Getting help / Documentation

There are some places on your host, in this wiki, and the larger web where you should look first when you are looking for help on CentOS.

1. Ask your local install of CentOS

CentOS has a full complement of man and info pages. The pinfo documentation reader is available and may be installed via yum. Each package also may have additional documentation, which should be considered authoritative. You may see what documentation a package has on your installation by running:

rpm -qd (packagename)

If a discrepancy between documentation and actual function is observed, it is a bug and should be filed at: the CentOS bug tracker or the upstream tracker. Similarly, but perhaps less obviously, the CentOS Project simply rebuilds the Sources as made freely available by its upstream, setting up a different approach (non Red Hat Network) to obtaining updates from the CentOS mirror network, attending to trademark removal and such. The project does not seek to extend its 'base' archive or 'updates' or 'fix' bugs beyond what its upstream releases in source form.

You may additionally see what additional packages are available via the yum package management tool. Please see its man page for more details.

2. Documentation on this Wiki

This Wiki will be growing, so if you are coming back some time later, you might want to take a look at the changes list to see what has been added or modified since your last visit.

• Search for any information on the CentOS Wiki or the Internet

• Frequently Asked Questions about CentOS in general and the different CentOS releases

• Tips And Tricks are short articles with helpful information

• HowTos are longer articles with details on how to get things done

• Additional Resources like information about Software Repositories, supported Hardware and Software, and information about CentOS mirrors.

• 'The cloud' is a newer entity, both as private and public instances. Public compute environments generally require payment to make use of them. Payment to a third party, such as: Amazon, to have a reproducing environment at hand. As such, we ask that questions initially be posed in specific channels. Mailing list: CentOS Virt ; IRC: at #centos-virt

• CentOS wiki in Spanish - Tips and Tricks, FAQs and a little more information

3. Manuals and other Documentation

The Documentation section is your starting point to the official CentOS documentation.

• Manuals: official CentOS documentation and manuals

4. The Official CentOS Homepage

The CentOS homepage has a lot of information on many CentOS related aspects.

5. The Mailing Lists

The CentOS Project runs several mailing lists on which you can ask your questions or help other people with the questions they have. All the CentOS developers as well as many long time Linux and CentOS users are on the lists.

• List of mailing lists about CentOS (also for Brazilian Portuguese, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Czech and Japanese)

6. The Fora

The CentOS Fora give you a place to ask questions about CentOS. Many highly knowledgeable CentOS community members help other users. Please choose a topic that is appropriate for your question. Please read the FAQ & Readme First.

7. IRC

For help in real time, #centos on Libera.chat is another valuable source of information about CentOS issues. Please read the CentOS IRC Guidelines first.

8. The CentOS developers' blog aggregator

CentOS developers are interesting people, and their individual blogs are collected into a feed at Planet CentOS.

9. Web Search

No, we're not running a CentOS version of Google. But Google (and other search engines) know very much about CentOS already, if you ask them correctly. However almost everybody expects that you searched on Google for the problem you had before asking on the mailing list or in #centos. Sure, you will get help. But you will get much smarter help if you ask smart questions

• An overview of search resources about CentOS (including tips to help you filter better)