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I have a question about the location of the file man, because some people told me it is in /usr/share/man, while other people told me: it's in usr/share/doc. Where is it?

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  • The places where manpages are looked for are defind in /etc/manpath.config. These usually are subdirectories of /usr/share/man, /usr/local/share/manetc., but also could be in /usr/share/doc, though this is not standard. /usr/share/doc usually contains other srots of documentations. – ridgy Feb 5 '17 at 12:51
  • You might find it useful to research the locate command. It may be necessary to download the package and run updatedb before it works. – SauceCode Feb 5 '17 at 13:07
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man is a command used for displaying manuals. You very seldom have to care where the actual manuals are stored.

To get the manual for, e.g., the ls command:

$ man ls

To get the manual for the man command itself:

$ man man

If you have manuals stored in a non-standard location, for example $HOME/local/share/man:

$ env MANPATH="$HOME/local/share/man" man somecommand

The default MANPATH is set up using /etc/manpath.config on many Linux systems, and may be viewed with the manpath command.

The directory /usr/share/doc may contain documentation which is not in man format. This may be README files, copyright information, and other bits of info not necessarily directly related to how to use a piece of software.

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  • Thank for answer me, but I'm asking what's the route? – elisur Feb 5 '17 at 12:55
  • @elisur Route? You mean path? Have a look in /etc/manpath.config. Also try the manpath command. – Kusalananda♦ Feb 5 '17 at 12:57

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