Map to the Oracle Solaris OS Man Page Collection

The Oracle Solaris OS provides detailed information about system internals through man pages. If you are unfamiliar with the man page concept, see the man page for the man(1) command itself or type man man on the command line. The Oracle Solaris OS provides more than 13,000 man pages. Man page collections are separated into sections, which vary slightly from vendor to vendor or even from one release to another release. Large sections are sometimes divided into volumes. References to commands often include the reference manual section or volume number next to the command. For example the man command might be referred to as man(1).

Viewing man pages at docs.sun.com offers several advantages over viewing man pages from the command line. Each section or volume is presented as a book with an index and preface, and an alphabetized list of items with their short descriptions. In some sections, an introductory page provides an overview of the section.

The man pages for the Oracle Solaris OS are organized into sections and volumes as follows:

• man pages section 1: User Commands – Describes the non-administration commands on the system. The Intro(1) man page provides information on man page command syntax for users, guidelines for developers who are designing new man pages, and an explanation of the subdivisions within Section 1.

• man pages section 1M: System Administration Commands – Describes commands for system maintenance and other administrative purposes. The Intro(1M) man page repeats the man page command syntax explanation from the User Commands volume.

• man pages section 2: System Calls section – Describes prototypes and descriptions for the various system calls that can be made in the Oracle Solaris OS. This section focuses on calls that directly invoke UNIX system primitives. The Intro(2) man page provides a list of error returns from system calls as well as a glossary of system call terminology.

• Section 3 provides information on library calls and is divided into the following volumes:

  • man pages section 3: Library Interfaces and Headers volume – Describes general libraries that do not fit into the other categories. The Intro(3) man page provides the complete organization of the Section 3 libraries, a brief explanation of multithreaded applications, and a few basic definitions.

  • man pages section 3: Basic Library Functions volume – Describes the core C library functions that are basic to application development.

  • man pages section 3: Networking Library Functions volume – Describes libraries that are related to networking, such as LDAP and RPC.

  • man pages section 3: Curses Library Functions volume – Describes libraries for displaying characters and graphics.

  • man pages section 3: Realtime Library Functions volume – Describes libraries for performing realtime activities.

  • man pages section 3: Extended Library Functions volume – Describes specialized libraries.

  • man pages section 3: Multimedia Library Functions volume – Describes the libmlib library that provides functions for multimedia processing.

• man pages section 4: File Formats section – Describes file formats. The C structure declarations for the file formats are provided where applicable.

• man pages section 5: Standards, Environments, and Macros section – Describes miscellaneous information. The Intro(5) man page describes the topics in this section.

• man pages section 6: Demos section – Contains games and demos.

• man pages section 7: Device and Network Interfaces section – Describes device interfaces and network interfaces that are available on the system. The Intro(7) man page explains how the section is organized.

• Section 9 provides information on the device drivers, and is organized into the following volumes:

  • man pages section 9: DDI and DKI Driver Entry Points volume – Describes the Device Driver Interface and the Driver-Kernel Interface (DDI/DKI), which are required for device drivers in the Oracle Solaris kernel. The Intro(9E) man page provides an overview of driver entry points.

  • man pages section 9: DDI and DKI Kernel Functions volume – Describes the kernel functions that are available for use by device drivers. The Intro(9F) man page presents summaries of the functions, which are organized into STREAMS and non-STREAMS functions.

  • man pages section 9: DDI and DKI Properties and Data Structures volume – Describes the data structures that are used by drivers to share information between the driver and the kernel. The Intro(9S) man page presents summaries of the structures, organized into STREAMS and non-STREAMS structures.