# top(1): "Command not understood"



## attilagyorffy (Jun 11, 2016)

Hi everyone,

Anyone had the issue with top not being able to write the current configuration to the topic file? According to manual (https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=top&sektion=1&apropos=0&manpath=redhat), this should be supported no problem but I'm getting a "Command not understood" when pressing W in interactive mode. I'm on FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p4 by the way.

Thank you in advance.


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## tobik@ (Jun 12, 2016)

attilagyorffy said:


> (https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=top&sektion=1&apropos=0&manpath=redhat)


That is a link to RedHat 9's top(1). Here is the FreeBSD version: top(1). It never mentions W or a configuration file, but it mentions setting the environment variable TOP to customize it.

I've been bitten by this before too. Turns out that https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi has the man pages of multiple operating systems not only FreeBSD's.


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## fossette (Jun 12, 2016)

Oh, tobic, that's interesting!  I also noticed some commands with options that had no effect at all. I assumed the documentation was out-of-date, but it turns out that it may also be out-of-this-world.  

Dominique.


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## attilagyorffy (Jun 13, 2016)

tobik said:


> Turns out that https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi has the man pages of multiple operating systems not only FreeBSD's.



Wow, that's unexpected. Does anyone know the decision behind this move?

IMHO this makes the FreeBSD learning curve unnecessarily difficult. Imagine someone wants to learn about the system and then surprised why the man pages don't seem to work. Quite confusing and uncomfortable. Seems like I'm also not the first person who's been bitten by this.


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2016)

attilagyorffy said:


> Wow, that's unexpected. Does anyone know the decision behind this move?


It's been that way for as long as I can remember.


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