44.2 Man Pages
Man pages are an essential part of any Linux system. They explain the
usage of a command and all available options and parameters.
Man pages are sorted in categories as
shown in Table 44-1
(taken from the man page for man itself).
Table 44-1 Man Pages—Categories and Descriptions
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
(/etc/fstab) |
6 |
Games |
7 |
Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions),
for example, man(7), groff(7) |
8 |
System administration commands (usually only for root) |
9 |
Kernel routines (nonstandard) |
Generally, man pages are delivered with the associated command. They can
be browsed in the help center or directly in a shell. To
display a man page in a shell, use the man command. For
example, to display the man page for ls enter
man ls. Each man page consists of
several parts labeled NAME,
SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION,
SEE ALSO, LICENSING, and
AUTHOR. There may be additional sections available
depending on the type of command. With Q, exit the
man page viewer.
Another possibility to display a man page is to use Konqueror. Start
Konqueror and type, for example, man:/ls.
If there are different categories for a command, Konqueror displays
them as links.