"info ls" shows man page instead of info page

lorenz · 09-16-2007, 07:16 AM

I've just installed Slackware 12.0

I tried to find something about this issue on this forum and with google but I could not find anything.

In some distro (for example Fedora) the command "ls info" open the info page of ls while in Slackware open the man page of the command indside the info reader.

The ls info documentation is installed since I can view it if I open the coreutils info page and navigate through the menus.

It's not a big problem but I would like to fix it.

H_TeXMeX_H · 09-17-2007, 02:53 AM

'man ls' works.

b0uncer · 09-17-2007, 03:06 AM

I'm not sure if it's a default behavior everywhre, but if 'info' (btw. the command is 'info ls', not 'ls info'..) can't find or access the info page, it probably shows the man page instead. This happens to loads of pages, and is one reason why I just prefer using 'man'. If you are certain that the info page that you should be seeing with 'info ls' is there, but you can't view it, start finding out why. Is it in the correct place, and does it have correct permissions?

Sorry I can't help much more with this, but like I said, I don't use info pages that much..I don't think they're as good as man-pages, the user interface, links and all just make it more difficult to see the document as a whole. Anyway.

Vrajgh · 09-17-2007, 03:07 AM

The original poster is complaining that "info ls" shows the man page instead of the info page. How does "man ls" help in this case?

It seems odd to me that the OP can navigate to the correct page but it doesn't find it when invoked from the command line.

b0uncer · 09-17-2007, 03:12 AM

Does it work with

Code:

info -f /path/to/the/infofile

It should..if that works, but just

Code:

info infofile

doesn't (where 'infofile' is this semi-missing file), then it could probably be that the directory where the file is isn't in INFOPATH or something. You could then try to use

Code:

info -d /path/to/the/

to add /path/to/the/ directory to INFOPATH (the directory where this 'missing' infopage is in).

Code:

man info

brianL · 09-17-2007, 07:45 AM

Don't know if this is relevant, but I had to edit the info/dir file, replacing "fileutils, "sh-utils", and "textutils" entries with "coreutils".

vulcan59 · 09-17-2007, 03:48 PM

Looks like the /usr/info/dir file installed from the texinfo package is out of date. Looking at the source for this package the slackbuild script copies a dir file dated 2002. I rebuilt my dir file as follows.

cd /usr/info
rm dir
for file in $(ls *gz); do install-info $file dir; done

I've sent Pat an email so it will hopefully be fixed in the next release.

onebuck · 09-17-2007, 05:31 PM

Hi,

Do a 'man info';

Quote:

excerpt from 'man info';

INFO(1) User Commands INFO(1)

NAME
info - read Info documents

SYNOPSIS
info [OPTION]... [MENU-ITEM...]

DESCRIPTION
Read documentation in Info format. <<<<<<here

Quote:

man - format and display the on-line manual pages

If you do a 'info man' read the top portion. Another way to see the format difference for the documentation. The idea behind 'info' is to give the user the means to work within the documentation. 'Man' just formats and displays the man pages.

lorenz · 09-21-2007, 08:47 PM

Thanks everybody for the help.
I could solve the problem with the suggestions of vulcan59 and brianL.

I also found useful the explication of the /usr/info/dir file in the following section of the Texinfo manual
http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/...g-an-Info-File

To understand how Texinfo works I read this article, even if it's quite outdated
http://www2.linuxjournal.com/article/2840