man stand for manual, man pages is the set of documentation or help which is available with a Linux system, There is a manpage for most commands on your system. There are also manpages for important files, library functions, shells, languages, devices, and other features. Whenever you update your system by installing new packages the man pages also get installed with the new programs.
It is worthy to note here that the man pages are not written in form of a tutorial hence not suitable for beginners
The usual location where the man pages reside in a Linux system is
/usr/share/man
Linux Man pages are divided in numerous sections and each section has a subdirectory in /usr/shrare/man
The different sections of the Linux man pages are mention in table below
|
Section |
Description |
|---|---|
|
1 |
User programs |
|
2 |
|
|
3 |
Library calls |
|
4 |
Special files (usually found in /dev) |
|
5 |
File formats |
|
6 |
Games |
|
7 |
Miscellaneous |
|
8 |
In order to get help regarding a utility or file you simply enter the command
man <file or binary name>
e.g. man passwd will open the man page of the passwd command
similarly if you are looking for the /etc/passwd file than you can issue the man 5 passwd command , where 5 specifies the section you want to search
The MANPATH variable can be tuned to set the search path of man command
What is the aim of this website ?
This website makes the Linux man pages available and access able in a HTML format over the internet and can you used get help regarding Linux from any system and place
these man pages have been made from a CentOS system running
Currently only the section 8 and section 2 , having the system administration command is available, rest of the section will be also available in a few weeks