[Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

PonJar · 2019-09-03 12:58:00

I have been using Arch for a couple of months and have been very impressed with the accuracy and completeness of the Wiki. I have gradually built up an install to meet my needs and the Wiki has been my guide. It has solved every issue I had except one, getting man pages to work. The problem I had was in the section headed "Building the manual cache with mandb". Here it says

You can manually (re)generate the cache or update it by running:
mandb

This didn't seem to do anything for me so a bit of research led me to use

sudo mandb -c

This created the database and took a few minutes

sudo mandb

This seems to update the database and takes a few seconds

There is also a reference to the man-db.service and man-db.timer. I think this needs to be activated with:

sudo systemctl enable man-db.timer
sudo systemctl start man-db.timer

If I am correct about this I think the Wiki could be improved by covering these points.

Finally a big thank you to everyone who has worked on the Wiki. I have learnt so much from it.

Last edited by PonJar (2019-09-07 08:34:56)

Lone_Wolf · 2019-09-03 13:28:35

You can manually (re)generate the cache or update it by running:
# mandb

You missed a tiny but important detail.
When commands are shown in wiki or forum, convention is that a prompt is shown to indicate with which permissions the command needs to be run.

# indicates the command needs to be run as root, while $ indicates any user can run it.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … mctl_usage shows that enable & start also need to be run as root using that convention.

I have no idea if / where this is documented though.

2ManyDogs · 2019-09-03 13:37:03

Lone_Wolf wrote:

I have no idea if / where this is documented though.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/He … er_or_root

PonJar · 2019-09-04 07:33:46

Lone_Wolf wrote:

You missed a tiny but important detail.
When commands are shown in wiki or forum, convention is that a prompt is shown to indicate with which permissions the command needs to be run.
# indicates the command needs to be run as root, while $ indicates any user can run it.

Thanks for this. I had missed that detail. It further underlines just how complete the Wiki is.

I’m not 100% sure but I think the -c may still be necessary to create the database in the first place. Also the point about enabling/starting man-db.timer to maintain the database and not needing to enable/start man-db.service (I believe it’s called by man-db.timer).

Perhaps these residual points would still be helpful.

jasonwryan · 2019-09-04 08:05:46

PonJar wrote:

I’m not 100% sure but I think the -c may still be necessary to create the database in the first place.

man mandb

The wiki is not intended as the definitive source of documentation; that's what man pages are. The wiki should only illustrate or introduce aspects of the man pages. If you are ever in doubt, read the man page.

PonJar · 2019-09-06 07:44:08

jasonwryan wrote:

The wiki is not intended as the definitive source of documentation; that's what man pages are. The wiki should only illustrate or introduce aspects of the man pages. If you are ever in doubt, read the man page.

I do agree jason that the man pages take you to a much greater level of detail however the wiki is generally more precise and includes reference to important options. When I look down the wiki for the installation guide, for example, many of the code entries have detailed options for the necessary command. The same is true elsewhere. It makes no difference to me if this suggestion is adopted by who ever maintains the man entry because I now know about the -c option. I do know that it would have saved me time had it been mentioned.

jasonwryan · 2019-09-06 08:41:40

My point was, initially anyway, the -c switch is not necessary...

PonJar · 2019-09-07 06:18:48

Jason, I’m sorry, I wrote this believing the -c option was necessary. Having re-read the man page I can see that the database should be created if it doesn’t exist using sudo mandb without the -c. However this was not my experience. man did not work (the database was not created) until I used the -c option. I guess the author provides that option because it’s needed in some circumstances to resolve an issue.

jasonwryan · 2019-09-07 06:56:43

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2019-09-03 12:58:00

[Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#2 2019-09-03 13:28:35

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#3 2019-09-03 13:37:03

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#4 2019-09-04 07:33:46

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#5 2019-09-04 08:05:46

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#6 2019-09-06 07:44:08

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#7 2019-09-06 08:41:40

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#8 2019-09-07 06:18:48

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

#9 2019-09-07 06:56:43

Re: [Solved] Suggestion for the entry on "man page"

Board footer