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For example, I was reading setuid man page today. It says:

If the effective UID of the caller is root, the real UID and saved set-user-ID are also set.

I don't know what set-user-ID is. How can I get more information about it if I don't have Internet connection?

One thing I can do is to open some books and search for it.

What are other places on my Linux system where I can search for more information?

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  • 1
    Why is this CW?
    – Umang
    Commented Aug 21, 2010 at 14:06
  • @phunehehe: editing title again. I am looking for other places where I can search. Not only man pages.
    – Hemant
    Commented Aug 22, 2010 at 12:41
  • do you just want random sources that may or may not be installed on a unix system? (e.g. perldoc, info, html doc, --help) I'm not really sure what you're looking for...
    – xenoterracide
    Commented Aug 22, 2010 at 13:08

3 Answers 3

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Use apropos 

apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

Try apropos 'set user id' for an example.

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    +1 for apropos. But its give me only manpages with that string :-( not much description.
    – Hemant
    Commented Aug 22, 2010 at 12:44
  • @Hemant you're supposed to then open the man pages it gives you... It's basically a very simple local man page search engine
    – xenoterracide
    Commented Aug 22, 2010 at 13:00
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apropos is also spelled 'man -k'

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Some applications (mostly those of GNU origin) come with 'info' pages.

These pages usually contain a more in-depth manual of the application, and lots of extra information which you can find very useful for learning. To see if the info documentation for an application is installed, just type info xxx (if the manual is not installed it will load the man page instead).

In Ubuntu at least, info pages are in a separate foo-doc package, where foo is the name of the application (ie. gcc, make, etc).

And yes, the browser is lame.

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