CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 5: The Linux Operating System       9  The User Model

Starting Up and Shutting Down 1 2 Basic Concepts and Procedures for Creating, Viewing and Editing Files and Directories

Linux comes with an extensive on-line help system in both what is known as Man pages, short for manual pages, and another type called info pages. Information about any command can be found by simply typing man followed by the command in question. The system will then display the command referenced, a description of its functionality, and the options that can be with the command. These pages give a thorough explanation of command functionality. A second help system is the info help system, typing:

info command

This will display these pages, which usually provide additional information about the command.

You can see a sample Man page provided below.

man(1) man(1)

NAME

man - format and display the on-line manual pages

manpath - determine user’s search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS

man [-acdfFhkKtwW][--path][-m system][-p string][-C config_file]

[-M pathlist][-P pager][-S section_list][section] name ...

DESCRIPTION

man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you specify section, man only looks in that section of the manual. name is normally the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command, function, or file. However,if name contains a slash (/) then man interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page files.

OPTIONS

-C config_file

Specify the configuration file to use; the default is /etc/man.config.(See man.conf(5).)

-M path

Specify the list of directories to search for man pages. Separate the directories with colons. An empty list is the same as not specifying -M at all. See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

Starting Up and Shutting Down 1 2 Basic Concepts and Procedures for Creating, Viewing and Editing Files and Directories