Both novice users and those familiar with Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server can use online man pages to obtain information about the product and its features. A man page is intended to answer concisely the question “What does it do?” The man pages in general comprise a reference manual. They are not intended to be a tutorial.
The following contains a brief description of each man page section and the information it references:
Section 1 describes, in alphabetical order, the asadmin administration commands.
Section 1M describes Enterprise Server utility commands.
Section 5ASC describes concepts that are related to Enterprise Server administration.
Below is a generic format for man pages. The man pages of each manual section generally follow this order, but include only needed headings. For example, if there are no bugs to report, there is no BUGS section.
This section gives the names of the commands or functions documented, followed by a brief description of what they do.
This section shows the syntax of commands or functions.
The following special characters are used in this section:
Brackets. The option or argument enclosed in these brackets is optional. If the brackets are omitted, the argument must be specified.
Separator. Only one of the arguments separated by this character can be specified at a time.
This section defines the functionality and behavior of the service. Thus it describes concisely what the command does. It does not discuss OPTIONS or cite EXAMPLES. Interactive commands, subcommands, requests, macros, and functions are described under USAGE.
This secton lists the command options with a concise summary of what each option does. The options are listed literally and in the order they appear in the SYNOPSIS section. Possible arguments to options are discussed under the option, and where appropriate, default values are supplied.
This section lists the command operands and describes how they affect the actions of the command.
This section provides examples of usage or of how to use a command or function. Wherever possible a complete example including command-line entry and machine response is shown. Whenever an example is given, the prompt is shown as example%, or if the user must be superuser, example#. Examples are followed by explanations, variable substitution rules, or returned values. Most examples illustrate concepts from the SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, and USAGE sections.
This section lists the values the command returns to the calling program or shell and the conditions that cause these values to be returned. Usually, zero is returned for successful completion, and values other than zero for various error conditions.
This section lists references to other man pages, in-house documentation, and outside publications.
This section lists additional information that does not belong anywhere else on the page. It takes the form of an aside to the user, covering points of special interest. Critical information is never covered here.
This section describes known bugs and, wherever possible, suggests workarounds.