How do I get the man command?

Question

I just installed Windows Subsystem for Linux for the first time and downloaded the Debian distribution from the Windows Store.

The first thing I tried to do was use the "mv" command. The second thing was to run "man mv" because I don't remember how to use it. But I received the error:

-bash: man: command not found

It looks like the package I want is called manpages. But I can't install that:

sudo apt-get install manpages
[sudo] password for pi:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package manpages is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

E: Package 'manpages' has no installation candidate

How do I get the man command up and running?

user_6050997 · Answer

apt update to update the local package lists followed by apt install man-db to install the actual package.

user_4602253 · Answer

I want to add to elken's answer that apparently, the 'man-db' packages doesn't cover all the manpages. For example, I needed documentation for the C stdio library (fopen, fgets, ...), and for that I had to install 'manpages-dev':

sudo apt install manpages-dev

Apparently there are also some other manpage collections (/different names for them on certain unix distros), see https://superuser.com/questions/40609/how-to-install-man-pages-for-c-standard-library-functions-in-ubuntu

How do I get the man command?

2 Answers