Gentoo-Shorewall

From Grokdoc

documentation

I've installed the shorewall package and now I want to make it work...

• man shorewall
  No manual entry for shorewall
• help shorewall
  -bash: help: no help topics match `shorewall'. Try `help help' or `man -k shorewall' or `info shorewall'.
• man -k shorewall
  shorewall: nothing appropriate
• info shorewall
  No menu item `shorewall' in node `(dir)Top'.
• shorewall -?
  Usage: shorewall [debug|trace] [nolock] [-c <directory>] [ -x ] <command> where <command> is one of:
  ...
  No information on the configuration file syntax though; and no URL for the homepage either.

Googling on shorewall gives you the information, but a pointer to local documentation is very convenient for firewall software.

Software has so much more value with proper documentation!

This is a typical Gentoo problem, sometimes new tools are already in portage before they are properly documented. Fortunately *most* of the key gentoo stuff now at least has a bit of documentation. And I agree with you: if it isn't documented, it doesn't exist (yet).

Shorewall Docs

Shorewall is an example of a program that tries to provide local documentation in its own way, completely ignoring the typical, and expected, avenues of Linux manual page delivery: man, info, or plain text README files. The help is accessed by running the shorewall program with either no arguments, or with the argument help. If the Gentoo Ebuild pointed this out during install we might improve the situation: but only if the installer reads the output. The Ebuild already contains information pointing to the home web site for Shorewall, which does contain example configurations for typical setups.