BSU Man Pages

The manual pages are viewed by using the man command. The main programs, subroutines, and functions packaged with BSU all have man pages. The location of the man page files will depend on your choice of the option, --prefix= set during the compilation process. The standard location in Debian and Redhat packages would be --prefix=/usr. However, it may be different. For example, you may have chosen --prefix=/usr/local. If that were the case, man page files will be located under the directory /usr/local/man. Whatever your prefix is, the man directory under that prefix should be in your man search path. If it isn't, define and export the MANPATH variable. For example, if you use bash and want to set MANPATH for all users, you might wish to edit the file, /etc/profile, and add the line:


export MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/man


This will add the above directory to any existing MANPATH. Options for setting the man search path can vary among the Linux distributions. For example, on Ubuntu, you may wish to edit the file /etc/manpath.config. Examine your /etc directory for a file with “man” and some variation of “conf” or “config”. To view a man page, type man followed by the program name (bmed in example below):

EXAMPLE


man bmed



You will be able to see the man page in an X-term window. To generate a Postscript version of a man page, type:


{vlist21}
man -T bmed >bmed.ps
vlist21



Then you can print or view the file bmed.ps with a ghostscript program (gv, evince, kpdf, etc ...).

The other feature of man pages is the whatis and apropos data base. If you know the full name of the man page you wish to view, then typing


whatis bmed



will give you a one line description of the man page contents.


bmed (1) - BSU program median mixes seismic data across the trace direction



If you are not sure of the entire spelling, type


apropos bme



to get a list of programs that have that character string in the whatis database. Not all programs listed will be relevant to your inquiry.


bmed (1) - BSU program median mixes seismic data across the trace direction
obmenu (1) - a menu editor for openbox