I ended the Realcrypt Howto with instructions about navigating a man page. It really deserves its own post, so I’m reposting the navigation commands here as well as expanding the topic.
When you’re not sure about the usage of a program, ‘Google is your friend’ but an even better friend generally is the programs man page [manual page]. It’s where you should always start your search. The documentation in the program’s manual is usually quite extensive and is likely all you’ll need. Man pages use a common layout – Name; Synopsis; Description/[Options]; Examples, See also.
To read a programs man page: man {program-name}
Related commands are whatis and apropos: whatis searches the short man page descriptions in the whatis database and outputs a one line description. apropos searches the whatis database for strings.
whatis Usage:
- whatis gpg
Output:
- gpg (1) – OpenPGP encryption and signing tool
- gpg-agent (1) – Secret key management for GnuPG
- gpg-connect-agent (1) – Communicate with a running agent
- gpg-preset-passphrase (1) – Put a passphrase into gpg-agent’s cache
apropos Usage:
- apropos gpg
Output:
- applygnupgdefaults (8) – Run gpgconf –apply-defaults for all users
- gpg (1) – OpenPGP encryption and signing tool
- gpg2 (1) – OpenPGP encryption and signing tool
- gpg-agent (1) – Secret key management for GnuPG
- gpgconf (1) – Modify .gnupg home directories
- gpg-connect-agent (1) – Communicate with a running agent
- gpgparsemail (1) – Parse a mail message into an annotated format
- gpg-preset-passphrase (1) – Put a passphrase into gpg-agent’s cache
- gpgsm (1) – CMS encryption and signing tool
- gpgsm-gencert.sh [gpgsm-gencert] (1) – Generate an X.509 certificate request
- gpgsplit (1) – Split an OpenPGP message into packets
- gpgv (1) – Verify OpenPGP signatures
- gpgv2 (1) – Verify OpenPGP signatures
- keychain (1) – re-use ssh-agent and/or gpg-agent between logins
- radeonhd (4) – AMD GPG (ATI) R5xx/R6xx video driver
Less is a program that is used to view text files from the terminal | example: less letter.pdf . The viewing of Man Pages is done with Less. The key commands for Less are:
- Page Down = Spacebar or the ‘Page Down’ Key
- Page Up = b or the ‘Page Up’ Key
- Line Down = j or the ‘Down Arrow’ Key
- Line Up = k or the ‘Up Arrow’ Key
- Top of Document = g
- Bottom of Document = G
- Quit = q
- Search = / to search forward [example /keyfile ] |or| ? to search backward [ ?keyfile ]
- Repeat Search = n to repeat the search forward and N to repeat the search in the opposite direction
- Help = h | Will give you the full summary of Less commands. ;-)
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Tags: Linux, commands, usage, man, man pages, less, whatis, apropos,
