Arch Linux

BenBen

Member

Registered: 2008-02-19

Posts: 3

Question about "man" and "locate"

Hello!

I'm new to Arch with average LInux experience from an Debian/Ubuntu background.

I got Arch installed with LUKS and LVM on top, got Gnome, wireless and some user applications running fine.

However, I noticed that there seem to be only very few man pages. Popular pages like "man xorg.conf" that i know from Debian are missing. Do them have to be installed extra? Is there a man page "index" that i have to build or are they simply missing.

The other thing that puzzles me is "locate". Again, from Debian i know how to find files with it by searching for a pattern, which i need frequently because i don't know the *nix file system by heart. However, i rarely seem to find a file with locate, even when i know that and where it exists. The versio of locate that i know indeed has an index that get's build/refreshed once every day (by default). Is there something similar in Arch's locate? Do i have to link a script to /etc/cron.d for it to work?

Thanks for your help.
You got a damn fast and nice distro here!

Cheers,
Ben

tesjo

Member

Registered: 2007-11-30

Posts: 164

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

For man issue in /etc/profile you want a line
unset MANPATH
Look for a /etc/profile.pacnew if you dont have personal modifications just copy to /etc/profile

for locate make sure you have run updatedb  as root

Last edited by tesjo (2008-02-19 23:55:06)

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

Hello.

In Arch, you explicitly install everything except base.  For locate, you have 2 options (without going to the AUR):  mlocate and rlocate.  There's a wiki page about rlocate; mlocate is probably the one you're used to.  Both are just a pacman -S away...

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

Additionally, locate requires a database that is built based on a cron job. You need to be running cron in your DAEMONS in rc.conf in order for that to get built nightly.

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http://phraktured.net

attila

Member

Registered: 2006-11-14

Posts: 293

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

@Ben At first i suggest you to take a look for anacron which is in community (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=5196). If you don't run your pc 24/7 than this is a very nice completion for cron.

Okay, now to your xorg.conf and locate it problem. First run a updatedb (and second let anacron do the job after you switch on your pc). I don't know what you mean with "searching for a pattern" but if you want to search for the manpage of xorg.conf than perhaps you like this:

$ locate xorg | grep conf | grep man
/usr/man/man1/xorgconfig.1.gz
/usr/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.gz

"apropos xorg.conf" and "whatis xorg.conf" be two other options for searching this. There be seldom only one way to communicate with a linux system.:)

BenBen

Member

Registered: 2008-02-19

Posts: 3

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

Thank you very much for the information, guys.
I will consult the wiki on rlocate and mlocate and look into rc.conf to set up anacron correctly (know that one back from Debian).

Cheers!

attila

Member

Registered: 2006-11-14

Posts: 293

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

@Ben One little warning about rlocate: At the moment with kernel 2.6.25 you have to wait for an update of rlocate or patch the kernel for yourself (See http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/9564). With a custom kernel package rlocate works fine as before with 2.6.24 but only than.

BenBen

Member

Registered: 2008-02-19

Posts: 3

Re: Question about "man" and "locate"

Thanks for the heads-up, pal!