Questions tagged [man]
man - format and display the on-line manual pages ("on-line" meaning “on the computer”, as opposed to “on paper”, not “on the Internet”)
641
questions
1
vote
1
answer
65
views
Manpage of 'regex(7)', from the shell
Today I have read two answers about which regular expressions are supported by less: Where is less search pattern reference?
Kusalananda mentioned re_format(7) and referenced its manpage as man 7 ...
- 499
6
votes
1
answer
324
views
Is groff ignoring `.nh` command?
For a man page written in POD (perlpod) I had the effect that the SYNOPSIS was left-adjusted on the text terminal, but the PostScript output (read: troff) adjusted the text to both borders.
So I tried ...
- 1,553
1
vote
1
answer
32
views
How do I append an option argument to the flag without spaces?
I am writing a program manual in mdoc(7). One example of my programs has this synopsis:
parsrc.sh [-lf<s>] [CSV_file]
Taken from ShellShoccar-jpn/Parsrs/parsrc.sh
For example if you run parsrc....
- 111
3
votes
1
answer
249
views
Word split between two lines is not found in man pages search
I'm on Linux Mint 21 (Ubuntu based). Just noted man pages internal search (/) does not find a word if split between two lines (the word is whole in the source of the page, displayed with a hyphen and ...
- 1,239
0
votes
0
answers
39
views
How to speed up full man DB search?
man-db's man --global-apropos/man -k is slow. man --global-apropos --where RestrictNamespaces takes around 30 seconds on a fairly beefy laptop with an NVMe. Compare to find $(manpath | tr : '\n') -...
- 52.1k
1
vote
1
answer
53
views
Is it possible to create a alias to a man page?
On my macOS system I have installed gcc-14 with Homebrew. On a shell that has access to the files, I can open a man page for the GCC compiler with man gcc-14.
I would like to write a script that ...
- 191
0
votes
1
answer
112
views
How does the credit system work in pam_pwquality?
Something has been really bugging me in he manual for the pam module pwquality (see man pwquality.conf).
I quote:
minlen
Minimum acceptable size for the new password (plus one if ...
- 1
1
vote
1
answer
64
views
coreutils man pages are missing in WSL Fedora
I installed Fedora 39 on WSL,
but I ran into some issues when I tried using man.
When I used the man command, I was getting no manual entry for ...
I had to remove tsflags=nodocs from /etc/dnf/dnf....
- 13
1
vote
1
answer
249
views
GREP error: warning: cannot select font 'i'
I am in the process of learning the usage of iscsiadm and somehow I noticed a strange behavior of grep.
Attempting to run the following grep command man iscsiadm | grep "aia" results in ...
- 13
0
votes
1
answer
30
views
Where is "--localcacert" in Puppet man page?
I am new to Puppet. We have a command and it uses the --localcacert option. The command looks like this:
puppet agent -t --localcacert <path to CA cert> --ca_server <CA server hostname> --...
- 224
0
votes
0
answers
176
views
How to Identify column names in terminal commands
Sometimes its useful to select/de-select specific columns from a command output data, but the columns are not always listed by name in the manpages. How can we find the names?
For example
Running two ...
- 11
6
votes
4
answers
2k
views
How do I add line numbers to the man page?
How can I add line numbers to man pages or info pages in Linux?
I want to use line numbers to navigate in man pages.
I can write the man page in a file and then open it with Vim, but is there a better ...
- 215
4
votes
2
answers
582
views
Understanding of dot with text in square brackets in manpage
In some man pages, e.g. https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/memchr.3.html, I see the following:
void *memchr(const void s[.n], int c, size_t n);
e.g. on https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/...
0
votes
1
answer
46
views
How do I read Cygwin's `/bin/kill` man page without bash's `kill` builtin interfering?
I'm using Cygwin on Windows 10 but I also use Ubuntu with WSL2. I can't reproduce this with the latter. When I type man kill in cygwin, it says No manual entry for kill. When I type man /bin/kill, it ...
- 985
1
vote
1
answer
183
views
The difference between `ps axjf` and `ps -axjf`
I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of the ps command in linux.
I'm confused when using ps axjf and ps -axjf when I find they seem to have different meanings in the manual but their output is ...
- 13
0
votes
1
answer
63
views
Substitute a new man page for an older one
I've just built (from source) a current version (ver 2.1) of libgpiod on my RPi 4B. There are six (6) "command-line tools" included in the source tarball for libgpiod. During the make ...
- 3,123
1
vote
1
answer
102
views
What's the difference between Ubuntu's man and macOS's man?
