Reading the documentation of the installed software

Most packages that you install on your system will come with their documentation. Webmin provides a simple utility to search through these manuals.

How to do it...

To read the documentation of the installed software, perform the following steps:

1. Go to System | System documentation and type in wget as the search term.

2. Set the Match option to Name and contents.

3. Mark checkboxes next to both Manual pages and Package documentation, and click Search.

Webmin will search through all available documentation and display a list of all manual pages and package notes that mention wget.

How it works...

Documentation accompanying a package usually consists of the program's manual pages and packaging information. The man pages contain instructions on using the installed software. They are stored in a special format (usually in /usr/share/man, /usr/local/man or similar locations) and displayed using the man command. Package information, on the other hand, may include information about how this package was prepared, how it is intended to be used, and so on. Package docs are usually stored as text or HTML files in /usr/share/doc.

Webmin scans the available man pages, package documentation files, and Perl module documentation for mentions of your search term. It displays all the results in the form of web pages for easy viewing.

There's more...

Webmin provides another important search form, which is located in the sidebar menu under the list of module categories. This allows you to perform a detailed search of Webmin itself, which scans both its documentation and also the elements of its user interface. For instance, if you use this form to search for the Send test message phrase, Webmin will display a result listing with a link to the Sending E-mail module that allows you to send a test e-mail.