[3271] in Release_Engineering
the new Athena release
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mjacknis@MIT.EDU)
Sun Jul 3 18:10:15 1994
From: mjacknis@MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 18:10:04 -0400
To: rel-eng@MIT.EDU
Cc: mjacknis@MIT.EDU, dryfoo@MIT.EDU, nocturne@MIT.EDU
I am on yaz-pistachio (a Maxine), the sipb machine with the new
experimental release of Athena, and I am concerned about the behavior of
help.
Typing help does not invoke On Line Help; it displays the following
confusing message and quits:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Look in a printed manual if you can for general help. You should
have someone show you some things and then read one of the tutorial papers
(e.g. UNIX for Beginners or An Introduction to the C Shell) to get started.
The commands:
man -k keyword lists commands relevant to keyword
man command prints out the manual for a command
are helpful; other basic commands are:
cat - concatenates files (and just prints them out)
ex - text editor
finger - user information lookup program
ls - list contents of directory
mail - send and receive mail
msgs - system messages and junk mail program
passwd - change login password
tset - set terminal modes
who - who is on the system
write - write to another user
You could find programs about mail by the command: man -k mail
And print out the mail command documentation via: man mail
You can logout by typing a control-d (if your prompt is $)
or by typing ``logout'' if your prompt is %.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message is not Athena-specific. It does not explain how to use
dash, etc. Some of the above information is outright wrong for the
Athena implementation.
Furthermore, man help provides the olh manpage (although maybe that's a
function of my manpath)
Note that asking for On Line Help from Dash displays the above help
message in the console.
Here is my path for help:
/usr/ucb/help
/usr/andrew/bin/help
When I try to run the olh program using its absolute pathname,
/usr/athena/bin/help
I get
/usr/athena/bin/help: Command not found.
Therefore, assuming this is not a function of my particular
configuration (.path, etc.) or the configuration of this particular
machine, I suggest the message be revised to be clear, accurate and
relevant to Athena, and the olh system be reinstated.
-- Mike, Athena Minicourse Instructor.