My main machine is running macOS 14 Sonoma, but I often ssh into Ubuntu servers. Recently I noticed a strange difference between the man program on these platforms.
On Ubuntu, man displays a useful &...
- 135
0
votes
0
answers
68
views
How shall I understand the synopsis of this command?
https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/nix-shell.html
Synopsis
nix-shell [--arg name value] [--argstr name value] [{--attr | -A}
attrPath] [--command cmd] [--run cmd] [--exclude regexp] [--...
- 104k
0
votes
1
answer
56
views
Restrict the number of colums for man (or less)
I use man pages in the console a lot (no GUI), but the wide screen I use really has a lot of columns in text mode. The lines are too long and unpleasant to read.
Is there a way to limit the number of ...
- 165
1
vote
1
answer
35
views
man pages global search regex `.*word1.*word2.*` does not find a page that contain both words
I want to use man more efficiently. I've decided to try --regex option. However:
~$ man --regex -K '.*textdomain.*perl.*'
--Man-- next: Locale::Messages(3pm) [ view (return) | skip (Ctrl-D) | quit (...
- 1,095
2
votes
2
answers
141
views
Why is there manpage for sync(1) and sync(8) and how do they differ?
I see there are two different utilities in Linux manpages and I don't understand the difference.
There is sync(1) and sync(8), and they look eerily similar.
https://linux.die.net/man/8/sync
https://...
- 1,961
1
vote
2
answers
640
views
How do I change the PAGER variable for man if it's possible?
I'm not an expert in Linux, but I was reading an introductory book and found that man pages use the PAGER environment variable to show the content of man pages. I checked printenv and didn't find any ...
- 119
0
votes
3
answers
177
views
open man (or info) pages from the same position where you left off last time
I treat man pages is the primary source of documentation about installed software.
I would like to use them not only as a reference, but actually read them from beginning to end.
And here comes the ...
0
votes
1
answer
206
views
How to show help for some bash command in less (like man do) rather than print it to console
For example, there is no manual pages for trap command. Running:
man trap
will give:
No manual entry for trap
Running:
trap --help
will print help straight to bash console without using less like ...
- 279
1
vote
1
answer
60
views
Can one find all pages in SEE ALSO of a man page? Jump to some of them when viewing man page?
I'm learning to edit man pages. I've just noted SEE ALSO part in source file consists of separate lines (displayed as one long line by man).
Any value in that? Or I can as well put long list of ...
- 1,239
0
votes
1
answer
73
views
man not searching ~/.local/share/man/ for man pages
On a previous install of Ubuntu 20.04, man would also search in the XDG_ home folder location in addition to the normal paths, e.g. /home/naftuli/.local/share/man/man?/*. For instance, I often ...
- 40.4k
0
votes
1
answer
96
views
How do I install the manual pages on NetBSD?
I've done a "Minimal" installation of NetBSD 9.3 from the ISO image, just to examine the behavior of one particular command (mktemp) as it differs from Linux.
I'm not seeing man pages for… ...
- 468
0
votes
0
answers
142
views
Colored Man Page and source Issues
i'm using alacritty as my terminal on Fedora 38 Workstation.
I have tried few different ways of getting colored man pages working but none are panning out, even if i go into the GNOME terminal (to ...
5
votes
5
answers
931
views
Retaining full manual for scrolling in SSH (Putty) terminal
Beginners question:
I am reading a man page called in a ssh (putty) session, i.e:
man usermod
Now this man page has about 252 line, when reaching the end, I press q for quit.
It would be very helpful ...
- 255
1
vote
0
answers
48
views
Coloring man pages doesn't work anymore? [duplicate]
I've had this for more than 3 years in my bashrc:
man() {
LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[01;31m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;44;33m' \
...
- 1,687
1
vote
1
answer
28
views
Does Debian ship the documentation for btrfs?
While researching the answer for this question, I noticed there is a documentation page for man 5 btrfs that I see online. But I don't see that on Debian 12. Did this get shipped at all? How can I ...
- 32.3k
2
votes
0
answers
51
views
How do I get the man page for a sub command using vim?
For example, I get the manpage for a command using 'K':
docker run
+------------ cursor is on d
# if I press 'ESC-SHIFT-K', I'll get a manpage for docker
Now, if I want to get the manpage for docker ...
- 993
0
votes
2
answers
337
views
man syscalls is missing in arch linux
I just can't find it. I've installed linux-docs with sudo pacman -S linux-docs but still man syscalls does not work.
