[hhw]

This is like not knowing the return or exit function, and is also used for telnet or serial console connections. If knowledge is so shallow on a particular tool, it should not count as being part of the toolset. There's nothing more basic or essential to SSH than connecting and disconnecting. And it's right there on the man page, not exactly a hidden feature. This is more beginner level knowledge, maybe novice if being very very generous, but nowhere near expert level.

[davidw]

Connecting: type ssh and the hostname. Disconnecting: type exit or ctrl-d or whatever on the remote end. That's enough for many people.

For a group of people as large as HN, there are bound to be many people who are experts in one thing, and marginal with others, so articles like this are likely to appeal to them, and be useful.

[hhw]

I would agree if it were for some more obscure yet useful feature, but this is one of the basics, that's clearly documented. This should not be useful for anyone who's ever read the man page, and anyone who's used ssh should have read the man page at least once. That so many people apparently haven't, in what's supposed to be highly technical community, is a very disappointing sign of intellectual indolence.

[davidw]

On my system, I ran this:

    nice man -l -Tdvi man*/* | wc 

And got

3416771 6700199 122007116

At more than 6 million words, that's approximately 10 War and Peace's. And of course in terms of documentation, that's only man pages, which doesn't cover all the stuff that's in other formats like info or html.

You cannot be an expert in everything: I knew about that command for closing ssh, but frankly it is not something I use because it's easier to just close the rxvt and be done with it. I have zillions of other things to occupy my brain.

I'd also argue that in terms of ssh, since this function is so easily accomplished in other ways, this is really just handy triva. Much more useful to know about are all the tunneling things, as they are not necessarily obvious, and can be extremely useful.

[hhw]

I'm hardly advocating reading every single man page; just the man pages for things you actually use. And 10x War and Peace's is hardly an extreme amount of reading to become a knowledgeable systems administrator. That would probably be akin to two semesters of 5 courses each to become a systems administrator; I think most community college or vocational school programs for systems administration require 2 years, and wouldn't teach you nearly as much.

In any event, I'm not taking the position that casual *nix users should be reading every single man page. Just for the essentials like ssh, cp/mv, ls, man itself, etc. You do not need to be an expert to read a few man pages on utilities you often use. Everyone should RTFM, at least for the relevant bits, no matter what level you're at. Anyone who found the initial post useful would also find reading the man page for ssh useful. Thus, they should have read it. That's not at all suggesting that they need to become an expert.

The ~. key sequence is used in pretty much any console type application, not just ssh, so it's quite useful to know. If you do any work with a serial console i.e. configuring network devices, pdus, even some servers, etc., then it's pretty useful for ending a session as there's no TCP connection to close and take you back to the local console on your terminal emulator. If you're working on the actual local console and not in a full blown GUI on a system without virtual consoles, there may be no other way to close the serial console session on some platforms (notably man different OS'es running on Sparc64's as well as not on Solaris at all until recently).

Regardless, it's generally less effort to type ~. than to close and reopen a window/tab in your terminal emulator of choice. The time spent to read the man page would inevitably be made up by a few clicks saved here and there throughout a long career. It would have taken less time than to make multiple posts in this thread.

[eropple]

I've been using SSH for fifteen years. I have never read the man page because I have never needed to--I have scanned it for specific topics but I have never been quite so teeth-pullingly. This is new and useful information to me and so I upvoted it. On the other hand, I am certain that many, many things I consider trivial would be out of your realm of knowledge and relative understanding of what is and is not trivial should lead you to act better than you are acting.

Or, put another way: don't be an asshole.

[hhw]

At the end of the day, RTFM is much more helpful than spoon feeding someone an answer. Maybe it comes off as being an asshole, but a little shame can be a good motivator for a neophyte to learn how to teach themselves, and they will be better off for it in the long run. "Teach a man to fish" and all that.

[eropple]

Do you want a shovel for that giant hole you're digging?

"A little shame is a good thing" says to everybody around you that you're more interested in feeling good about yourself than helping people. And it's a joke to boot. I've been doing this for around fifteen years, I've written multiple telnet server applications and a MUD client, and I didn't know about this feature in telnet/rlogin/ssh.

[hhw]

Or maybe because I was once a neophyte that was shamed into RTFM, which had a very positive effect on my life, I'm advocating other people RTFM also? Which would hopefully help them as much as it did me? This is generally how things work for online communities, be it an IRC channel, a mailing list, or web forums. Why shouldn't it be that way on HN, especially as RTFM is as much part of hacker culture as anything.

Meanwhile, you're resorting to making baseless assumptions about a total stranger on the Internet, and bringing your own credentials into this rather than focusing on the argument at hand. Who's digging the giant hole? Who's more interested in feeling good about himself?

I really couldn't care less what your personal story is, or what you've imagined up about mine. Let's stick to why someone should or should not RTFM, okay?

