howto make a HOWTO?

Oliver Savage oliver.savage at gmail.com
Sun May 8 20:36:48 UTC 2005


I am relatively new to Linux, but have taken it up with a fervor.
Luckily my employer is happy that someone in the office has jumped
into the ring with Linux and OSS. Since October I have been making
installations, configuring machines, setting them up as webservers, to
the point that within the last month I installed Ubuntu as my main
work and home environment.

As I have been working with all these Linux and related tools I have
kept as much notes as possible. The problem is that they are really a
horrible notes, nothing is in much order. Mostly chronological, and as
the systems would change (I distro hopped 5 times) the software that I
used to take the notes changed. Now I'm using Emacs alot and am
starting to dabble with Tex, LaTex, etc.

What I would like to know, and I believe this would be valuable to
others is Howto HOWTO? What are the tools and techniques that you use
to keep things organized across different systems thru sometimes hasty
installations, possibly on a caffeine fueled allnighter? Are there
favored commands that you use to record the output of a programs
installation or configuration feedback? How do I copy and paste
commands from the command line? What if you are SSH'd, telnetted,
XDMCP'd, or otherwise remotely connecting to a machine?

The only way I'm going to get good at writing Howto's is to write
them. But I often find myself at the end of an installation, or after
having solved a problem, having traversed the net, with a pile of
disorganized half taken notes, that seem more likely of corrupting a
persons brain than helping them out.

I've posted this to ubuntuforums.org as well in the Ubuntu Forums >
Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04  > Hoary 5.04 Application Support  >
Installation Help section and will create a Howto HOWTO out of the
responses.




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