Introduction

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2006-11-19 at 12:45 -0600, Dan Smith wrote:
> 
> LOL.. Must admit it's a weak point of mine. 

Mine to. :)

> Do I have rights to use the edit button yet? Is that the best place to
> submit to first?  
> Which CVS should I use? 
> Any good tools for exporting to XML?  I can export to HTML easily
> enough. Never had a need to export a document to XML before. 

I just added some stuff about the Wiki and refreshed this page in
general:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/NewWriters

If you have any questions not answered through that page, let's bring
them here, answer them, and then get it all updated. :)
 
> 
>         >From your intro, I can guess you might enjoy working on the
>         'Fedora
>         Administration Guide', which is targeted at syadmins:
>         
>         http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide
> 
> Took a look and have already started on two topics. 

Another guide to look at for ideas for source material ... maybe as an
additional reference?  What could we do if we could pull in some of this
content directly?

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/admin-guide/

> Almost done with a first draft actually on both. One was easy, the
> file system heirachy. I took the approach with that of writing for
> novice and mid-level users. Advanced users are going to already know
> the hiearchy or not going to really care or both :)  I did delve into
> detail about areas that users are most likely to visit. Would it be at
> all usefull to go into binaries that might be located in those
> structures or would a high level desc and a reason why a user would be
> interested in entering/using/what is normally contained in those dirs?
> Not sure if it's approrpriate but I stepped away from the official
> line and described the dirs in terms of real life usage rather than
> the theoretical but sometimes inaccurate purpose of certain
> dirs. /usr/local for example. That is really the dumping grounds for
> apps. Half the world installs there not the very specific apps which
> are supposed to install there. How many games do you see installed in
> var/games? LOL. I have one. All the rest install to places
> like /usr/local and /usr/share. My aim is for practical use. 

I think it's worth noting the ideal and actual usage, yes.  We probably
don't need to specify all of what is in a directly, that's what 'ls' is
for.  But we can give people some clever steps to learn more, e.g.:

"To find out what a binary 'foo' is, there are several methods of
research:

man foo

or

info foo

show manual and info pages for 'foo'.  

Since software in Fedora all comes in a package, looking to see where
'foo' came from can be useful:

which foo
/usr/bin/foo
rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/foo
foo-2.7-1.3.fc6

Packages also have some useful information, especially where the binary
is a non-obvious component in a larger package:

rpm -qi foo

To find out what other packages need that package:

rpm -q --whatrequires foo

..."

Anyway, that kind of thing. Or more advanced, or stepping to more
advanced.

> The other I am writing with all levels in mind. That is on storage and
> partitions. 
> 
> Questions. 
> How in depth should I go with LVM?  Right now I've stayed at a high
> level. Why you'd want to use LVM and what NOT to use LVM for. I also
> speak heavily of of LVM in common partitioning schemes. 
> What about uncommonly used file systems. Any point in going into any
> depth with those? 
> Non-standard Fedora software, for example NTFS utilities. Should I
> just link or should I spend some time on them? 

Are we including NTFS now?

I'd first stick with what the community supports.  But we can certainly
provide some nice, comprehensive, quality content on using parts of
Fedora that many people aren't aware of or haven't been covered because
they were not in the shipped kernel before.

> References. If I want to refer a user to more detailed information on
> a topic should I just link external, link to a stub article in the
> wiki or not link at all?  An example, in the file system heiarchy I
> did find a page that did a very good job of describing the traditional
> uses of the file systems.  Reminds me. Never did find out what
> the /sys dir is supposed to do. It's there. No references to it in
> first ten pages from google. I've never used it myself. Just know it's
> there. Have zero files in my FC6 and FC5 installs. So no clue there. I
> found a reference for what the /srv dir does the only other one I
> didn't know well. So if anybody knows what the /sys dir is used for
> please let me know. Anyway  my question is should I link them there
> and should I ask permission of the maintainer to link to them? 

Just link out.  If there is a Fedora project that needs a Wiki page on a
subject, you could create a stub and email a maintainer there with a
suggestion or even actual content.  Or just create it, depends on what
the page is and what is needed.

> Any good templates to use? Currently all my stuff is in text. 

We're drafting this one in the Wiki.  Read through the New Writers page
for links to how to write in the Wiki, markup usage guidelines, etc.

Sounds as if you are happy with this document for now, let's keep you
here for now until something else sparks your interest directly.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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