Ok, I'm very new to linux. I'm generally a "learn by doing" type of guy, so I figured that the best way to learn how to maintain a linux server would be to just get one and start doing it. By the time I had it running well I'd know how to do it.
Unfortunately the downside of doing things this way is that I miss some of the most basic steps... Such as how to get out of a "man" command.
I type in "man [whatever command]" it gives me all sorts of info, then it says (END) at the bottom, but doesn't give me a command prompt.

If I'm logged in as root I can press ^break to stop the process, but that CAN'T be the official way of doing it. So anybody wanna throw a dog a bone? What do I press to get back into the command line from "man"?

man uses a paging program, such as 'more', to split its output. If you type 'man more' you can see the available commands while you're viewing a man page or anything else.

Short answer: type "q" (lower-case Q) to exit.

Great, many thanks.

thanks mmoncur!

Also, if you get into a process that you can't get out of (like accidentally trying to pico your one gigabyte log file rather than tailing it to see the last few entries), don't forget that you can
CTRL-C
to jump out of it. That one was a big mystery to me when I started.