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I'm trying to get traceroute to work, all 30 hops " *** ". While working to figure it out I found the -y option as part of the update and installation.

man -y tells me I'm stupid and googling Ubuntu flag "-y" tells me it is to skip the confirmation of the installation. I am not getting it, and I don't get it with the manual searches. For example, I just want to browse a section, say section 8 admin/sys.sudo. I enter "man 8" which returns:

No manual entry for 8

(Alternatively, what manual page do you want from section 8?) For example, try man man.

bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ MANPATH
MANPATH: command not found

So then I installed git and ..git clone http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.

bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man command
No manual entry for command
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man file.conf
No manual entry for file.conf
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man man
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man -f -y
man: invalid option -- 'y'
Try 'man --help' or 'man --usage' for more information.
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$
 AD INFINITUM

I don't know where to look to see what i have and what I don't. I am just baffled at how complicated this seems to be needlessly.

bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man 8 1
No manual entry for 1 in section 8
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ apt-get man 8
E: Invalid operation man
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man 8 -y
No manual entry for -y in section 8
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man bash
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$  yum install man-pages
Command 'yum' not found, did you mean:
  command 'gum' from snap gum (0.12.0)
  command 'uum' from deb freewnn-jserver (1.1.1~a021+cvs20130302-7build1)
  command 'zum' from deb perforate (1.2-5.3)
  command 'sum' from deb coreutils (9.1-1ubuntu2)
  command 'num' from deb quickcal (2.4-1)
See 'snap info <snapname>' for additional versions.
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ sudo apt-get install man-pages
[sudo] password for bob:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package man-pages
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$

Someone please tell me what to do.

man 8 -y is a valid argument. so I must not have section 8 available, but how do I see it? I've already downloaded the manual.

karel
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bryce colwell
  • 1
  • 2
    We gently reject the self-deprecation. You want to learn, and you are willing to ask questions. Those are GOOD things, and reflect well upon you. We all had to learn sometime; welcome to the club. – user535733 Oct 09 '23 at 04:23

1 Answers1

2
bob@adminbaby:~/Desktop$ man 8 -y
No manual entry for -y in section 8

You've not provided any OS/release details; where the man will show details for your unstated release, and there can be slight variations on releases too.

A man man on my release (*thus it may differ to your unstated system) shows

SYNOPSIS
       man [man options] [[section] page ...] ...
       man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
       man -K [man options] [section] term ...
       man -f [whatis options] page ...
       man -l [man options] file ...
       man -w|-W [man options] page ...

where you'll note there is no reference to -y as an option, thus the -y parameter you gave is the page.

Why would you expect a section 8 for an entry on -y which your commands asks for. Were you instead assuming the -y was an option? Read man man to peruse what options are catered for on your system; and you gave no page to show in your command, thus interpreting the final bit of your command (-y) does fit expected results for man as per the manual page for it on my release.

I'm not aware of any page relating to -y, and I suspect you're misunderstanding your own command.

It's not clear what you're actually wanting, but if I wanted to understand the operation of -y in relation to the apt-get command, the page I would look at is

man apt-get

and type /-y (& hit ENTER) to search for the -y detail, skipping until I found what I was looking for. The -y though can differ in function for different commands, so adjust man apt-get to the other pages you're wanting to understand.

guiverc
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  • It's not clear to me what you're asking, and I used man apt-get as that page has an easy to find -y example, as compared to other commands that do not. The /-y are keys for searching for things on any POSIX box from late 1970s onwards (ie. old unix boxes on pre-windows days, thru to modern GNU/Linux systems of today; maybe not as well known to those younger folk who point-click etc, but known also to users of vi, vim etc) – guiverc Oct 09 '23 at 03:41
  • You mention idiots - I do not think that applies; we all start from somewhere, and all stumble as we're learning. We're also busy & can forget things anyway, because we're distracted or worried about other things.. so mention of idiots doesn't apply unless we're all idiots! – guiverc Oct 09 '23 at 03:44
  • FYI: If you find different pages seem to use different standards to other pages; you're not wrong. Refer https://xkcd.com/927/ for quick understanding, but our system is a mixture of the early AT&T unix, Berkeley Unix (later BSD), GNU & more, with each source for different commands/parts of our system coming from standards of the creation team thus some commands use -- (GNU), others don't require any special command (Berkeley/BSD), others use a single - etc... Some parts of our system dates from 1960 & 70s and many various standards since then. – guiverc Oct 09 '23 at 03:47
  • so this is related to what i was mumbling: when i enter "man-man" and look at the intro pages, for instance, there is not chapter headings. google tells me -y is to skip the confirm's and this is section 8. but theres no list of anything like "apt-get". it never crossed my mind admittedly to use " man apt-get -y" which just pulled up the command in (8). maybe im looking at this like a book, and laid out like a book, and its not? i was wanting to just prose page to page, whatever the first page of section 8 is. – bryce colwell Oct 12 '23 at 03:42
  • Your understanding of -y is incorrect, as what it means varies on tool & where the tool comes from (ie. standards for BSD tools will differ to those coming from GNU etc; BSD being closer to earlier Unix, where GNU in its name highlights it's not unix). Our system is a distribution from a lot of upstream projects/teams that can decide on their own which standards they'll follow... this has existed from the mid-late 80s (complaints about it then too were used in early windows 3 advertizing too) & led to IBM's subsequent linux standard base push, which too was dropped in time. – guiverc Oct 12 '23 at 03:48