Manual From Hackepedia
Simple example to type at your shell prompt:
$ man 1 introThis 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 fstatSimilarely functions, syscalls 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.
# man -k snoop /usr/share/man/windex: No such file or directoryIt means you have yet to create your Index:
# /usr/bin/catman -w #
$ 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 archiverDo notice that the section of the manpage is displayed in the keyword search, this is to ease viewing the particular manpage. $MANPATH is used, unless something else is explicitly specified.
$ export MANPATH=/usr/local/man $ man ls man: no entry for ls in the manual. $ unset MANPATH $ man ls LS(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual LS(1) ...Another manpage section can be added on to the current MANPATH:
$ export MANPATH=/usr/share/man:/usr/local/man
/mediaoptwhile 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". 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 fstatSimilarely functions, syscalls 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.