The manual pages contain all the essential information regarding the use of the feature. However, they are not intended to be in a tutorial fashion and can often be confusing to new users. Many of them are fairly straightforward and are easily read. Some of them presume some knowledge of the topic and will require more work to understand them. Over time, it becomes easier to understand them after you build a basic knowledge of the operating system and its commands.
The Unix manual pages are divided into several sections to speed searches for more experienced users, and to differentiate certain types of information. The usual man page sections are:
Table 5-1. Manual Page Sections
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | User Commands |
| 2 | System Calls |
| 3 | Subroutines |
| 4 | Devices |
| 5 | File Formats |
| 6 | Games |
| 7 | Miscellaneous |
| 8 | System Administration |
| n | New |
Usually you don't need to worry about which section a manual page will be in. However, sometimes there are manual pages by the same name in different sections, referring to different things (e.g., the manual page on how to use the "hostname" command may be found in section 1 "[User Commands]", while the man page that describes the process of hostname resolution is found in section 5 "[File Formats]"). So, if you want to know how hostnames are resolved, you must type:
% man 5 hostname
The manual pages are included in the system unless you explicitly left them out during installaton. Manual pages are are also available online for all versions of FreeBSD. Manual pages for ports are also available for some versions. This can be useful if you want to review a port's manual page before installing. The FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages can be accessed at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi.