Ubuntu Command Lines for Beginners Part 5: Reading Manuals

Continuing Part 4, if this fifth part you need to be able to read user manuals installed on your own Ubuntu system. Actually, a GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu is like a library, it stores "books" (user manuals) of many command lines and programs installed. In other words, you don't need internet access to learn, just read manuals already available on your system if you don't know about commands like cp, ls, apt, systemctl, and so on in your system. What you need to have is the ability to read and find manuals using man and apropos command. So let's try the ten exercises below. Happy exercising!

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Read also I: Navigation, II: Copy & Delete, III: Combination, IV: Editing, of the most basic command lines for Ubuntu beginners.

Command 1

Remember 2 things:
To close manual page, press Q
To find out a word in manual page, press /

$ man ls
Close

$ man pwd
Close

$ man cp
Close

$ man mv
Close
$ man cat
Close

$ man echo
Close

$ man nano
Close

Command 2

$ man bash
Find out: pipeline
Press N to search forward, Shift+N to search backward
Close

Searching in a manual

$ man bash
Find out: redirection
Press N to search forward, Shift+N to search backward
Close

Command 3

Here's how to read manual concerning your shell (GNU bash shell).

$ man bash | grep pipeline
$ man bash | grep Pipeline
$ man bash | grep -i pipeline

$ man bash | grep redirection
$ man bash | grep Redirection
$ man bash | grep -i redirection

$ bash --help
$ help
$ bash -c 'help cd'
$ bash -c 'help for'
$ bash -c 'help while'

Command 4

Here's manuals of your package manager (APT).

$ man apt-get
Close

$ man apt-cache
Close

$ man apt-key
Close

$ man apt-cdrom
Close

$ man apt-get | grep install
$ man apt-get | grep remove
$ man apt-get | grep upgrade
$ man apt-get | grep dist-upgrade
$ man apt-get | grep print-uris

$ man apt-cache | grep policy
$ man apt-cache | grep search
$ man apt-cache | grep stats

Command 5

Here's manuals of your common GUI applications like LibreOffice, Nautilus, Rhythmbox, and many more.

$ man libreoffice
Close

$ man nautilus
Close

$ man eog
Close

$ man gnome-screenshot
Close

$ man gnome-shell
Close

$ man gnome-calendar
Close

$ man gnome-software
Close

$ man software-properties-gtk
Close

$ man gedit
Close

$ man rhythmbox
Close

Command 6

Here's manuals of your Linux kernel's basic utilities especially those for working with filesystem.

$ man fsck
Close

$ man fdisk
Close

$ man blkid
Close

$ man mkfs
Close

$ man mount
Close

$ man umount
Close

$ man 4 hd
Close
This explains what is /dev/hda

$ man 4 sd
Close
This explains /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.

$ man 4 tty
Close

$ man 4 null
Close
This explains what is /dev/null

$ man 5 filesystems
Close
This explains what filesystems Linux kernel support like ext, fat, ntfs, jfs, etc.

Command 7

Here's manuals of your GNU operating system components.

$ info
Press Ctrl+C to close

$ man info
Close

$ man ls
Close

$ man cp
Close

$ man mv
Close

$ man bash
Close

$ man grep
Close

$ man find
Close

$ man awk
Close

$ man sed
Close

$ man cut
Close

$ man chmod
Close

$ man chown
Close

$ man chroot
Close

$ man tar
Close

$ man gunzip
Close

$ man wget
Close

Command 8

Here's manuals of process management on GNU/Linux.

$ man uptime
Close

$ man ps
Close

$ man kill
Close

$ man pkill
Close

$ man killall
Close

$ man xkill
Close

$ man top
Close

$ man shutdown
Close

$ man reboot
Close

$ man init
Close

Command 9

Here's manual of user & group management on GNU/Linux.

$ man whoami
Close

$ man w
Close

$ man sudo
Close

$ man adduser
Close

$ man deluser
Close

$ man usermode
Close

$ man groupadd
Close

$ man groupdel
Close

$ man groupmod
Close

Command 10

Here's how to find a manual within all manuals installed. It's like finding book among books in library!

Looking for GNU utilities:

$ apropos gnu
See the first column

$ apropos gnu | grep utility
It shows make and tar

$ man make
Close

$ man tar
Close

Looking for Linux kernel utilities:

$ apropos linux
See the first column

$ apropos linux | grep filesystem
It shows extlinux, filesystems, fs, fsck, and so on

$ man extlinux
Close

$ man filesystems
Close

Command 11

Each manual can be saved as TXT file, further to be converted to PDF, ODT, DOC, or any other formats!

Each saved manual can also be printed out to papers!

To save apt manuals:

$ cd ~
$ man apt-get > aptget-book.txt
$ cat ~/aptget-book.txt
Open it with Gedit Text Editor

To save GNU manuals:

$ cd ~
$ man cp > cp-book.txt
$ man ls > ls-book.txt
$ man chmod > chmod-book.txt
$ man awk > awk-book.txt
$ man wget > wget-book.txt
Open them with Gedit Text Editor

To save Linux kernel's utilities manuals:

$ cd ~
$ man fsck > fsck-book.txt
$ man fdisk > fdisk-book.txt
$ man blkid > blkid-book.txt
$ man 5 filesystems > filesystems-book.txt

To save systemd init system manuals:

$ cd ~
$ man systemd > systemd-book.txt
$ man systemctl > systemctl-book.txt
$ man journalctl > journalctl-book.txt

To save networking manuals:

$ cd ~
$ man resolv.conf > resolvconf-book.txt
$ man ip > ip-book.txt
$ man route > route-book.txt
$ man ping > ping-book.txt
$ man ssh > ssh-book.txt
$ man wget > wget-book.txt

You can further read the TXT in LibreOffice Writer to later export it to PDF:

Reading the saved manual with LibreOffice

Summary

• For any command, if you need to read the manual, invoke: $ man command_name
• To find out manual you don't know the title, invoke: $ apropos keyword_you_wish_to_find_out
• You can filter out the output of man or apropos by using grep in pipeline.

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