No manuals installed with Lenny

adrianmariano · 08-13-2007, 06:32 PM

I installed Lenny on a new system and there are almost no info files installed. I was trying to look up the "tar" manual. The man page indicates that the real docs are in the info file. But the info file isn't installed! I hunted around for a while thinking maybe the manuals were installed in a different format, but I can't seem to find them. Where are they?

Code:

root#  ls /usr/share/info
total 1260
 28 bzip2.info.gz       56 gnucash-design.info.gz   12 nano.info.gz
164 coreutils.info.gz   24 guile-library.info.gz    56 readline.info.gz
  8 cpio.info.gz        16 gzip.info.gz             24 rluserman.info.gz
  8 dc.info.gz          20 history.info.gz          28 sed.info.gz
  8 dir                 16 ipc.info.gz              28 sharutils.info.gz
  8 dir.old              8 ispell.info.gz          196 slib.info.gz
 64 dvips.info.gz       64 kpathsea.info.gz         24 tds.info.gz
 12 ed.info.gz          36 latex.info.gz             8 time.info.gz
  4 emacs-22/           76 m4.info.gz               64 web2c.info.gz
  4 enscript.info.gz    24 menu.info.gz             68 wget.info.gz
 68 find.info.gz        36 mtools.info.gz

rickh · 08-13-2007, 07:17 PM

Normally, in /usr/share/doc/

adrianmariano · 08-13-2007, 07:44 PM

Well, I had looked there. In /usr/share/doc there is a tar directory containing these files:

Code:

 4 AUTHORS          8 changelog.Debian.gz   4 copyright   4 README.Debian
68 changelog.1.gz  92 changelog.gz         16 NEWS.gz    12 THANKS.gz

But no actual manual there.

I ran "find / -name '*tar*' -print" in an effort to find a tar manual and turned up nothing.

rickh · 08-13-2007, 08:00 PM

From the tar man page:

Quote:

The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents
instead. Unfortunately, the info document describing tar is licensed
under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which violates the Debian
Free Software Guidelines. As a result, the info documentation for tar
is not included in the Debian package.

If you want to read the complete documentation for GNU tar, please
refer to the online version at http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html

Seems pretty clear to me.

adrianmariano · 08-13-2007, 08:18 PM

Mine says this. No explanation about how the documentation is missing because of some obscure disagreement over licensing issues.

Code:

       
The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create  info  documents
       instead.   The  maintainer  of  tar falls into this category.  This man
       page is neither complete, nor current, and was included in  the  Debian
       Linux  packaging of tar entirely to reduce the frequency with which the
       lack of a man page gets reported as a bug in our defect  tracking  sys-
       tem.

       If you really want to understand tar, then you should run info and read
       the tar info pages, or use the info mode in emacs.

I find it fantastically, incredibly, unbelievably annoying to be referred to a web page for manuals. (The netpbm utilities have annoyed me to no end for having cut the manuals.) For one thing, this means I'm unlikely to be reading the manual that goes with my version of the software. What if I'm not on line and need to consult a manual? I mean, renaming firefox to iceweasel doesn't really cause any trouble, but NOT INSTALLING THE MANUALS??? That's ridiculous. Is there some fix to get the manuals properly installed?

rickh · 08-13-2007, 08:37 PM

Quote:

That's ridiculous. Is there some fix to get the manuals properly installed?

Easy. Use some distribution other than Debian. Whoever wrote the manuals elected to distribute them under a non-free license. Debian does not distribute non-free software or documentation.

cgjones · 08-13-2007, 08:46 PM

I don't think it is that annoying. If you want the documentation for tar, add the non-free repository and install tar-doc. Problem solved.

adrianmariano · 08-13-2007, 09:11 PM

I must admit that it seems a little crazy that GNU isn't considered free enough for Debian. How could anybody expect something like this going in.

But installing "tar-doc" from the non-free repository sounds like the solution I was seeking. Is there a reasonable way to install all the missing documentation as opposed to having to do it piecemeal one program at a time? I mean, I could try to install X-doc for every package X that is installed on my system, I suppose.

cgjones · 08-13-2007, 09:25 PM

I'm not aware of any easy way to install the documentation for all installed packages. Hopefully, someone here with stronger apt-foo then I will be able to answer that.

Daws · 08-13-2007, 09:52 PM

Quote:

I must admit that it seems a little crazy that GNU isn't considered free enough for Debian.

LOL. Welcome to the world of Debian.

Quote:

Is there a reasonable way to install all the missing documentation as opposed to having to do it piecemeal one program at a time?

I asked a similar question a while ago regarding pulling in -dev/-devel packages. It seems at present, there is no easy way to do it. It would be nice if packages declared their -doc -dev -dbg packages explicitly. Then apt would be able to handle things with ease. But at this point in time, they don't. Perhaps down the line Debian policy may change, but for the moment, it's a matter of finding and installing them manually.

dahveed3 · 08-14-2007, 10:59 PM

Yes, coming from OpenSUSE I was also surprised that the doc installation is often separate on Debian.

Just doing aptitude search doc and aptitude search html will get you lists of available documentation in several formats and languages.

An easier way might be using just aptitude and then you'll see the documentation category of each of the sections.

Or, open synaptic and you can also browse there. But I just use synaptic for browsing and then close it when I know what I want and install it through aptitude on the command line.

It's all there (assuming you added the sources to the sources.list file.) If you like, you can work with that file through Synaptic or Software Sources (same thing).

I've seen that Debian offers just about the entire Open Source library of software. Way more than most other distro's. However even running testing we get to wait a bit for upgrades. I like that when I see forum posts in other distro's forums about how come this or that doesn't work properly, or has broken something on their system.

And then there's the very strict adherence to their principals. But I wind up liking that too, as long as I can still find a way to fulfill whatever it is I need to do with the computer. And with the vast assortment of software and easy installation and configuration (dpkg-reconfigure, update-alternatives, etc.) there's nearly always a way.

The most adaptable to a users needs I've seen from any distro.