Get help under Linux

1. using the man manual page

Man is a command that displays Unix/linux online manuals. Can be used to view the Help manual for a command, function, or file, and it can also display some files in gzip compressed format.

The reader can use man to view this command when he/she encounters a command that is not understood, and when a function is not used when writing a program, you can view the function with man, or you can view the file with man if you do not know the file . In general , the resources of the man manual page are mainly located in the /usr/share/man directory, which is displayed using the following command.

[Email protected] ~]# Ls/usr/share/man

BG en hu man0p man2x man4x man7 man9x PT SL

CS es ID man1 man3 man5 man7x Mann Pt_br SV

Da fi it man1p man3p man5x man8 nl ro TR

De fr ja man1x man3x man6 man8x overrides Ru ZH_CN

El hr ko man2 man4 man6x man9 Pl SK ZH_TW

[Email protected] ~]#

Usually the user, as long as the command man , enter the name of the command you want to get ( for example , LS), He will list a complete description, including the command syntax, the meaning of each option and related commands.

How to use the Linux Man command

Linux provides a rich help manual that you do not have to look for when you need to see the parameters of a command, as long as you have a man.

The Linux Man Handbook has several chapters:

Generation No.	Representative contents
1	Instructions or executables that the consumer can manipulate in the shell
2	The system core can call functions and tools, etc.
3	Some common functions and function libraries (library), most of which are C's function libraries (LIBC)
4	Description of the device file, usually in/dev file
5	The format of a profile or some file
6	Game (games)
7	Conventions and agreements, such as Linux file systems, network protocols, ASCII code, and so forth
8	Management instructions available to the system administrator
9	Documents related to Kernel

Example: Man 5 data

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]

1, standard commands (command)

2. System calls (Systems call)

3. Library functions (Libraries function)

4, special devices (equipment description)

5. File formats (document format)

6. Games and toys (game and entertainment)

7. Miscellaneous (Miscellaneous)

8, Administrative Commands (Administrator command)

9 Other (Linux-specific) documents used to store kernel routines.

N new documents, you may want to move to a more appropriate area.

o old documents may be retained for a period of time.

L Local documentation, related to this particular system.

For example: We enter the man LS, it will show "LS (1)" in the upper left corner, where "ls" denotes the manual name, and "(1)" means that the manual is in the first section, similarly, we enter "man ifconfig" it will show "ifconfig (8)" in the upper left corner. You can also enter the command: "Man [chapter number] Manual name".

The man is searched in the order of the chapter number of the manual, for example:

Mans sleep

Only the Manual of the Sleep command is displayed, and if you want to see the library function sleep, enter:

Mans 3 Sleep

Get help under Linux