- 103
-1
votes
1
answer
64
views
Why are there missing commands on some manpages? [closed]
Early on in my Linux journey, I found some manpages to be lacking. One example is that on Fedora 37, I forgot the command to display the total filesize of all files in a directory. I knew it involved ...
- 414
0
votes
1
answer
73
views
mandb generates all possible languages in /var/cache/man
In Debian 12, the following command is run weekly:
start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile /dev/null --startas /usr/bin/mandb --oknodo --chuid man -- --quiet
which generates man caches in /var/cache/man
...
- 728
1
vote
1
answer
52
views
Converting non-English manual pages to PDF/PostScript
I'm trying to convert manual pages containing either Japanese or Russian characters to the PDF/PostScript formats. I'm doing it with the following commands.
man -Tpdf /usr/share/man/ja/man1/vim.1.gz &...
- 201
2
votes
2
answers
70
views
What is the recommended user writable manpath?
I'm writing an interactive shell utility (it's a bash script), and I would like to provide a man page for it. It's a script that I expect the user to download and put in their PATH, not something ...
- 150
0
votes
2
answers
59
views
man page: how to see progress through file (MacOS)
When viewing a man page, is there a way to see visually where you are in the file? Typing = shows the line numbers currently in view, but does not show how many lines are in the file. I'm not ...
- 103
2
votes
0
answers
268
views
Unable to resolve sphinx-build on ArchLinux VM (installed via pacman)
I'd like concise information on kernel-internal functions, structures, and macros at hand while I develop kernel modules.
I have the Linux-kernel repo cloned on my ArchLinux VM, and I would like to ...
- 153
-3
votes
1
answer
53
views
broken link in APG's man page
How can I create an issue for the broken link in APG's man page?
My try: I tried sending an email to the address above the broken link, but it seems that it's no longer accessible.
The highlighted ...
0
votes
2
answers
181
views
Console doesn't render according to man manual
So why is my console on Ubuntu doesn't render according to the man manual? If I type in man man in the console I get a manual for man. And for example, it points out that italic text replace ...
- 101
5
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Manpage for configuration file
I often find myself in the situation where I need to look up the syntax and logic for a configuration file of some program on my computer. While I can do man mosquitto, this will not necessarily yield ...
- 63
0
votes
1
answer
212
views
How do I change the language of the man pages on Debian, while keeping the default language as english
I've tried changing the man pages on debian from English to Italian but all I have tried hasn't worked yet.
First of all, I installed the manpages in Italian with apt install manpages-it.
I then ...
- 1
0
votes
1
answer
132
views
Why does the `man` command not handle SIGINT or SIGQUIT?
When using man, I noticed that you need to use the q key to exit instead of using CTRL + C (SIGINT) or CTRL + D (SIGQUIT) signals. Is there any reason for this? I couldn't find anything in the man ...
- 149
0
votes
1
answer
86
views
less option "--save-marks" does nothing when less is used as a manual pager
I use less version 590 (GNU regular expressions).
I use
export LESSFILE="/root/.lesshst_for_manpages"
export MANPAGER="pager --save-marks -I"
man -L en <<somemanpage>>
...
- 111
0
votes
2
answers
188
views
Syntax or convention used to describe Linux commands
If you apply git clone --help in the command line, your result will include something like the following:
git clone [--template=<template_directory>]
[-l] [-s] [--no-hardlinks] [-q] ...
- 3
2
votes
1
answer
229
views
Debian - command fatlabel is missing but package dosfstools that contains the command is already installed
I want to change the volume label of a FAT usb with fatlabel but when I try to run the command in terminal it does not recognize it.
root@debian:/home/a# fatlabel --help
bash: fatlabel: command not ...
- 21
0
votes
1
answer
145
views
Why can't I filter manual pages through grep command? [duplicate]
I'm not sure if something has changed about my system but I find that filtering Unix manual pages through my grep command isn't working. Do you know what's wrong?
For example, consider the jq manual ...
- 3,180
3
votes
1
answer
243
views
Why does `makewhatis` choke on symbolically linked directories, and how can I fix/avoid it?
Example
(from macOS 11.7; also shows up on macOS 12.6.1; these are the only systems I have available to test)
$ pushd "$(mktemp -d /tmp/makewhatis-XXXXXXX)"
$ mkdir man
$ ln -s man sman
$ ...
- 522
0
votes
2
answers
64
views
How to easily find what variation of <common command> is used in my distribution?
When learning to use basic C functions and other commands (sed, awk and a lot more) in terminal, shell, etc. I realize that their behavior is slightly different depending on the OS. MacOS, Linux and ...
