trigger) Well, what you do know,
| it disintegrated." -- Daffy Duck
