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6.4. Summary
In this section, we discussed various methods to help you find documentation and information about programs and how to find help with problems you may encounter. We took a look at man and info pages and the apropos and info commands. We discussed bug trackers, provided some tips on how to search for and submit good bug reports, and provided some tips to help you figure out who owns the program or project in question.
Summary Tips:
• Before you can understand what is really going on when there is a problem, you need to know the theoretical role played by each program involved in the problem. One of the best ways to do this is to review the program’s documentation.
• To view a manual page, simply type man manual-page, filling in the name of the command after an optional section number.
• The apropos command returns a list of manual pages whose summary mentions the re- quested keywords, along with the one-line summary from the manual page.
• The GNU project has written manuals for most of its programs in the info format. This is why many manual pages refer to corresponding info documentation.
• Each package includes its own documentation and even the least documented programs generally have a README file containing some interesting and/or important information. This documentation is installed in the /usr/share/doc/package/ directory.
• In most cases, the FAQ or mailing list archives of a program’s official website may address problems that you have encountered.
• The Kali project maintains a collection of useful documentation at http://docs.kali.org.
• The Kali Linux project uses the #kali-linux channel on the Freenode5 IRC network. You can use chat.freenode.net as IRC server, on port 6667 for a TLS-encrypted connection or port 6666 for a clear-text connection. To join the discussions on IRC, you have to use an IRC client such as hexchat (in graphical mode) or irssi (in console mode). There is also a web- based client available on webchat.freenode.net6.
• The official community forums for the Kali Linux project are located at forums.kali.org7.
• If you uncover a bug in a program, you can search bug reports or file your own. Be sure to follow the guidelines that we have outlined to ensure your report is clear, comprehen- sive, and improves the chances that the bug will be addressed by the developers in a timely fashion.
5https://www.freenode.net 6https://webchat.freenode.net 7https://forums.kali.org
• Some bug reports should be filed to Kali, while others may be filed on the Debian side. A command like dpkg -s package-name | grep ^Version: will reveal the version number and will be tagged as ”kali” if it is a Kali-modified package.
• Identifying an upstream project and finding where to file the bug report is usually easy. Sim- ply browse the upstream website that is referenced in the Homepage field of the packaging meta-data.
• Kali uses a web-based bug tracker at https://bugs.kali.org where you can consult all the bug reports anonymously, but if you would like to comment or file a new bug report, you will need to register an account.
• Debian uses a (mostly) email-based bug tracking system known as Debbugs. To open a new bug report, you can send an email (with a special syntax) to submit@bugs.debian.org or you can use the reportbug command, which will guide you through the process.
• While many projects are hosted on GitHub and use GitHub Issues to track their bugs, there are also many others hosting their own trackers. You may have to research the basics of third-party bug trackers if you need to post to them.
Now that you have the basic tools for navigating Linux, installing and configuring Kali, and trou- bleshooting your system and getting help, it is time to look at locking down Kali so that you can protect your installation as well as your client’s data.
Keywords
Security policy
Firewall iptables Monitoring Logging