What's the difference between Ubuntu's man and macOS's man? My main machine is running macOS 14 Sonoma, but I often ssh into Ubuntu servers. Recently I noticed a strange difference between the man program on these platforms. On Ubuntu, man displays a useful "prompt" in the bottom-left corner: It can be configured with the –prompt …
Restrict the number of colums for man (or less) I use man pages in the console a lot (no GUI), but the wide screen I use really has a lot of columns in text mode. The lines are too long and unpleasant to read. Is there a way to limit the number of columns used …
man pages global search regex `.*word1.*word2.*` does not find a page that contain both words I want to use man more efficiently. I’ve decided to try –regex option. However: ~$ man –regex -K ‘.*textdomain.*perl.*’ –Man– next: Locale::Messages(3pm) [ view (return) | skip (Ctrl-D) | quit (Ctrl-C) ] ^C ~$ man –regex -K ‘.*perl.*textdomain.*’ No manual …
Why is there manpage for sync(1) and sync(8) and how do they differ? I see there are two different utilities in Linux manpages and I don’t understand the difference. There is sync(1) and sync(8), and they look eerily similar. https://linux.die.net/man/8/sync https://linux.die.net/man/1/sync I am probably missing something obvious. How do they differ? (I know that sync(2) …
Can one find all pages in SEE ALSO of a man page? Jump to some of them when viewing man page? I’m learning to edit man pages. I’ve just noted SEE ALSO part in source file consists of separate lines (displayed as one long line by man). Any value in that? Or I can as …
Retaining full manual for scrolling in SSH (Putty) terminal Beginners question: I am reading a man page called in a ssh (putty) session, i.e: man usermod Now this man page has about 252 line, when reaching the end, I press q for quit. It would be very helpful if all the lines from man page …
man syscalls is missing in arch linux I just can’t find it. I’ve installed linux-docs with sudo pacman -S linux-docs but still man syscalls does not work. Asked By: Corel || Source The syscalls man page is provided by the Arch Linux package man-pages. Install it with pacman -S man-pages. Answered By: Johan Myréen syscalls …
What is the recommended user writable manpath? I’m writing an interactive shell utility (it’s a bash script), and I would like to provide a man page for it. It’s a script that I expect the user to download and put in their PATH, not something that should require superuser privileges. Any idea where I should …
man page: how to see progress through file (MacOS) When viewing a man page, is there a way to see visually where you are in the file? Typing = shows the line numbers currently in view, but does not show how many lines are in the file. I’m not looking for a clickable scrollbar, but …
Console doesn't render according to man manual So why is my console on Ubuntu doesn’t render according to the man manual? If I type in man man in the console I get a manual for man. And for example, it points out that italic text replace with appropriate argument. But what I can see is …
Manpage for configuration file I often find myself in the situation where I need to look up the syntax and logic for a configuration file of some program on my computer. While I can do man mosquitto, this will not necessarily yield the help section for the file /etc/mosquitto.conf. What I am searching for is …
Why can't I filter manual pages through grep command? I’m not sure if something has changed about my system but I find that filtering Unix manual pages through my grep command isn’t working. Do you know what’s wrong? For example, consider the jq manual page compiled from the following code. . .IP "(bu" 4 fB–slurpfR/fB-sfR: …
Show application list with description, ommitting "nothing appropriate" I’ve been working on a script with a variety of functions. I’m trying to add a function that show’s the output of the whatis command for all applications in the "/usr/share/applications" folder, without showing lines that say "nothing appropriate". My current command attempt is: whatis $(ls /usr/share/applications …
Why might `man -awK` be including results that don't match the search term? Example: man -awK "typeset" This was confirmed by piping to grep: search=typeset man -awK — "$search" | xargs -I {} sh -c "echo ‘{}’ man –no-hyphenation –no-justification — {} | grep -iF — ‘$search’" Result: /usr/share/man/man1/lcf.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/memusagestat.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/mtrace.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/nm-applet.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/nm-connection-editor.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/nroff.1.gz GROFF_TYPESETTER …
How to pipe a man page (without pagination) while intentionally preserving formatting? Minimal example: man git | cat Real example: man git | grep –color=always -C 3 "pathspec" FWIW, I’ve tried –pager="cat" using various pagers, as well as piping to various pagers. I’ve also tried using vimcat with the same, but unfortunately it freezes. I’ve …
How can I keep colouring when piping man to less? I have this in my .zshrc file export MANLESS="" export LESS="–RAW-CONTROL-CHARS" export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(tput bold; tput setaf 5) export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(tput bold; tput setaf 1) export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(tput setaf 1; tput setab 3) export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(tput rmso; tput sgr0) export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(tput setaf 3) export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(tput sgr0) When I use …
ps command: how does the '-q' option work? According with the ps command, for the -q option Through the man is indicated: -q pidlist Select by PID (quick mode). This selects the processes whose process ID numbers appear in pidlist. With this option ps reads the necessary info only for the pids listed in the …
Is there any quasi-standard for adding "sub-subsections" in a UNIX manual page? I wonder: Writing a UNIX manual page using the man macro package there is .SH (section heading) and .SS (subsection). But what if I want to have "sub-subsections"? Is there any kind of standard for such? I think I’ve seen some page fiddling …
How can I prevent a line break between option and parameter using `.RB` and `.IR`? When writing a manual page of a command, the SYNOPSIS contains: .RB [ -v .IR version ] Unfortunately when formatting the SYNOPSIS there is a line break between "[-v" and "version]". How can I avoid that? Adding the Obvious As …
Why does man have its own user? I’m simply curious as to why man has its own user. $ grep man /etc/passwd man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/usr/sbin/nologin I’m using Debian Buster. Asked By: Panki || Source man (at least, the version implemented in man-db) can be set up with its own user so that its “cache” (which includes indexes, …
