apropos

borgward · 05-29-2016, 11:41 PM

apropos and man -k both return "nothing appropriate" Is there something I need to do to make them work? Is there another command to use instead.

notKlaatu · 05-29-2016, 11:45 PM

what are you trying to find a match for?

`apropos` expects an argument. Example:

Code:

$ apropos backup
tdbbackup (8)        - tool for backing up and for validating the integrity of samba .tdb files
tdbbackup.tdbtools (8) - tool for backing up and for validating the integrity of samba .tdb files

As does `man -k`:

Code:

$ man -k archive
ar (1)               - create, modify, and extract from archives
arm-linux-gnueabihf-ar (1) - create, modify, and extract from archives
arm-linux-gnueabihf-ranlib (1) - generate index to archive.
cpio (1)             - copy files to and from archives
...

It's not clear on what you are trying to do; maybe there is another command that would work for you, or maybe you are just using these incorrectly :-)

Elaborate, maybe?

borgward · 05-29-2016, 11:53 PM

apropos printer - I get nothing appropriate in CentOs 5.7 Final even though there are commands pertaining to printers. If I run apropos printer in debian based distros I get a list of commands that are printer related. I get "nothing appropriate" for anything I enter after apropos. man -k as well.

notKlaatu · 05-30-2016, 02:09 PM

Are you sure there are commands installed that are apropos to 'printer' ? I don't know how you installed CentOS, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that 'lp' and other obvious commands may not be present on your system.

Test apropos to get a positive result:

Code:

apropos copy

Then verify that you have a printer-related command installed:

Code:

man lp | grep printer

Then test apropos with a fuzzier query:

Code:

apropos print

If whatever it is that you are searching for is not in the final apropos results, I'm guessing It isn't installed. Either than, or you really have found a bug in apropos.

borgward · 05-30-2016, 11:01 PM

I am thinking a lot of the commands I tried are just not in the installation. You are using CentOs 5? Do you have any problem with apropos, or commands? I wonder if things are that way in CentOs by design. Talk about not user friendly, but I feel like that is taking it to an extreme. I installed off of an old disk, but md5sum, sha256, etc were good. I ran into this with Knoppix, but figured they were trying to save disk space. I am running 5.7 because it's the only thing that works on old 32bit single core computer that runs a SCSI flatbed scanner.

notKlaatu · 05-30-2016, 11:25 PM

No, I'm not on CentOS 5, I'm just troubleshooting.

I hear your frustration, but you should just be able to install the applications you want to run. Maybe poke around in the CentOS docs to find what those are if you are unsure.

I think it's one of those things; some installs are minimal by default, others pack everything in. It just depends on what distro and, usually, what ISO you go with, and what you choose at install time.