Lesson 1.11: Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc
Here are the three documentation sets:
- Man pages
- Info pages
- /usr/share/docs
The Man Page
man ls
What can you discover via the man pages?
- The command's summary
- Options and explanations
- Examples
- Author and maintainer
Search Capabilities of man page
- Man pages include a powerful set of search capabilities to help you find exactly what you need.
- Once the man page is displayed, type a forward slash
/to enable keyword searching. - Simply enter the word you're looking for after the slash and select Enter.
- Use the
nandNkeys to find the next or previous example of the keyword. - Use
Ctrl+Cto end the search.
Organization of man page
Man pages are organized into the following sections:
- User commands (section 1)
- System calls (section 2)
- C library functions (section 3)
- Devices and special files (section 4)
- File formats and conventions (section 5)
- Games (section 6)
- Miscellanea (section 7)
- System administration tools and daemons (section 8)
Keys used in man page (manual page)
- Up, down arrow key to navigate upwards and downwards.
Gto jump to the bottom of the page.gto jump to the top of the page.qto quit or exit from man page./textto search a text (Forward Search : Top --> Bottom)?textto search a text (Reverse Search : Bottom --> Top)nto locate next occurance of the searched textNto locate next occurance of the searched text in reverse direction
The info command
The info pages play a similar role to man pages, though they tend to be a little more user-friendly. The man pages are basically a short, terse reference, while info pages tend more toward readability and deeper explanations. The info page system also supports basic linking between documents for easier cross-referencing. This provides a more structured and readable documentation set.
info ls
Files in /usr/share/doc
[sanjeeb@server ~]$ ls /usr/share/doc/ abattis-cantarell-fonts gsound libssh php-common accountsservice gstreamer1 libstemmer php-fpm adcli gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free libstoragemgmt pigz adobe-mappings-cmap gstreamer1-plugins-base libtasn1 pinentry adobe-mappings-pdf gstreamer1-plugins-good libthai pinfo adobe-source-code-pro-fonts gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free libtheora pipewire alsa-lib gtk3 libtiff pipewire-libs alsa-utils gtk4 libtirpc pixman appstream gtkmm30 libtraceevent-doc pkgconf ... ... ... ...
[sanjeeb@server ~]$ ls /usr/share/doc/bzip2 CHANGES LICENSE README [sanjeeb@server ~]$ cat /usr/share/doc/bzip2/README