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I sometimes find that man7.org has available man pages not found on locally on my Linux distribution.

An example is veth(4) that provides information on veth network devices.

A quick inspection using apropos returns no results, although the ip (iproute2) is installed:

parallels@debian-gnu-linux-vm:~$ apropos veth veth: nothing appropriate.

How can I obtain these very useful man pages on network devices (e.g. veth(4))?

More generally, how can I obtain the complete man7.org database?

parallels@debian-gnu-linux-vm:~$ cat /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)" NAME="Debian GNU/Linux" VERSION_ID="9" VERSION="9 (stretch)" VERSION_CODENAME=stretch ID=debian HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/" SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
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    That particular manual is part of the manpages package on Debian. Don't you have that installed? packages.debian.org/… EDIT: Doesn't seem to be avaiable in Debian stretch... Do you have that network device on your system? It does not make sense to download manuals for utilities or components (or versions thereof) that you don't actually have on the system. Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 9:48
  • @Kusalananda - iproute2 (4.9.0-1+deb9u1) comes with Debian 9 and it's able create veth device pairs; however, the documentation for veth devices are not present on the system, but I found it online. Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:12

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I’m not aware of a single source for all the man pages on man7.org, but there is a list of all the source projects used to build the web site; if you install all the corresponding packages, you’ll have all the relevant man pages.

In particular, you should install the manpages and manpages-dev packages; these contain the man pages maintained as part of the man-pages project.

Note that the web site reflects the current state (or latest release) of each source project; this will be newer in many cases than the versions available in Debian 9 or 10. In particular, you won’t find the veth man page in Debian 9: it was added in version 4.14 of the man-pages project, but Debian 9 has version 4.10. Version 4.16 is available in Stretch backports.

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    Thank you. Just an off-topic question, why are there both man7.org and man-pages project? It seems they are trying to achieve the same. Are they affiliated? Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:07
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    The man-pages project is a project to write and maintain man pages, in particular for the Linux kernel. It is led by Michael Kerrisk, who also hosts man7.org, which makes the man-pages man pages available on the web, and since 2013, man pages from a selection of other projects. Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:58
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Install the manpages from stretch-backports:

printf "%s\n" "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main" \ |sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/stretch-backports.list sudo apt update sudo apt install -t stretch-backports manpages man veth

veth manpages : stretch-backports

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  • Thank you. Very useful. Do you know how to provide the -t flag (for presumably targeting stretch-backports.list?) for apt-get? Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:10
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1. WGET
You could try something like this

wget --recursive \ --no-clobber \ --html-extension \ --convert-links \ --domains man7.org \ --no-parent https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/

The options meaning:

  • --recursive: download the entire Web site
  • --domains: don't follow links outside website.org.
  • --no-parent: don't follow links outside the directory.
  • --html-extension: save files with the .html extension.
  • --convert-links: convert links so that they work locally, off-line.
  • --no-clobber: don't overwrite any existing files

You can also add --page-requisites if you need pages layout, CSS and so on.

2. SELENIUM
This is more complicated but a lot more powerful, if you are a web developer it will be useful in future https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/

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  • That won't convert them to man pages in groff / troff format that the man command can find and use. Having your own mirror of a web site is mostly only useful for offline use, or possibly if you want to search in a way that google with site:man7.org won't do. Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 21:34

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