Getting Started : Online Help

The main source of online documentation is the man command. This is an online Unix Reference Manual. The full syntax of any command may be seen by typing

man command

The reference manual entry for the specified command will be displayed on the screen, with the display pausing after each screenful. At this point the following actions can be taken:

<Spacebar> display the next page

<Return> display the next line

/string display the next page containing string

h give a full list of man sub-commands

q quit from man and return to the command prompt

The command

man -k topic

will give a list of other man pages that contain information about the specified topic. See man man for full details of the man command.

Where possible, each section ends with the relevant manual page reference, with the assumption that the csh (C shell) or tcsh (TC shell) is being used. The default on the OUCS Unix systems, is the tcsh. There is a general Unix help menu system; type help to access this. There is a large help section (ie manual pages) for each shell; use man csh, for example, to see the help for the C shell.

Other useful help commands are:

man -k topic

searches the manual pages for the keyword topic

whatis topic

same as above

apropos topic

same as above (only works in the csh)

which topic

locates the file including aliases and path

whereis topic

locates all the files for topic

man topic/Indexname

searches for the Indexname section for topic, for example man csh/Job would go straight to the Job Control section of the manual pages for csh. Note, indexing is not available to all shells.

manq topic

available on OUCS Unix systems at Oxford University only. Searches for the topic in all of the manual pages and displays a list of pages to choose from.

It is also useful to explore the manual pages for associated topics/commands; these are listed at the end of the manual pages for each topic.

Note, the conventional notation for references to Unix manual pages is in the format of topic(section number). User commands are in section 1 of the manual pages hence a reference to passwd(1), for example, means help can be found on the user command passwd by typing man passwd. This notation is used throughout this document.

Users at Oxford University can also e-mail advisory@oucs.ox.ac.uk for direct help.