You use the command ‘man’ all the time right? To get a ‘manual’ of any command... Well, sometimes they refer to the man pages as something like: chown(8) and then they reference a chown(2). I am guessing this means there are multiple man pages on the command, but how do we get to those other pages?

In chown(8), the number means the section of the unix manual that it is in. Sometimes the commands are mentioned in different parts and with different meanings.

So, to look at the various man pages on one command do: man <section_number> <command>

man 5 passwd
man 1 passwd

Note: Syntax for specifying a section varies between UNIX flavors, but “man -a chown” should get all the pages.

neat!