Re: Documenting unix utilites

[bcliver -at- manu -dot- com]

Hi Beth,

What flavor of UNIX are you using? HP, AIX, and Solaris are common, and 
the differences among them are subtle.

>Hi everyone, 
>
>Some administrative tasks involve going into more than one utility to 
perform a task, so I'd like to
>document it by utility. (Good idea?)

Yes, a reasonable idea. I recommend that you run the utilities yourself on 
a UNIX machine or while connected to a UNIX machine. Ask a tester or 
developer to help set up your environment. You don't need a physical UNIX 
machine. You can telnet to the UNIX machine from your PC using the 
command:
        telnet <UNIX_host_name>

You must have a UNIX account on the machine, and I'm guessing you need 
your application software installed.

>There are five separate custom unix utilties, which can be called from
>either the graphical user interface or the command line.

Are the utilities invoked from a command-line? with options or variables? 
If so, document each option and what it does. Some options may be required 
while others are optional. If users need to write a shell script (batch 
script) for the utilities, don't get hung up trying to learn vi or ed 
command-line editors. Most UNIX machines have apps like Notepad. Solaris 
has a great tool...I think it's called TextEdit, which is similar to 
Notepad.

Telnet only provides a command-line interface to UNIX, so you'll require a 
graphical interface to the UNIX machine. Try a tool like WinAxe. WinAxe 
displays the graphical interface on your PC to the UNIX machine. In other 
words, it looks like you're sitting in front of the UNIX machine. 

Write back if you need more help.



Barry Cliver
Lead Technical Writer
Manugistics, Inc.

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