Man pages are a common way to learn the commands that are on your system. man is actually the system’s manual pager. The man command will give you all the details of a given command, including switches used, and syntax. man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program, utility or function.
If your server does not installed with man command, you will get this error when you run it :
[root@centos58 ~]# man chage -bash: man: command not found
Simply run this command to install “man” command on linux CentOS 5.8.
[root@centos58 ~]# yum install man -y Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror.oscc.org.my * epel: mirror.nus.edu.sg * extras: mirror.oscc.org.my * rpmforge: mirror.oscc.org.my * updates: mirrors.hostemo.com CentOS5.8-Repository | 1.3 kB 00:00 Setting up Install Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package man.i386 0:1.6d-2.el5 set to be updated --> Processing Dependency: groff >= 1.18 for package: man --> Processing Dependency: bzip2 for package: man --> Processing Dependency: nroff-i18n for package: man --> Running transaction check ---> Package bzip2.i386 0:1.0.3-6.el5_5 set to be updated ---> Package groff.i386 0:1.18.1.1-13.el5 set to be updated --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ==================================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size ==================================================================================================== Installing: man i386 1.6d-2.el5 CentOS5.8-Repository 262 k Installing for dependencies: bzip2 i386 1.0.3-6.el5_5 base 49 k groff i386 1.18.1.1-13.el5 base 1.9 M Transaction Summary ==================================================================================================== Install 3 Package(s) Upgrade 0 Package(s) Total download size: 2.2 M Downloading Packages: (1/3): bzip2-1.0.3-6.el5_5.i386.rpm | 49 kB 00:00 (2/3): groff-1.18.1.1-13.el5.i386.rpm | 1.9 MB 00:17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 95 kB/s | 2.2 MB 00:23 Running rpm_check_debug Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction Installing : bzip2 1/3 Installing : groff 2/3 Installing : man 3/3 Installed: man.i386 0:1.6d-2.el5 Dependency Installed: bzip2.i386 0:1.0.3-6.el5_5 groff.i386 0:1.18.1.1-13.el5 Complete!
Example of man usage :
[root@centos58 ~]# man chage
