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I want to read the manpage for the application cutechess, however I do not want to install it, so is there any way to get and read a manpage for a package without installing it? That is through the command-line and not a browser (a Terminal browser such as lynx does not count). This method should work for all packages and not be specific to cutechess though. I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.04.

3 Answers3

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A manpage for cutechess can be found here This is the results of a simple search for manpage and cutechess

The script below (taken from here) can be used to read manpages from the internet, in a terminal window. Usage is dman <topic>, if the script is saved as dman

#!/bin/sh -e

###############################################################################
# This is the Ubuntu manpage repository generator and interface.
# 
# Copyright (C) 2008 Canonical Ltd.
# 
# This code was originally written by Dustin Kirkland <kirkland@ubuntu.com>,
# based on a framework by Kees Cook <kees@ubuntu.com>.
# 
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
# 
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
# 
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
# 
# On Debian-based systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public
# License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3
###############################################################################


. /etc/lsb-release
while true; do
    case "$1" in
        --release)
            DISTRIB_CODENAME="$2"
            shift 2
            ;;
        *)
            break
            ;;
    esac
done
PAGE=`echo "$@" | awk '{print $NF}'`
MAN_ARGS=`echo "$@" | sed "s/\$PAGE$//"`

# Mirror support of man's languages
if [ ! -z "$LANG" ]; then
    LOCALE="$LANG"
fi
if [ ! -z "$LC_MESSAGES" ]; then
    LOCALE="$LC_MESSAGES"
fi
if echo $LOCALE | grep -q "^en"; then
    LOCALE=""
fi

URL="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages.gz/"

mandir=`mktemp -d dman.XXXXXX`
trap "rm -rf $mandir" EXIT HUP INT QUIT TERM
for i in `seq 1 9`; do
    man="$mandir/$i"
    if wget -O "$man" "$URL/$DISTRIB_CODENAME/$LOCALE/man$i/$PAGE.$i.gz" 2>/dev/null; then
        man $MAN_ARGS -l "$man" || true
    fi
    rm -f "$man"
done

You can also download the script with: 

wget http://manpages.ubuntu.com/dman
terdon
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Charles Green
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  • http://manpages.ubuntu.com/ tells you more about the Ubuntu Manpage Repository and how to use it. – Florian Diesch Oct 21 '15 at 15:20
  • So there is no way of doing this through Terminal rather than in a browser (a Terminal browser such as `lynx` does not count) as I specified? –  Oct 21 '15 at 15:23
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    @ParanoidPanda There is a way: The script `dman` will allow you to read manpages from the internet, using a terminal interface. It can be found at manpages.ubuntu.com, which, unfortunately, you will need a browser to find :) – Charles Green Oct 21 '15 at 15:27
  • @CharlesGreen: Well, you could always paste the script here and then link to where you got it from. I would find that to be an acceptable answer. :) –  Oct 21 '15 at 15:29
  • @ParanoidPanda, yeah, but then you'd need a browser to read the script here! – Charles Green Oct 21 '15 at 15:44
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    @CharlesGreen: You can download the script with `wget http://manpages.ubuntu.com/dman` and then `chmod +x ./dman`.... or is `wget` forbidden too ;-)? – Rmano Oct 21 '15 at 15:44
  • @Rmano Not sure of the rules about that. Interestingly, I did wget the script, chmod and attempt to execute. Didn't seem to work, but I'll try again later... – Charles Green Oct 21 '15 at 15:50
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    works for me --- did you remember to call it with `./dman cutechess`? `.` is not normally in the PATH for safety reasons. – Rmano Oct 21 '15 at 15:54
  • Is it in your path @CharlesGreen? It worked for me if I called from the within the same directory with `./dman ` – Arronical Oct 21 '15 at 15:55
  • @Arronical Seems to be a release issue. I'm actually going to mark this question as a duplicate, and recommend installation of the package `bikeshed` – Charles Green Oct 21 '15 at 15:59
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The dman script which should allow you to browse the Ubuntu man pages found at http://manpages.ubuntu.com/dman can be fetched via the command line using wget:

wget http://manpages.ubuntu.com/dman

Make sure the working dman is in your path and executable, and you should be able to call it like any other command line utility.

Arronical
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  • Thanks! I should be able to remember there's a command to get webpages, but for some reason I never do. I corrected your text for the weblink. – Charles Green Oct 21 '15 at 15:46
  • Thanks @CharlesGreen , overly speedy fingers by me there! I rarely remember either, looking at the manpages just prompted an 'I wonder' moment. – Arronical Oct 21 '15 at 15:49
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All of Ubuntu's man pages, for all currently supported releases, are available through Ubuntu's online man pages

waltinator
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  • Does seriously nobody listen? I don't want the answer to be to go into a browser and to go to a website, I want the answer to be fully using the command-line (and a command-line browser such as `lynx` does not count). Is there really no way to do it this way? –  Oct 21 '15 at 15:27
  • How do you expect such a thing without actually downloading the relevant application? Once you do that, pipe the man output to a file so it stays with you and then delete the app. – DK Bose Oct 21 '15 at 17:02