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Frequently I'll be in a situation where I want to read the man page for some software, even though I don't have it installed.

Specifically this time I want the syslogd man page, but I use Arch Linux with systemd (which replaces syslogd). And if you've ben following Arch recently, you'd know that Arch doesn't even support syslogd anymore (in favor of systemd), so the usual approach of "download the entire software just to get the man page" won't work here.

So, is there a resource for downloading just man pages, or even downloading all man pages (similar to how some websites host man pages in HTML)?

Frank
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    What's wrong with just Googling as-needed? – ceejayoz May 25 '13 at 02:06
  • 1. I'd prefer to use a terminal. 2. My less is configured nicely. 3. I don't want to waste time Googling. – Frank May 25 '13 at 02:12
  • Define "all" manpages. Then iterate over multiple variants and versions that might be in use for any given program... – Sven May 25 '13 at 02:26
  • Whatever system man page hosting websites use would be acceptable. – Frank May 25 '13 at 02:28
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    systemd replaces init, not syslogd. – Michael Hampton May 25 '13 at 04:02
  • @Frank The answer to your question is http://www.google.com (search for "man " or " man page", optionally also listing the OS you care about). Beyond that, [Server Fault doesn't really do "list-of-links" answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8231)... – voretaq7 May 25 '13 at 04:40
  • @MichaelHampton Actually, systemd now has its own journal system integrated into systemd that replaces syslogd. – Frank May 25 '13 at 13:21
  • @voretaq7 I don't want a list of links, because that wouldn't be any better than Googling. I want a method to download every man page locally, without the hassle. – Frank May 25 '13 at 13:21

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If you have to have it in a terminal why not just use elinks. I typically use the website: http://linux.die.net for looking up man pages.

You could set a bash function up like so:

function myman() { elinks http://linux.die.net/man/ ;}

You run it like so:

myman

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slm
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  • Nice trick. Also if you prefer w3m: `function myman() { w3m http://linux.die.net/man/ ;}`. Anyways, very clever. – tomi May 25 '13 at 09:14