Every command on the Linux machines, should have an associated manual page. The manual pages are generally comprehensive and detailed, but not particularly easy to read. They can be accessed through various utilities:

• man

  This is the command line method of accessing the manual pages. To search for a specific manual page:

  man commandname
  

  To search for a keyword:

  man -k keyword
  

• xman

  This is an X-windows application. To start it from Linux at the command line type:

  xman &
  

• nroff

  This text formatting utility enables you to read any unformatted manual pages:

  nroff -man manualpage
  

  You do not need to use this for manual pages installed on the DoC systems.

• whatis

  This gives a one line summary of a command:

  whatis keyword
  

Manual pages come in two varieties, nroff encoded and plain text. The difference in the two types is that plain text versions can be read directly, whilst nroff encoded have to be formatted using the nroff utility.

Each manual page will have an associated section into which it should be installed. This section is normally indicated by a trailing digit in the manual page filename. For instance, the following manpage should be installed in section 1:

	xterm.1

Within this you should create directories to hold the manual pages. The directory names should be of the following format:

For unformatted manual pages, (man1 indicates manual section 1):

	~/man/man1/
 	~/man/man2/

	setenv MANPATH ~/man:$MANPATH

Creating a "whatis" Database

The whatis command searches the whatis database for a oneline summary of a command. This is generated from the manual pages by using the command catman. For example, suppose that you have a set of manual pages installed in your home directory in the path ~/man. To create the whatis database for manual section 1, you would type:

	/usr/etc/catman -w -M ~/man 1

© CSG / 1999