[jmccree]

If someone had posted a question asking how to end an unresponsive ssh session, perhaps RTFM would be an appropriate response. In this case someone is sharing knowledge that could be useful to many people. Just because something is written in a man page, does that mean it should be locked away to only those intrepid enough to read the man pages of every tool they use? Community curated knowledge is useful.

As well, I'm not sure if you're intending to, but you're coming off as an elitist asshole. Not knowing an esoteric bit of what is essentially ssh trivia does not make someone a neophyte. For anyone who entered the field in the past 15-20 years, hitting the (x) close window/tab button is likely more second nature than 'enter ~ .' Please don't be like the guy who hangs out in IRC help channels just to tell people wanting help to RTFM.

[hhw]

I will concede that nobody posted the question, but I do think RTFM is still appropriate as a surprisingly large number of people here apparently have not done so. Because it's written in a man page, it's certainly not locked away. And reading it is hardly going to extreme lengths. Man pages are precisely there to be an easy way to look something up, and are written and maintained by the community, so they certainly qualify as community curated knowledge. It's also a much more efficient way of spreading information than a blog post. I'm not sure where you get the notion that man pages are for a select few and not for everyone. They're also all on the web so it's easy to search their contents as well.

I would take the position that anyone who hasn't read the man page for something is a bit of a neophyte, or a novice at best. Unless perhaps they've read the source. How else are you going to learn something, without reading the documentation? Online tutorials and blog posts make for a poor substitute at best, and being less direct often introduce inaccuracies and other misinformation. I think it's fair to say that someone whose entire knowledge of a subject is based on incomplete information is not an expert. Not to say that man pages are perfect; they can be outdated and inaccurate themselves. But perhaps if more people read them, more people would submit revisions to make the documentation better. If suggesting that people read the proper documentation makes me an elitist asshole, so be it.

I don't quite agree with your 15-20 years timeline; GNOME and KDE were only founded about 15 years ago, and it was a few years before they matured to the point where decent windowing support was commonplace, so it wouldn't have been a given that you would have a full GUI environment at that time. Opening and closing xterm in twm was enough of a hassle to warrant using screen to accomplish windowing instead, which is much more esoteric than ~. Using ssh from an actual console without a GUI was still pretty common at the time, at the very least as part of setting up a box to the point where it had a GUI. But that is all beside the point. ~. takes less time than closing a window/tab and opening a new one, be it through a mouse or a keyboard sequence. And it doesn't nuke your scrollback history. This is just as true today as it was 15-20 years ago. If it's still useful enough to vote up a post, it should be useful enough to read about in a man page.

More people should be like the guys who hang out in IRC help channels. If you think they're there just to tell people to RTFM, you are very much mistaken. They are generally genuinely helpful people. However, they're not inclined to be as helpful to people who come waltzing in demanding everything they want to know handed to them on a silver platter, when they could have looked it up themselves with minimal effort. I don't think it's wrong to point out that there's no place for that sense of entitlement. However when someone asks a question who's clearly done their research but is still stuck on an issue, you'll find the same people who normally respond with RTFM will do everything they can to help. I don't think it's too much to ask to take enough consideration of their time not to waste it with something that can be answered in the first page of Google results. I would posit that instead of these people being labelled elitist assholes, a lot of people should be labelled entitled assholes instead.

[eropple]

Being a shaming douche doesn't help people--it hurts them. Some react in an in-the-end-positive method because they are hurt by people like you--they develop scar tissue to inure themselves against your consciously-adopted sociopathy. Most say "fuck it, I won't deal with these people", throw their hands up, and leave. It's toxic behavior and it is unacceptable because they are more desirable people to have in a community than people who glorify the shaming of people who don't know obscurities.

Be a better person.

[hhw]

So expecting someone else to take 10 minutes of their time to explain something to you, when you could have just spent 5 minutes of your own makes the other guy a douche? Really?

Anyone emotionally fragile enough to turn away over someone telling them to try to find answers on their own before pestering others probably isn't cut out to be part of the community in the first place, at least not a technical one, seeing as how they're too lazy to do it, and selfish enough to think that their own time is more valuable than that of the person helping them.

If people followed your advice, aside from the more experienced people shooting themselves in the face, they'd waste all their time answering questions for those too self-entitled to put in any efforts of their own where their expertise isn't even utilized, while the other neophytes who have a genuine interest and a willingness to put in their own efforts wouldn't have a resource to turn to.

Maybe it's toxic behavior to you, but it's human nature and the modus operandi because the set of technical experts is small to begin with, the set of technical experts who have enough patience to answer beginners' questions on a regular basis is much smaller still, and the set of technical experts willing to endlessly put up with the self-entitled and intellectually indolent is as rare as unicorns.

Be more realistic and open-minded to other perspectives.