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#1 2013-04-02 02:32:53

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Erratic man-pages behavior

Ok, man 'X' where 'X' is any manpage whatsoever, resulting in bringing up the manpage for aitolib-ng, airdecloak-ng, airdecap-ng, blairs static if root, launches arduino, then dumps the disk, then launches qt-assistant, then launches qtcreator, then goes into an infinite loop is an issue.

I have replaced both man-db, and man-pages, as well as manual removal and reinstallation of man-db and man-pages.  The problem persists.  I don't know if this was intended to be an april fool's joke or what, but I'd like to get this fixed.

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#2 2013-04-02 02:34:34

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Also, it only does this when outputting to the terminal's stdout.  Not when outputting to a file.

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#3 2013-04-02 02:43:13

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Not a problem here.  As my user and as root.

Any chance someone pranked you with an alias?  prefix the man command with \ and see if that helps.  If it does, what does alias man report?
Any chance someone has screwed with your pager?  What does journctl do if you run it?  (It uses the pager by default)

All of this, of course, assuming your not pranking us tongue


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#4 2013-04-02 03:11:03

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

You were right; someone put an alias.  I wasn't farmilliar with them tongue

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#5 2013-04-02 03:12:22

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Wait, it has the behavior of an alias, but has no alias entry...

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#6 2013-04-02 03:26:41

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

I am not sure I understand --
Did \man man (or whatever command work?
Did alias report anything of interest?
Is the value of $PAGER set?

edit:  Which shell do you use?

Last edited by ewaller (2013-04-02 04:31:49)


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#7 2013-04-02 03:33:07

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

\man man DID work.
alias has NO entries
$PAGER is not present

Using bash through straight tty and lxterminal.

I showed this to teo grad students and they think someone might have messed aroung with a shared library.  I don't know what to think -- that seems overly difficult for a prank.

Last edited by anadon (2013-04-02 03:34:53)

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#8 2013-04-02 03:37:02

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Any chance they did this to you:

ewaller@odin:~ 1002 %alias alias=
ewaller@odin:~ 1003 %alias
ewaller@odin:~ 1004 %\alias
alias=''
e=emacs
ll='ls -l'
ls='ls --color=auto'
run-help=man
vi=vim
which-command=whence
xd='od -x'
ewaller@odin:~ 1005 %

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#9 2013-04-02 03:51:03

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

No.  This morning, I took my system to below single user mode, and killed every process possible.  Same behavior.

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#10 2013-04-02 03:56:13

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Ok, the date changed here and it magically fixed.  It was an April Fool's joke, but its in somewhere I don't know.

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#11 2013-04-02 04:05:32

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

anadon wrote:

Ok, the date changed here and it magically fixed.  It was an April Fool's joke, but its in somewhere I don't know.

That is scary; I would say you are owned.  At the least, you need to figure out what happened, and then decide whether you can ever trust your system again.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#12 2013-04-02 04:09:47

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Oh, I'm nuking it all to hell, the moon, and launching it to the sun.  I just got a shiney new SSD, too, so I will need to do a full reinstall anyways.

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#13 2013-04-02 04:29:16

HalosGhost
Forum Moderator
From: Twin Cities, MN
Registered: 2012-06-22
Posts: 2,089
Website

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

Scary? yeah, kind of. But interesting? obviously. It'd be fun to see how someone managed that (maybe that's just me).

All the best,

-HG

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#14 2013-04-02 07:45:28

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

'alias man' works only if 'man' is an alias.
'type' is a shell builtin and for bash 'type man' works even if it's a function.

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#15 2013-04-02 12:28:34

anadon
Member
Registered: 2012-08-08
Posts: 35

Re: Erratic man-pages behavior

HalosGhost:  If you're that interested, I have no sensitive daya on my machine; I can send you the image.

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