Manual

2007-09-19T22:27:22Z

Mr8M9x:

Simple example to type at your [[shell]] prompt:
$ man 1 intro
This brings up the man page for intro(1). You can use your spacebar to go down a page, and "q" for quit.

Most UNIX systems have online manual pages.

MAN(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual MAN(1)
NAME
man - display the on-line manual pages
SYNOPSIS
man [-achw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection] [-s section]
[section] name [...]
man -f command
man -k keyword
DESCRIPTION

The types of manpages have sections which they are grouped in. Here is the manual page layout of [[BSD]]:

;Section 1 : General commands (tools and utilities)
; Section 2 : System calls and error numbers
; Section 3 : Library functions, especially for C and Tk
; Section 4 : Special files and hardware support
; Section 5 : File formats, especially configuration files
; Section 6 : Games
; Section 7 : Miscellaneous information pages
; Section 8 : System maintenance and operation commands
; Section 9 : Kernel internals

When someone tells you to run "man 6 tetris", that means that you should read the tetris manpage found in section 6 of the manpages. Sometimes the same manpage name exists, but in different sections. One example is the fstat manpage it exists in sections 1 and 2. The lower number sections take precedence over higher numbered sections. Thus, to see the manpage for fstat in section 2 you would type:
$ man 2 fstat

Similarely functions, [[syscall]]s or commands are sometimes mentioned with the section of manpages in brackets behind them like so: '''fstat(2)''', you'll see this mentioned a lot in this wiki.

=== Creating windex ===

If you're looking for a man page and get the following:
# man -k snoop
/usr/share/man/windex: No such file or directory

It means you have yet to create your Index:
# [[variables|/usr/bin/catman]] -w
#

=== Searching for Manual Pages ===

It is possible to do a keyword search in the manpage system.

$ man -k filesystem
OpenBSD::Vstat (3p) - virtual filesystem for pkg_add(1) simulations
dump (8) - filesystem backup
fstab (5) - static information about the filesystems
...

Another command synonymous to man -k is apropos:

$ apropos archiver
tar (1) - tape archiver

Do notice that the section of the manpage is displayed in the keyword search, this is to ease viewing the particular manpage.

<code>$MANPATH</code> is used, unless something else is explicitly specified.

=== Location of Manual Pages ===

In [[BSD]] the default manual pages are located in /usr/share/man. This can be changed with the MANPATH [[environment variable]]:

$ export MANPATH=/usr/local/man
$ man ls
man: no entry for ls in the manual.
$ unset MANPATH
$ man ls
LS(1)
1000
OpenBSD Reference Manual LS(1)
...

Another manpage section can be added on to the current MANPATH:

$ export MANPATH=/usr/share/man:/usr/local/man

== Searching in a man page ==

Often you will want to search a man page you are viewing for a particular keyword. You can preceed this search word with a "/". If I wanted to see what mediaopt(ions) my sis [[NIC]] has I could do

/mediaopt

while reading the sis(4) manpage I have on my system. If the first result is not what I want, I don't have to type the full search word after the first time, I can simply use

/

which is to "find another instance".

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