Questions tagged [manpage]

A manpage is a piece of documentation (not just a single page) that comes with most programs installed on Ubuntu.This is invoked with the name of a program to call up a help manual with various sections detailing the operation of the program.

For more information, enter man man in the terminal or refer to the [Ubuntu manpages online][1].

[1]: http://manpages.ubuntu.com

NAME man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals

DESCRIPTION man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program, utility or function. The manual page associated with each of these arguments is then found and displayed. A section, if provided, will direct man to look only in that section of the manual. The default action is to search in all of the available sections following a pre-defined order ("1 n l 8 3 2 3posix 3pm 3perl 5 4 9 6 7" by default, unless overridden by the SECTION directive in /etc/manpath.config), and to show only the first page found, even if page exists in several sections.

   The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the
   types of pages they contain.

   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]

   A manual page consists of several sections.
273 questions
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What is the difference between `man` and `man (#)`?

Just saw someone referencing man 7 regex on Stackoverflow. I tried man regex and got very similar output - there appear to be slight differences. So what is this magical number 7? Searching man 7 unix on Google gives me more mysterious results like…
31
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4 answers

How to create a manpage?

I am packaging a program for ubuntu, And I am getting a lintian warning saying my binary needs a manpage. How does one go about creating a manpage for a program?
trampster
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How do I access that basic command line tutorial man document?

I need to find that documentation that acts like a simple description and tutorial of how the command line works. It's "man something" I knw that much, so it's a man page, but not an actual command. It mentions the "find" command having a baroque…
Jessica
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3 answers

What is the meaning of the words with underline in a man page?

For most commands that I have seen, there are some underlined words in their man page. What is the meaning of this underline? Is that a link? If yes, how we can go there?
Mohammad Reza Rezwani
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Man pages offline for e-reader?

Is there anywhere one can get a copy of Ubuntu's man pages in e-reader (preferably Kindle/mobi, epub can be handled)format?
acp
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4 answers

How to open .8 file with man?

How do I properly open a local .8 file like named.8 with the man command? I have the man command and I have a .8 file. In my case it is bind9/bin/named/named.8 (which can be found on github) I'm pretty sure that I was able to do it before. In my…
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Meaning of curly Braces in Manpages

I looked here help.ubuntu.com (and on the german ubuntu-user wiki) but couldnt find an answer. I dont know what they mean e.g. in the manpage of mpstat: SYNOPSIS mpstat [ -A ] [ -u ] [ -V ] [ -I { keyword [,...] | ALL } ] [ -P { cpu [,...] |…
Fynn
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5 answers

Highlight manpages syntax?

Is there a way to "colorize" manpages output? I mean - the output of for example: man command_name
Stann
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2 answers

Why are there different versions of a man page in the Ubuntu Manpage Repository?

Why are there two or more different versions of a manpage in http://manpages.ubuntu.com For example, looking at the manpage of at, you can find two, one that is provided by the manpages-posix package [ref]. And another that is provided by the at…
Dan
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2 answers

Can I get man pages without installing the corresponding packages?

Is there a way to have man pages available for commands i want without having to install the corresponding package? For example, I want to browse the man page for emacs. And I don't have emacs installed and prefer not to install it. I know i can…
Mahesh
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man pages broken after dist-upgrade

After a recent dist-upgrade, I have broken man pages. Symptoms are that man refuses to load anything and shows a blank console, except for the line in the upper left: Manual page man(1) line ?/? (END) (press h for help or q to…
emk2203
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Where to submit man page corrections?

In Ubuntu 17.04 I perceive that man systemd-resolved has a typo under the OPTIONS -i INTERFACE section referring to /etc/systemd/resolve.conf rather than /etc/systemd/resolved.conf, I.E. the difference is a d, and due to /etc/resolv.conf being so…
7
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3 answers

How to follow a link in man

When looking at man-pages in the terminal I often come across words with bracketed numbers after them (like mkdir(2)). If I am not mistaken, these are links or references to other man-pages. If so, how can I follow that link / find the referenced…
schtandard
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How do I perform full text search in man pages?

I'm aware about apropos/man -k, but they search in summaries, while I need to search entire man pages. How can I do full text searches in man pages?
zuba
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Installing the manual for getxattr

This is probably an easy one but I could not figure out. On my Fedora, I get the man page when I type man getxattr. However, on my ubuntu 12.04, I get No manual entry for getxattr. Here are the packages I installed hoping I will get to see above man…
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