Where to get help (i.e. man pages)

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Man was originated from the linux programmer’s manual and its large enough to be multiple printed books

There are various sections in manual, below would be list of those section with basic purpose of each

1 – User commands – executable and shell programs

2 – System calls – kernel routines invoked from the user space

3 – Library functions – functions provided by program libraries

4 – Special files – example of this can be device files

5 – File formats – configuration files and structures

6 – Games – amusing programs

7 – Conventions, standards and miscellaneous – protocols, filesystems

8 – System administration and privileged commands – maintenance tasks

9 – Linux kernel APIs – internal kernel calls

A keyword search of man pages is performed using man –k keyword, below can be a nice example,

[root@serveros73 ~]# man -k passwd -l

chpasswd (8)         - update passwords in batch mode

gpasswd (1)          - administer /etc/group and /etc/gshadow

grub2-mkpasswd-pbkdf2 (1) - Generate a PBKDF2 password hash.

lpasswd (1)          - Change group or user password

pam_localuser (8)    - require users to be listed in /etc/passwd

passwd (1)           - update user's authentication tokens

sslpasswd (1ssl)     - compute password hashes

pwhistory_helper (8) - Helper binary that transfers password hashes from passwd or shadow to opasswd

[root@serveros73 ~]#

Popular system administration topics are in section 1 i.e user commands, section 5 i.e. file formats, section 8 administrative commands, section 2 i.e. system calls.

Some examples can be seen as below,

• View su(1) man page – man su
• Find command for tuning ext4 – man -k ext4

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