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Questions tagged [man]

'man' is a command for accessing documentation on Linux and other Unix and Unix-like systems.

man is a command for accessing documentation on Linux and other Unix and Unix-like systems. Manual pages are typically grouped into eight categories and provide information on commands, system calls, and other components of the operating system.

108 questions
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Where are man pages stored in Ubuntu?

I hope my question isn't too trivial, but I've never actually needed to know this before. In which directory can I find the files of the man pages, i.e. the read-only text file opened when you type man foo? I assume different distros may keep them…
Yitzchak
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Sometimes you are feeling down, you want to 'man up' -- how can I add this manual entry in unix?

Cris-Mac-Book-2:src cris$ man up No manual entry for up How can I remedy this situation? I want to add an 'invented' manual entry for a non-existant command up so I can type man up when required. Suggestions of stuff to include are welcome…
Cris Stringfellow
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How do I search for a word or a phrase in the Linux 'man' command and cycle through the found solutions?

When looking for a certain word or phrase in the man page of Linux command, one can type '/' followed by the word or phrase to search for it. What I'd like to be able to do is to search for the next occurrence of the word or phrase without having…
Eddy
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How to jump to a particular flag in a Unix manpage?

When reading a Unix manpage in the terminal, how can I jump easily to the description of a particular flag? For instance, I need to know the meaning of the -o flag for mount. I run man mount and want to jump to the place where -o is described.…
dotancohen
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Man pages for Git Bash on Windows 7

I am using Git bash on Windows 7. It provides me with a way to use most of the commands that I used to use on the bash shell on my Ubuntu machine. But the man and the info commands do not work. Is there a way to get these (incredible) documentation…
Prasanth
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Searching for a specific option in a man page

I often find myself man'ing a command just to learn about one specific option. Most of the time I can search to the option just fine, unless it's something like ffmpeg or gcc where I have to step through about 40 matches until I get to the actual…
mgalgs
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20
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4 answers

What are the license(s) of the Linux man pages?

What is the license on the Linux man pages? GPL, Public Domain, etc? The Wikipedia page about the man doesn't appear to have any info about the licensing status of the man pages.
XEL
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What does "sw" option mean in /etc/fstab?

In my Ubuntu 14.04 /etc/fstab, I have following line: UUID=e4YGg1-2bHU-Ylum-3FwK-MK3s-1Fjf-ZvQEh2 none swap sw 0 0 Which seems pretty current for swap. I can't figure out what the sw option stand for. There is no…
Cinlloc
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bash: colorized man page

Where do I have to take a look at in the system to colorize the man pages? The man pages are viewed with less, so I tried adding the following lines to my .bashrc to change the colors: (Which works fine, btw.) # # L E S S C O L O R S F O R …
sjas
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Where's the man page for the `sizeof` C function?

How come there's no man page for the sizeof C function? $ man 3 sizeof No manual entry for sizeof in section 3 $ man sizeof No manual entry for sizeof I do see man pages for other C functions like malloc if I run man 3 malloc and similar commands,…
user1527227
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How do you switch between Linux manual pages?

I'm new with Linux and have noticed that there are numbers beside certain commands I look up. For example I want to look up accept() in the aspect of network programming, but man accept shows this instead: accept(8) Easy Software…
Some Noob Student
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How do I execute a Linux command whilst using the less command or within the man pages?

I generally pipe the command ls with less and would like to execute a command while it is paging e.g. I come across a file that I would like to delete so I would like to execute the command rm {filename} whilst still paging. I would also like to…
PeanutsMonkey
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2 answers

What does `LESS=+/EXAMPLE\:` mean?

In man parallel_tutorial (for GNU parallel) I’ve found the following black magic: LESS=+/EXAMPLE\: man parallel Searching around in the man pages for man, less, and bash, it appears this may have something to do with a less preprocessor, but I’m…
isomorphismes
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show man pages in terminal without a pager

man defaults to using a pager. For short pages, I want to just echo them to the terminal without paging. I'm on OS X. Things I've tried: man -t man #produces PostScript output man man | groff -T latin1 #readable, but line wraps…
Chris F Carroll
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man page command: man 3 vs. man

I'm wondering what's the difference between man 3 command vs man command? I read in Wikipedia that man 3 is used in Linux in section 3 of the man pages. And section 3 refers to Library functions, covering in particular the C standard library. I…
user2157668
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