A listing of the pages held within the Manual are stored in a system-generated database. Accessing them is as simple as man <command>, and (usually) detailed listing of how to use a command is presented. Check out Finding Help in Linux for more information about how to use man

Help! The Manual is Missing!

On freshly created Linux system, it is common that the Manual Pages have not yet been generated. Running a man <command> results in an error, even for basic core utilities such as ls. This can be a problem - as especially on newly-created systems, it is really common to need to issue lots of commands with rarely-used options. It is also worth noting that sometimes the Manual can become outdated during a software update and might need to be rebuilt.

Most distributions of Linux use a scheduled job to generate the Manual - usually daily. Predictably, there is also a manual way to generate the Manual quickly and easily. Run the mandb command to update the Manual to the latest and greatest version:

Once this has successfully completed, a fully populated Manual awaits the curious user. Let the learning commence!