How to install man pages on centos?

In order to use the man command, you must also install the man package before or after the man-pages one

# yum install man-pages
... ok
# yum install man
... ok

Now man is installed

# man ls


NAME
      ls - list directory contents

SYNOPSIS
      ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
      List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).  Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort.

      Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. ...

I had the same problem in my docker container and solved it by commenting out tsflags=nodocs in the /etc/yum.conf file, then I removed the man-pages and man-db and reinstall them again. It works fine this way.

$ vi /etc/yum.conf

Search for tsflags into the file and add a comment (#) in front of it:

#tsflags=nodocs

Now remove the man-db and the man-pages if it's already installed on your system:

$ yum remove man-pages man-db

Then install them again:

$ yum install man-pages man-db

Sorted!

The syntax on CentOS 7:

# yum install man-pages man-db man

The syntax on CentOS 6:

$ sudo yum install man man-pages

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