Specifications

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Command-Line Environment 17

To view a list of options and parameters you can use with the command:

Enter the command without options or parameters:

$ sudo serveradmin

Some commands don’t have onscreen help.

Using Man Pages

Most command-line documentation comes in man pages. Man pages provide

reference information for shell commands, tools, and high-level concepts.

To access a man page entry:

$ man command

Replace command with the name of the command you want to nd information about.

The man page contains detailed information about the command, its options and

parameters, and proper use.

For help using the man command itself, enter:

$ man man

You can press the Space bar to go to the next page, the B key to go back a page, or the

Return key to scroll forward one line at a time. Press the Q key to exit the man page.

You can search within the contents of a man page by pressing the / key followed by

the word you’re looking for. If multiple instances are found, the P and N keys let you

access the previous and next instances of the term.

If you don’t know the name of the particular man page, you can search the topics by

entering:

$ man -k topic

Replace topic with a word that would be contained in the description of the man

page you might be looking for. For example:

$ man -k "directory service"

Returns references to the dscacheutil, dscl, and whois man pages. You can

also nd links to related man pages at the bottom of a given man page in the “SEE

ALSO” section.

If you have the Xcode tools installed, you can view man pages from within Xcode by

selecting “Open man page…” from the Help menu. There are also several third-party

graphical Mac OS X applications available for viewing man pages. You can nd one by

choosing Mac OS X Software from the Apple menu and then searching for “man page.”