Scenario

I want to use the "find" command to find all files in a folder older than 6 months.

Problem

I can't remember the correct syntax.

Actual behaviour

I type "man find" and get "man: command not found".

I type "find --help" and get this, which is not helpful:

Tests (N can be +N or -N or N):

-amin N -anewer FILE -atime N -cmin N -cnewer FILE -context CONTEXT

-ctime N -empty -false -fstype TYPE -gid N -group NAME -ilname PATTERN

-iname PATTERN -inum N -iwholename PATTERN -iregex PATTERN

-links N -lname PATTERN -mmin N -mtime N -name PATTERN -newer FILE

-nouser -nogroup -path PATTERN -perm [-/]MODE -regex PATTERN

-readable -writable -executable

-wholename PATTERN -size N[bcwkMG] -true -type [bcdpflsD] -uid N

-used N -user NAME -xtype [bcdpfls]

If I type "man find" on my Mac, I get help for a different version of find, which suggests I can use "-ctime 20w". This does not work in unRAID.

Expected behaviour

I type "man find" and can get the correct syntax, because unRAID installs the man pages for its commands.

Please could unRAID support actually having documentation for its commands? Man pages were working on the old Sun 3/50s that I was using in the late 80s, and they had considerably less CPU and disk space that what any unRAID user is running now. There's room for them! There really is!

Edited September 21, 2025Sep 21 by ElectricBadger

If you install the un-get plugin, you can install the necessary packages:

un-get install mandb man-pages groff

Unfortunately, the pages do not include find or many other useful commands.

Thanks — there seems to be something I'm missing, though.

• Install by pasting https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ich777/un-get/master/un-get.plg into the manual install plugin page (you'd think this would be documented in the plugin's README, but it isn't…)

• Type un-get update

• Type un-get install mandb man-pages groff

• Get error Can't find package(s): mandb!

Do I need to add something to the sources.list in order to do this?

yes the Linux command for manpages and manual and man pages for what is included for slack ware linux requires 3rd party applications.

unget is this app and done. not this app and its dependency.... welcome to dependency hell...

but man and manpages has and will always be a 3rd party extra install... I usually check and use pkgs.org to check the binary and its potential dependency...

so, your looking for the slack version of manpages application called man-page: https://slackware.pkgs.org/15.0/slackware-x86_64/man-pages-5.13-noarch-1.txz.html

and then the db / collection of mapages for a language pack.

so my question is do you need / want the man db... as for slack linux that is unget install man-db: https://slackware.pkgs.org/15.0/slackware-x86_64/man-db-2.9.4-x86_64-3.txz.html
as man is the default system reader and not the content of the commands on the system... for the slackware db or man-page-languepack is the content...

the mandb for slackware: Homepage: http://www.nongnu.org/man-db/

then there is groff
https://slackware.pkgs.org/15.0/slackware-x86_64/groff-1.22.4-x86_64-4.txz.html


So Example:
un-get install man-db man-pages groff

The following package(s) will be installed: man-db man-pages

Are you sure? [y/N] y

0K ........ . 100% 9.37M=0.06s

0K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 98% 12.4M 0s

3072K 100% 18.0M=0.2s

+===============================================================+

| Installing new package /boot/extra/man-db-2.13.1-x86_64-2.txz |

+===============================================================+

Verifying package man-db-2.13.1-x86_64-2.txz.

Installing package man-db-2.13.1-x86_64-2.txz:

PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:

# man-db (database-driven manual pager suite)

#

# This package provides the man command and related utilities

# for examining on-line help files (manual pages). It has several

# enhancements over man, including an indexed database for searches

# with -k or apropos, the ability to easily view man pages in a browser,

# better i18n support, and a much more efficient implementation of the

# -K (full text search) option.

#

# Homepage: http://www.nongnu.org/man-db/

#

Executing install script for man-db-2.13.1-x86_64-2.txz.

Package man-db-2.13.1-x86_64-2.txz installed.

+================================================================+

| Installing new package /boot/extra/man-pages-6.16-noarch-1.txz |

+================================================================+

Verifying package man-pages-6.16-noarch-1.txz.

Installing package man-pages-6.16-noarch-1.txz:

PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:

# man-pages (system documentation)

#

# Man pages are online documentation for Linux. This package includes

# many section 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 man pages for Linux.

#

# The man-pages distribution is maintained by Michael Kerrisk with

# the help of more writers, editors, and other contributors than we

# can name here.

#

# For more information, see http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

#

Executing install script for man-pages-6.16-noarch-1.txz.

Package man-pages-6.16-noarch-1.txz installed.
#
+==============================================================+

| Installing new package /boot/extra/groff-1.23.0-x86_64-2.txz |

+==============================================================+

Verifying package groff-1.23.0-x86_64-2.txz.

Installing package groff-1.23.0-x86_64-2.txz:

PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:

# groff (document formatting system)

#

# The GNU groff package provides versions of troff, nroff, eqn, tbl, and

# other Unix text-formatting utilities. Groff is used to 'compile' man

# pages stored in groff/nroff format into a form which can be printed or

# displayed on the screen. These man pages are stored in compressed

# form in the /usr/man/man? directories.

#

Executing install script for groff-1.23.0-x86_64-2.txz.

