Man Pages

Man pages (abbreviation for "manual pages") are extensive documentation that comes with almost all UNIX-like operating systems. The command used to display them is man.

Accessing man pages

To display man page you can run the command man followed by the name of the man page.

user $ man ip

Here we view man page for the ip command that comes with sys-apps/iproute2.

Section numbers

Man pages are sorted by section number. You can specify section number after man command.

user $ man 1 ip

Man pages are sorted into 8 separate sections.

Section Number	Description
1.	General commands
2.	System calls
3.	Function calls
4.	Special files
5.	Configuration files
6.	Games
7.	Miscellaneous
8.	System administration commands

Searching man pages

You can search man pages with -k option.

user $ man -k ip

To do wider search by matching keyword to whole articles you can use -K option.

user $ man -K wlan

Searching words within man pages

root # man openssl

press / and then enter the word you want to see within the man page, then press return.

root # /key
       list-public-key-algorithms]

       openssl no-XXX [ arbitrary options ]

DESCRIPTION
       OpenSSL is a cryptography toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) network protocols and
       related cryptography standards required by them.

       The openssl program is a command line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell.  It can be used
       for

        o  Creation and management of private keys, public keys and parameters
        o  Public key cryptographic operations

to scroll down to the next entry:

• press n

to scroll back:

• press shift + n