How to search man pages?

ddenial · 12-07-2019, 11:46 PM

Hello

How to search for multiple keywords in man pages? For example, I want to search all of the man pages not just in the description but in whole for keywords like 'emergency' and 'critical'

What command should I give?

Thanks

scasey · 12-08-2019, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ddenial

Hello

How to search for multiple keywords in man pages? For example, I want to search all of the man pages not just in the description but in whole for keywords like 'emergency' and 'critical'

What command should I give?

Thanks

man man should provide some direction. I've not read it all to be able to give a definitive answer. Sorry.

From within a man page, one can use / to enter a search string and use n jump to the next occurrence of the string
See details in man less

ArfaSmif · 12-08-2019, 01:05 AM

man -k emergency
man -k critical

syg00 · 12-08-2019, 01:40 AM

What did your searching turn up ?.

ddenial · 12-08-2019, 04:51 AM

The idea is to search for topics you want to know more, but you don't know what to look for. Here in my example, I want to know more about error types and all their details. So I want to search all man pages which contain keywords like 'emergency' AND 'critical' AND 'error'. That way I know that if a man page deals with all three keywords, it's mostly dealing with error types.

So I tried the following

Code:

$ man -wK emergency
/usr/share/man/man1/brltty.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/dmesg.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/git-stash.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/nano.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/perl5004delta.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/perldiag.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/perliol.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/perltoc.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/perlvar.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/systemctl.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/systemd.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/btrfs-filesystem.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/dracut.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/e2image.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/gdisk.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/master.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/smartctl.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/systemd-fsck@.service.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/yum.8
/usr/share/man/man2/sched_setscheduler.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/emergencyanalysis_event.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/rsyslog.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/yum.conf.5
/usr/share/man/man7/bootup.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/dracut.bootup.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/dracut.cmdline.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/dracut.cmdline.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/filter.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/kernel-command-line.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/notifier.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/systemd.directives.7.gz
/usr/share/man/man7/systemd.special.7.gz

$ man -wK --regex 'emergency|critical|error'
/usr/share/man/overrides/man1/aide.1.gz
/usr/share/man/overrides/man1/iconv.1.gz
/usr/share/man/overrides/man1/locale.1.gz
/usr/share/man/overrides/man1/localedef.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/7z.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/7za.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/abrt-action-analyze-vmcore.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/abrt-action-check-oops-for-hw-error.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/abrt-auto-reporting.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/ac.1.gz
....

$ man -wK --regex 'emergency|critical|error' | wc -l
6419

This is what I got 6419 results. I know the search pattern I gave is OR operator. If only I knew how to give AND operator in the regex, I think it solve my problem.

Thanks

teckk · 12-08-2019, 09:27 AM

I'm going to do a very small example so it doesn't take forever.

Look for man pages with 'remote and shell' in the short descriptions and manual page names.

Code:

man -k 'remote.*shell'
rsh (1)              - Remote shell client
rshd (8)             - Remote shell server

Easy way to read/search those man pages

Code:

man -t rsh | ps2pdf - rsh.pdf
man -P cat rsh > rsh.txt

Use favorite pdf reader/text editor.

grep a man page for string

Code:

man rsh | grep -- '-d'
-d, --debug

rnturn · 12-08-2019, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArfaSmif

man -k emergency
man -k critical

Which is, as a one-liner, can be done with "apropos emergency critical".

There's more than one way to skin this cat.

ArfaSmif · 12-08-2019, 09:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rnturn

Which is, as a one-liner, can be done with "apropos emergency critical".

There's more than one way to skin this cat.

I've always hated trying to type in the word "apropos". It's easier for me to use "man -k".

teckk · 12-10-2019, 12:51 PM

Quote:

When I search for wincc 7 5

When you searched how?

Code:

man -k wincc 7 5 | wc -l
wincc: nothing appropriate.
1309

apropos wincc 7 5 | wc -l
wincc: nothing appropriate.
1309

1300 responses for 7 and 5. Don't search for numbers like that.

scasey · 12-10-2019, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shituhin238

When I search for wincc 7 5
I get this message:
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: wincc 7 5.
What more should I write in the search field?

Spam link in sig. Reported.