Package groff-1.23.0-x86_64-2.txz installed.

then run the groff command to populate. and this restores man man

so at first arry start I would need to screen and run groff as the man pages don't surive a reboot.

Edited December 22, 2025Dec 22 by bmartino1
Data - typo

so then its more on how to get groff to populate unraid manpages if unraid reboots...

groff(1) General Commands Manual groff(1)

Name

groff - front end to the GNU roff document formatting system

Synopsis

groff [-abcCeEgGijklNpRsStUVXzZ] [-d ctext] [-d string=text] [-D fallback-encoding] [-f font-family] [-F font-directory] [-I inclusion-

directory] [-K input-encoding] [-L spooler-argument] [-m macro-package] [-M macro-directory] [-n page-number] [-o page-list]

[-P postprocessor-argument] [-r cnumeric-expression] [-r register=numeric-expression] [-T output-device] [-w warning-category]

[-W warning-category] [file ...]

groff -h

groff --help

groff -v [option ...] [file ...]

groff --version [option ...] [file ...]

Description

groff is the primary front end to the GNU roff document formatting system. GNU roff is a typesetting system that reads plain text input

files that include formatting commands to produce output in PostScript, PDF, HTML, DVI, or other formats, or for display to a terminal.

Formatting commands can be low-level typesetting primitives, macros from a supplied package, or user-defined macros. All three approaches

can be combined. If no file operands are specified, or if file is “-”, groff reads the standard input stream.

A reimplementation and extension of the typesetter from AT&T Unix, groff is present on most POSIX systems owing to its long association

with Unix manuals (including man pages). It and its predecessor are notable for their production of several best-selling software engi‐

neering texts. groff is capable of producing typographically sophisticated documents while consuming minimal system resources.

The groff command orchestrates the execution of preprocessors, the transformation of input documents into a device-independent page de‐

scription language, and the production of output from that language.

Options

-h and --help display a usage message and exit.

Because groff is intended to subsume most users' direct invocations of the troff(1) formatter, the two programs share a set of options.

However, groff has some options that troff does not share, and others which groff interprets differently. At the same time, not all valid

troff options can be given to groff.

groff-specific options

The following options either do not exist in GNU troff or are interpreted differently by groff.

-D enc Set fallback input encoding used by preconv(1) to enc; implies -k.

if all else fails the man pages are online format as well:
https://linux.die.net/man/

note that there is a plugin for UNRAID that will give you online access to man pages:

Just type "tldr find" instead of "man find"

On 11/19/2025 at 8:11 AM, ElectricBadger said:

Thanks — there seems to be something I'm missing, though.

• Install by pasting https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ich777/un-get/master/un-get.plg into the manual install plugin page (you'd think this would be documented in the plugin's README, but it isn't…)

• Type un-get update

• Type un-get install mandb man-pages groff

• Get error Can't find package(s): mandb!

Do I need to add something to the sources.list in order to do this?

I don't know. My current sources.list:

https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware64-15.0/slackware64/ 15.0

https://slackers.it/repository/slackware64-current/ conraid

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ich777/slackware/master/slackware64-15.0/slackware64/ ich777

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shinji257/unraid_pkgs/main/slackware64-current shinji257

... tldr is petter as a maintained plugin... you would still have to monitor the applications yourself...

It why i made this script for nertools to use shinji257 repo...
https://forums.unraid.net/topic/178033-bmartino1-user-scripts/page/2/#findComment-1596096

root@OMV:~# cat /boot/config/plugins/un-get/sources.list

https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware64-current/slackware64/ current

https://slackers.it/repository/slackware64-current/ conraid

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shinji257/unraid_pkgs/main/slackware64-current/ shinji257

root@OMV:~#

I'm very confused by all of this.

I already know there are multiple sites with man pages online, and that's of no use to me when I'm using ssh to access unRAID. I just want to type man command like on every other Unix-based system and have it work.

I don't want to have to manually build man pages — I want unRAID to have an option to include them, and then have it do all the legwork for me. That's why I posted this in the Feature Requests forum — in the hope of getting an "include manpages" checkbox somewhere under Settings 🙂

You have not read (or understood) my tldr plugin note.

instead of "man find" you just type "tldr find" on the shell/ssh.

It is just what you are asking for.

root@F:~# tldr find

info: cache is stale (last update: 14d, 5h ago), updating...

info: downloading 'tldr.sha256sums'... 3.35 KiB

info: downloading 'tldr-pages.en.zip'... 2.88 MiB

info: validating sha256sums... OK

info: extracting 'pages.en'... 6774 pages, 37 new

info: cache update successful (total: 6774 pages, 37 new).

warning: 1 page(s) found for other platforms:

1. windows (tldr --platform windows find)

find

Find files or directories under a directory tree, recursively.

See also: fd.

More information: https://manned.org/find.

Find files by extension:

find root_path -name '*.ext'

Find files matching multiple path/name patterns:

find root_path -path '*/path/*/*.ext' -or -name '*pattern*'

Find directories matching a given name, in case-insensitive mode:

find root_path -type d -iname '*lib*'

Find files matching a given pattern, excluding specific paths:

find root_path -name '*.py' -not -path '*/site-packages/*'

very simple

Edited January 5Jan 5 by MAM59