Virtual Private Server User Guide
Internet and UNIX Basics
Manual pages
Many of the commands, programs and files that are found on your virtual server
come with short reference manuals known as iman pages.i These man pages
explain the basic operation, command syntax, and other information. Often, they
will even provide usage examples.
These manuals can be viewed with the man command using the following syntax,
where command is the name of the command you wish to learn about:
> man command
For example, to learn more about the ls command type:
> man ls
To view just a brief description of a command you can also use the whatis
command.
The online manual that you access with the man command is actually divided into
sections. In some cases, the same topic may appear in more than one section of
the online manual. For example, there is a chmod user command and a chmod()
system call. For this reason, each section of the online manual is assigned a
number, as follows:
(1) User commands.
(2) System calls and error numbers.
(3) Functions in the C libraries.
(4) Device drivers.
(5) File formats.
(6) Games and other diversions.
(7) Miscellaneous information.
(8) System maintenance and operation commands.
(9) Kernel developers.
In the case of the chmod example, you can tell the man command which section
of the manually you want to look in by specifying the section number. Sometimes
it is important to specify this section number, as some command names are
overloaded and exist in more than one of the above sections. In general, though,
you don't need to include the section number unless you are writing your own
programs because man will usually give you the one you want by default):
> man 1 chmod
This will display the manual page for the user command chmod. References to a
particular section of the online manual are traditionally placed in parentheses in
written documentation, so chmod(1) refers to the chmod user command and
chmod(2) refers to the system call.
Technical Training Department
August 2004
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