Can one list commands documented by man? [Solved]

[arm45]

I've recently had a need to monitor disk activity. Not knowing the Linux utilities to do that I went to the web and found explainations on how to use several utilities to monitor disk activity (iostat, iotop, dstat, etc) and seem to have found that they are not part of mxlinux's utility set (systemd utilities?).

Alright I said, I then went to look to mxlinux's (19.3) 'man' to see how to list all command line utilities supported by 19.3 but, reading man's help, I could not discover how to list commands in man.

Is there a way to do this?

TIA,

[Adrian]

I think you misunderstand what the man pages are, it's not a manual of all the apps available, each program could come with a manual page, but it might not. So you could have programs on your system that don't have man page and any other program available in the repo would not have the man page install till you install the program.

To see the installed programs you could use Synaptic, MX PackageInstaller, "dpkg -l" there are a number of ways to list installed programs. But if somebody recommends you "just run iotop" and you type iotop in the terminal and it tells you "command not found" then that's a clear sign you don't have it installed and you go ahead and search for it in your favorite package manager (Synaptic, MX PackageInstaller, "apt search", and so on).

[i_ri]

hello arm45 and Adrian and everyone

Did you disk monitor to your satisfaction?

Even listing packages does not expose what commands are inside.
usr/bin is a place to start. it seems as you wish be handed file names.
Example of your question there is a command for that in mx.
recent updates have brought <rofi> into mx. (19)
another man for you. rofi.
run this to see commands

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rofi -show run

mx versions after December 2020 should have rofi. versions before that may not have it installed without opting for mxfluxbox additions in the last hundred days.

[Adrian]

mx versions after December 2020 should have rofi

What is rofi and why do I need it on my system?

[i_ri]

Hello Adrian
I should not have used the word should can be interpreted as a recommendation; should have said the system may contain rofi, because rofi was pushed with mxfluxbox as a application launcher.
therefore i pointed to rofi as a possible step to answer the question "how to list all command"

all? how about bash completion. where is all?

edit add. back after a
search: linux list all commands. is a stepping . a search site is your friend.

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compgen -c | sort -u | more

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whatis `compgen -c` | sort -u | more

arm45 is that a start? you have rofi in your system?
even if not complete list there, it is a start, after you read the instructions about each,, you can return to tell of more ways to list all commands.

[arm45]

I think you misunderstand what the man pages are, it's not a manual of all the apps available, each program could come with a manual page, but it might not. So you could have programs on your system that don't have man page and any other program available in the repo would not have the man page install till you install the program.

To see the installed programs you could use Synaptic, MX PackageInstaller, "dpkg -l" there are a number of ways to list installed programs. But if somebody recommends you "just run iotop" and you type iotop in the terminal and it tells you "command not found" then that's a clear sign you don't have it installed and you go ahead and search for it in your favorite package manager (Synaptic, MX PackageInstaller, "apt search", and so on).

Thank you for your reply Adrian (sorry for the delay in response).

I was under the impression that each linux distibution had a utility set that may, or may not, be specific to that distribution and that the 'man' pages that came with that distribution would have something akin to a Table of Contents that could be displayed. I was wrong. Apparently the number of utilities and the complexities of their organization precludes such a format.

I thought a simple question would lead to a simple answer... Nope.

A deeper dive into Google led me to install (SYSSTAT), as one of its utilities (IOSTAT) provides an instantanious snapshot of I/O information on the device level, that being the information that started me on this search.

Again, thank you for your reply.

arm

[arm45]

Hello Adrian
I should not have used the word should can be interpreted as a recommendation; should have said the system may contain rofi, because rofi was pushed with mxfluxbox as a application launcher.
therefore i pointed to rofi as a possible step to answer the question "how to list all command"

all? how about bash completion. where is all?

edit add. back after a
search: linux list all commands. is a stepping . a search site is your friend.

Code: Select all

compgen -c | sort -u | more

Code: Select all

whatis `compgen -c` | sort -u | more

arm45 is that a start? you have rofi in your system?
even if not complete list there, it is a start, after you read the instructions about each,, you can return to tell of more ways to list all commands.

Hello i_ri, Thank you for your reply (sorry for the delay in response).

I've not yet looked at 'rofi' or 'compgen' so I cannot comment now (I'll do so later) but I did find

Code: Select all

https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

which is a resource that I had not known about.

I've also now looked at

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man man

and

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man intro

Both man functions promise to be useful to me in the future.

Again, thanks,

arm45

[oops]

You can also try:

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man hier

[arm45]

You can also try:

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man hier

Another resource learned about!

Thanks,

arm45