Searching for Messages

Choosing What To Look For

How you choose to look up a particular message depends both on how the message is constructed and on whether you are searching in a printed book or in the AnswerBook documentation.

Variable Words and Numbers

In either case, remember as you are searching that some words and numbers in messages vary when the messages are displayed. For example, the following message uses the name of the server affected, b5server in this case:

  NFS read failed for server b5server

When message words or numbers vary, this book uses the words variable and number in the italics type face. So the previous message is listed in this book as:

NFS read failed for server variable

Variable words and numbers can appear anywhere in a message, even at the beginning. Because of this, messages are alphabetized by the first nonreplaced word or number in the message.

Frequently Duplicated Parts of Messages

Many messages you see are actually combined messages, often beginning with a program name. The five error messages in the following example are basically the same even though the command names are different.

• find: out of memory
• grep: out of memory
• ls: out of memory
• mount: out of memory
• fsck: out of memory

Rather than document this message at least five times, it appears in this book as the message "out of memory." Messages that contain colons (:) are often combined messages, and you might find that explanations of message sections are available separately.

So, if you don't find the beginning of a message in the book, and the message contains colons, search for other parts of the message, also.

Using the Permuted Index

When you are not sure which message words or numbers have been replaced, look for the message in the permuted index at the end of this book. With the permuted index you can find the original message by searching on any of the key words in the message.

In the permuted index, you can find the message "NFS read failed for server variable" by looking for "NFS," "read," "failed," and "server."

If you've never used a permuted index before, be sure to read the instructions at the beginning of Chapter 3, "Permuted Index."

In the Printed Book

Methods for finding a particular message vary depending on whether you are looking at a printed book or are searching online with the AnswerBook Navigator.

To find a message in the printed book, you can start with either the alphabetical listing of messages in Chapter 2, "Alphabetical Message Listing," or with the permuted index in Chapter 3, "Permuted Index."

In the AnswerBook Navigator

While print search methods work in AnswerBook, too, it's much faster to search for messages through the search utility in the AnswerBook Navigator.

1. Bring up AnswerBook

$ answerbook

2. Click SELECT on the Search button

3. Enter the words or pattern to search for in the "Search Library For:" pane

4. Double-click SELECT on an entry in the resulting list. Although any of the entries might contain the information you're looking for, those from this book are most likely to be what you want.

If your first search doesn't find the message, consider altering the search pattern. Remember, though, that this book contains only a small percentage of possible messages. If you aren't sure whether or not the message you're looking for is documented here, check in Chapter 3, "Permuted Index.

In general, you are most likely to find a documented message in the AnswerBook search pane when you enclose the searched-for words in quotation marks ("") or in parentheses ().

Using Pattern Matching

You can search in the AnswerBook Navigator for text containing specific single words, phrases that contain spaces, words near one another, and word variations.

See "Using the AnswerBook Software" in the Solaris User's Guide for more detailed information about the AnswerBook search.

Table 1-1

To search for	Such as	Use
Single words	installing, le0, group	The words
Phrases with spaces	Installing Packages	Quotation marks ("")
Words near one another	Installing...Server	Parentheses ( ( ) )
Word variations	delete, deleting, deletion	Asterisks (*) and hyphens (-)

The following example shows some of the possible matches for specific AnswerBook Navigator searches.

Table 1-2

Searching with	Finds these (for example)
Installing	Installing XIL Device Handlers (XIL Device Porting and Extensibility Guide) Installing Packages on a Server for... (Application Packaging Developer's Guide)
"Installing Packages"	Installing Packages on a Server for... (Application Packaging Developer's Guide) Installing Packages for Clients on a Server (Software and AnswerBook Packages...)
(Installing Server)	Installing Packages on a Server for... (Application Packaging Developer's Guide) Creating an Install Server (SPARC Installing Solaris Software)
Delet*	Delete All Silence (Solaris Advanced User's Guide) Deleting a Line (Solaris Advanced User's Guide) Deletion of the New Selection (OLIT Reference Manual)

If you are unable to find an error message documented, please take the time to report it to us by sending e-mail to msgdoc@Eng.Sun.COM (this address is an autoresponder alias, not an actual person).

Combining Search Techniques

Combine the above search techniques to further refine your search. For example, "chang* mail-tool" finds documents containing phrases such as "change mailtool," "change mail tool," "change mail-tool," "changing mailtool," and so on.

Understanding the Message Explanations

Each message contains at least one of the following areas:

• Cause: What might have happened to cause the message
• Action: What you can do to fix the problem or, to continue with your work
• Technical Notes: Background information that might be interesting or helpful to a technical audience. This often contains information specifically for programmers.

  Whenever you see part of a message that says "errno=" and then a number, look up the number on the Intro(2) man page to see what it indicates. System error messages on the Intro(2) man page are organized numerically.

• See Also: Suggests further reading