Hello there, you beautiful people.
Now, in the last video, you learned the difference between the terminal and the shell.
And you've also seen how commands are structured on quite a general level.
We mentioned that commands follow a general structure like command name, then some options and then
some inputs.
But like we saw, each of the Linux commands is implemented slightly differently, they behave slightly
differently.
So other than memorizing a bajillion different implementations of things, how can we actually know
how to use each of the Linux commands properly?
Well, the answer is to use the manual pages known as man pages for short.
Now Linux comes with an incredible set of manual pages that will detail the workings of pretty much
everything on the system, including commands.
So in this video, we're going to be covering how the manual is structured now because the manual is
massive.
Having an understanding of the structure behind it is going to make it so much easier to navigate because
then you'll know not only what is available in the manual, but also where to look for it.
So by the end of the video you'll have an understanding of the manual structure and which sections are
probably going to be most important to you.
And you'll also have a cool cheat sheet to take away with you that pretty much has all the notes and
all the all the top information from this video.
So that's quite exciting.
So let's go ahead and jump right into it.
All right.
So the first thing you need to know when you're looking at the manual structure is that the manual is
broken up into eight sections.
And each of these sections deals with a specific type of thing that is on your Linux operating system.
Now, the manual is absolutely huge and just it would be impossible to deal with if it was all just
in one big lump by breaking it up into several sections.
That makes it a lot easier for you and I to manage, understand where we're looking so we can actually
find what we're looking for.
Okay, so let's go through each of these eight sections and have a bit of a bit more of an understanding
of what they do.
Okay.
So let's start with section number one.
So section number one is for user commands.
Now these are commands that can just be run from the shell by any regular user.
You don't need any particular administration privileges or any root privileges to be able to run these
commands.
Anyone can use them.
So things like the date command, the cow command and so on, these are the kind of commands that would
come under user commands and pretty much any command that you'll use day to day will be in there.
Section two is for system calls.
Now, this is a more advanced section.
So this is this contains programming functions that can be used within an application that you write
to make calls to the Linux kernel, which is a very low level part of the operating system that we'll
be discussing actually later on in the course.
But unless you're doing some rather advanced stuff that actually plays with the operating system and
the hardware on your computer, you probably won't use Section two, but it's there and that's what
it's for.
Same kind of goes for Section three, which is about see library functions.
Now these are libraries for the C programming language and these are functions and libraries that provide
interfaces to specific things on your computer, such as graphical user interfaces or other libraries
that you might want to use.
So if you're writing some C code that you want to have access to your computer with, then that's the
kind of stuff that you'll be looking at in there in Section three.
But if you're just a regular user like me, you probably won't need to do so.
Section four is devices and Special Files.
Always got the word special in it, but this is about how the different devices on your computer are
managed.
So things such as CD drives or things such as random number generators or things such as USB ports and
stuff like that.
This is how they're managed and how you can access those using using command lines and things like that.
So anything to do with the device isn't going to be in section four.
Section five is an interesting one.
Section five is about file formats and conventions.
So if you've ever opened up a file on your computer and just been like, Oh my goodness, what is that?
That looks like an absolute mess.
I have no idea what is going on.
How can I possibly use this?
That's what Section five is for.
Section five is about all the different formats and the conventions of specific files and on your computer.
So, you know, formats for word documents or formats for PDF documents or formats for specific configuration
files.
So if you want to start configuring things on your computer, start customizing stuff.
Section five is what you're going to use often because it will show you how each of the special files
works and how they're structured and what, you know, how they're structured.
You can change them, right?
So that's section five.
Section six is about games.
So any games that are installed on your computer, they have their own section and different commands
and stuff that are applicable to those.
Section seven is more miscellaneous stuff, more uncategorized stuff.
So it's usually stuff like protocols or file systems and information about those.
If you know what they mean, then maybe you'll want to check it out.
If you don't, then don't worry about it.
You'll probably never come across it.
And Section eight is all of all the stuff to do with system administration.
So this is like the reverse of section one.
A Section eight is all the commands that can actually actually require root privileges and administration
privileges to be run on your computer.
This is things like changing passwords.
This is things like really editing important stuff on your computer, setting up automation and things
like that.
Whereas the section one the user commands is stuff that anyone can run.
Section eight requires privileges in order to actually run those functions and run those commands.
So those are the eight sections.
And as I say, this information with more explanation is actually in the cheat sheet that you can get
in the resources section.
So make sure to check that out after this video.
But the main sections that you're actually going to be using are section one, which is the user commands.
We'll be using that all the time in this course and you'll be using it all the time pretty much whenever
you use Linux Day today, Section five is usually what you'll use.
If you want to start editing stuff and configuring things, you'll get information on how to edit the
stuff and what to edit in specific configuration files using Section five and Section eight.
When you want to set up things like automation or make some rather advanced changes to your computer,
then you'll use Section eight, which is all the system administration stuff.
So that's when you want to do stuff that normal users shouldn't be able to do all the time.
It's like changing, changing other people's passwords and stuff like that, creating users for the
system and things like that.
So Section one, Section five, and Section eight are what you will likely use most often.
So there we are.
That's a that's a structure for.
The manual.
Let's take a quick summary of what we've seen here.
We've seen the Linux expanding was broken up into eight sections and more information about each of
the sections is actually in the cheat sheet that you can find in the resources.
But now that we've got an understanding of each of the sections and we see how the manual is structured,
let's start actually using it.
So in the next video, what we're going to do is we're going to take this information about the manual
structures and we're going to see how you can actually search the manual and read the manual pages to
learn how to use new commands.
So for all that goodness, I'll see you in the next video.