man pages section 1: User Commands

This section describes the commands and utilities available with this operating system, including commands found only in the SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package; commands for communicating with other systems; commands associated with the Form and Menu Language Interpreter (FMLI); and commands specific to the SunOS system. 

The available options, arguments, and operands for each command are provided in accordance with standard rules of command syntax, along with availability attributes, diagnostic information, and cross-references to other document pages and reference material with relevant information. 

This section is for all UNIX system users. 

man pages section 1M: System Administration Commands

This section describes the Solaris system administration and maintenance utilities and is for system and network administrators. 

man pages section 2: System Calls

This section describes the system calls. A system call is a C library function that requests kernel services. Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs. 

man pages section 3: Library Interfaces and Headers

This section describes the interface libraries that are implemented as shared objects and the headers that are used by the functions that make up these libraries. Headers contain function prototypes, definitions of symbolic constants, common structures, preprocessor macros, and defined types. Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs. 

man pages section 3: Basic Library Functions

This document describes the core library functions found in the standard C library (libc), the dynamic linking library (libdl), the SunOS/BSD compatibility library (libucb), and the various memory allocation libraries. Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs.

man pages section 3: Networking Library Functions

This section describes the functions in the various networking libraries, including the Kerberos library (libkrb), the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) library (libldap), the network service library (libnsl), the remote asynchronous calls library (librac), the resolver library (libresolv), the remote procedure call libraries (librpcsvc and librpcsoc), the sockets library (libsocket), the X/Open® Federated Naming (XFN) library (libxfn), and the X/Open network service library (libxnet). Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs.

man pages section 3: Threads and Realtime Library Functions

This section describes the functions in the threads libraries (libthread and libthread), the realtime library (librt), and other related libraries. Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs.

man pages section 3: Extended Library Functions

This section describes the functions in the various specialized libraries, including device ID (libdevid) and device information (libdevinfo) libraries, executable and linking format (ELF) library (libelf), kernel statistics (libkstat) and kernel VM (libkvm) libraries, and the mathematical library (libm). Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs.

man pages section 3: Curses Library Functions

This section describes the functions in the libraries that provide graphics and character screen updating capabilities, including the curses library (libcurses), the forms library (libform), the menus library (libmenu), the panels library (libpanel), and the graphics interface library (libplot). Readers of this section should be familiar with C programming language constructs.

man pages section 4: File Formats

This section outlines the formats of various files that include the C structure declarations, where applicable. The headers containing these structure declarations are generally found in the directories /usr/include or /usr/include/sys.

In the pages that outline the various library structures, both public and private interfaces are listed. A public interface provides a stable, committed set of symbols for application development; private interfaces are for internal use only and can change at any time.  

This section is for software engineers. 

man pages section 5: Standards, Environments, and Macros

This section describes miscellaneous subjects, including headers, environments, macro packages, character sets, and standards. These descriptions provide further elaboration on Solaris constructs described elsewhere in this section. 

man pages section 6: Demos

This section describes audio and video games and demos provided by Solaris software. 

man pages section 7: Device and Network Interfaces

This section describes the various device and network interfaces available on the system. It includes descriptions of character and block devices, STREAMS modules, network protocols, file systems, and ioctl()requests for driver subsystems and classes.

This section is for software engineers who write, maintain, or modify device drivers. 

man pages section 9: DDI and DKI Overview

This section describes the reference information required to write device drivers, which control data transferred to and received from peripheral devices, and are developed independently from the kernel. 

This section is for software engineers who write, modify or maintain device drivers. Readers should be familiar with the C programming language as well as system internals. 

man pages section 9E: DDI and DKI Driver Entry Points

This section describes entry-point routines a developer can use to provide calling and return syntax from the kernel to the device driver. 

This section is for software engineers who write, modify, or maintain device drivers. Readers should be familiar with the C programming language as well as system internals. 

man pages section 9F: DDI and DKI Kernel Functions

This section describes functions a developer can use to provide calling and return syntax from a device driver to the kernel. 

This section is for software engineers who write, modify, or maintain device drivers. Readers should be familiar with the C programming language as well as system internals. 

man pages section 9S: DDI and DKI Data Structures

This section describes the data structures used by drivers to share information between the kernel and device drivers. 

This section is for software engineers who write, modify, or maintain device drivers. Readers should be familiar with the C programming language as well as system internals.