"man -k" Question
 

In this recent thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nd-4175437057/ stf92 wrote in part ...
I found the following interesting when exploring that post.

Although this man -k command responds with the rdev(8) reference, the man page for rdev doesn't exist in Section 8 or anywhere else in Slack64 14.0.

Yet, as the OP stated, the rdev program is not to be found .... except in busybox.

Previously, in Slack 13.0, the program /usr/sbin/rdev was included along with the section 8 man page.

rdev appears to have been removed in 13.37 & 14.0. I recall reading a while ago that rdev was deprecated.

My question is how did the man -k or apropos commands include the rdev(8) reference? Is there an old cache file leftover from an earlier version?

I looked through the /usr/lib64/man.conf file, and there was no /var/cache man file, but didn't find anything obvious to answer my question.

It uses the whatis files which are created using the makewhatis command. Possibly those files are not up to date. Read man makewhatis. What you may need to do is run makewhatis -w as root.

Uses /usr/man/whatis database
 

Thanks vulcan59 !

The file /usr/man/whatis is dated from 2009 and contains the rdev(8) entry.

When I edit that file, removing the rdev entry, then run the "man -k rdev" command, rdev(8) is no longer found.

Although commands to update file system "lists/indexes" may be considered part of the administrator's duties, it may not be a bad idea to include commands like makewhatis or updatedb as part of Slackware release build process to clean out the old stuff and include any new (included) man pages between releases.