[SOLVED] apropos strange behaviour.

stf92 · 06-05-2011, 08:46 PM

Kernel 2.6.21.5, Slackware 12.0

Hi:
See this.

Code:

bash-3.1$ apropos timezone
timezone [tzset]     (3)  - initialize time conversion information
timezone [tzset]     (3)  - initialize time conversion information
timezone [tzset]     (3)  - initialize time conversion information
bash-3.1$

Just after installing slack 12.0, the output will be

Code:

bash-3.1$ apropos timezone
timezone [tzset]     (3)  - initialize time conversion information
bash-3.1$

But at some point afterwards, the output WILL be as in the first example.

As another example,

Code:

bash-3.1$ apropos utime
Tcl_FSUtime [Tcl_FSRegister] (3)  - procedures to interact with any filesystem
futimes              (3)  - change access and/or modification times of an open file
futimesat            (2)  - change timestamps of a file relative to a directory file descriptor
utime                (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
utimes [utime]       (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
Tcl_FSUtime [Tcl_FSRegister] (3)  - procedures to interact with any filesystem
futimes              (3)  - change access and/or modification times of an open file
futimesat            (2)  - change timestamps of a file relative to a directory file descriptor
utime                (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
utimes [utime]       (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
Tcl_FSUtime [Tcl_FSRegister] (3)  - procedures to interact with any filesystem
futimes              (3)  - change access and/or modification times of an open file
futimesat            (2)  - change timestamps of a file relative to a directory file descriptor
utime                (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
utimes [utime]       (2)  - change access and/or modification times of an inode
bash-3.1$

Here you can see the line for futimes thrice repeated. Same for the other lines. If I reinstall slack 12.0, things go straight for some time. But then, the unhappy phenomenon (the unhappy one is I) repeats. Any known cause?

I stick to version 12.0 because of the low memory and CPU speed in my machine. And I know many people won't be able to help because they're running version 13. But some slackers will remember having this problem with 12.0 which, of course, can't be a bug but an installation issue. I hope so.

David the H. · 06-06-2011, 12:10 AM

Does using mandb to update the index have any effect?

stf92 · 06-06-2011, 01:07 AM

Thanks for your kindness. How unfortunate! mandb is not a command in my linux O.S.

EDIT
From /etc/profile:

Quote:

# Set the values for some environment variables:
export MINICOM="-c on"
########## export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man
export HOSTNAME="`cat /etc/HOSTNAME`"
export LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"
export LESS="-M -i"

From /usr/lib/man.conf:

Quote:

# Every automatically generated MANPATH includes these fields
#
MANPATH /usr/man
MANPATH /usr/share/man
MANPATH /usr/local/man
MANPATH /usr/local/share/man
MANPATH /usr/X11R6/man
#

I commented the line in /etc/profile out, because man could not find mplayer.1, the file with mplayer manual. As I saw the paths removed were already in /usr/lib/man.conf, and seeing this way man printed mplayer manual invocating as 'man mplayer', I thought I had found a great solution to the mplayer manual problem.

Having now remembered this messing with the system, I tried apropos after uncommenting that line, thus leaving both files as they were just after slack 12 instalation, and found apropos runnning just fine. But getting back again to mplayer's manual issue, which had been the subject of a long tread.

Sorry to have bothered you uselessly.