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-   -   how to browse linux man by section? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/how-to-browse-linux-man-by-section-850388/)

hindi 12-15-2010 07:41 AM
how to browse linux man by section?
 
how to browse linux man by section?

GrapefruiTgirl 12-15-2010 07:42 AM
This is a great way here, if you have internet access: http://linux.die.net/man/

For local copies, I am not sure, but if there's a way to browse by section on the local machine, I'll be interested to know it too. :-)

brianL 12-15-2010 07:49 AM
If you're using KDE, open Help, and scroll right down. All the man pages are available sorted by section.

colucix 12-15-2010 08:30 AM
From the command line one way might be to parse the whatis database, looking for a specific section. Example for section 1 man pages:
Code:
grep '(1)' /var/cache/man/whatis
Please note that not all the linux systems provide a whatis database by default. However you can always create it using the makewhatis command (as root).

You can also create a function to list all the man pages, passing the section number as argument, e.g.
Code:
function manls () {
  grep "($1)" /var/cache/man/whatis
}
Checks on the correctness of the argument can be added, as well.

hindi 12-15-2010 08:42 AM
is there any command or man option to do it in the terminal

mlangdn 12-15-2010 12:00 PM
If your distro has xman, just type that in a terminal. Click on Manual Page to get started. Once you open a page to view, double-click on an entry to get its info. This is good for just plain exploring.

dv502 12-16-2010 04:57 PM
@ hindi

Some commands will have more than one section -- eg. crontab

When you view a manpage, it will list other relevant man pages for the command

An excerpt from man crontab

SEE A
crontab(5), cron(8)

To see those man sections, you would type

man 5 crontab
man 8 cron

äxl 05-09-2013 07:07 AM
Sorry for digging this up.
http://shallowsky.com/linux/debnotes.html
"mandb -c does what makewhatis does in other distros and other Unices -- builds the whatis/apropos databases. It's part of the man-db package."

I also couldn't get xman to work at first but it's usually part of every Xserver in x11-apps. Just type xman and browse the man pages.

Gnome Help Browser is called yelp. Looks more neat but has some dependencies.

syg00 05-09-2013 05:07 PM
Maybe use "info" instead. Quite often has more info (sorry .... :p), and has all the navigation you'll likely want.

frankbell 05-09-2013 09:43 PM
I am fond of the apropos command to investigate man pages.

For example (this is on Debian Wheezy):

Code:
~$ apropos directories
addgnupghome (8)    - Create .gnupg home directories
cp (1)              - copy files and directories
dh_bugfiles (1)      - install bug reporting customization files into package...
dh_clean (1)        - clean up package build directories
dh_compress (1)      - compress files and fix symlinks in package build direc...
dh_fixperms (1)      - fix permissions of files in package build directories
dh_install (1)      - install files into package build directories
dh_installchangelogs (1) - install changelogs into package build directories
dh_installdebconf (1) - install files used by debconf in package build direct...
. . . and so on.
See man apropos for details.


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