Manual Pages

From openSUSE

Manual Pages (man pages) is collection of documentation that is possible to find on any *nix operating system, including Linux. They describe all aspects of Linux, from commands and file formats to programmers references.

Organization

It is organized in numbered sections:

1. Executable programs or shell commands
2. System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3. Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4. Special files (usually found in /dev)
5. File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6. Games
7. Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8. System administration commands (usually only for root)
9. Kernel routines ( Non standard )

How to read

There is few ways to read manual pages.

Classic

• The standard is using CLI (console) command

man <name_of_file>

where the most common is to type in command name as the name_of_file, but, as you can see from list of sections there is more, like configuration files, C language commands, kernel functions, and so on.

Example:

man man

will list how to use command man.

Konqueror

Type in Location: (where usually goes http:// etc)

man:<name_of_file>

and it will list file content, or selection list if few files in different sections have the same name.

Example:

Click on first item in the list /usr/share/man/man1/man1.gz and there it is the man page about command man:

Searching

• You can use apropos which is a command line tool that searches the man (manual) pages for descriptions that match what you type after it.

For example:

apropos list

Happy reading.

Related

Some commands have just very basic manual, that describes few command options and then refers reader to info pages. To be able to continue reading you can use on command line:

info <command name>

or use Konqueror in the same way as with command man, described above.
This time instead of man:<command name> you type info:<command name> .

See Also

• Linux Documentation for many other ways that deliver important information about your openSUSE Linux system.
• openFATE feature#305336: Ship man page for every executable

Typographic convention