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Maybe I did something wrong. but xman doesn't work on -current. I get a few entries, but nothing like the full selection of man pages. I think it is the $MANPATH,but trying to set that environment variable gives an error. probably from the oracle jdk package I installed/
Yes, it was the oracle jdk I installed. It places a /etc/profile.d/java.sh script which set "export MANPATH=${MANPATH}:/usr/lib64/java" I commented this out, rebooted, and now xman works.
Well, it did cause a problem because when I tried to reset the MANPATH, "export MANPATH=<new path>" and several variants, I got an error message that is was something wrong. Which leads to another question and that is man-db, which is apparently the new man program in -current. Is there a directory listing browser for man-db? Next pet peeve is the difficulty I have with .Xresources for xman. There are times when one has to read man pages and I just don't have a good setup for it.
ls /var/log/packages/ | grep man
***
man-db-2.9.1-x86_64-1
man-pages-5.05-noarch-2
***
xman-1.1.5-x86_64-1
And how about this one --
$ man man-db
No manual entry for man-db
Yes, I know. If you read the man man page, you will find (emphasis added):
Code:
$ man man
* * * *
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate manpath to use. By default, man uses manpath derived code to determine
the path to search. This option overrides the $MANPATH environment variable and causes op‐
tion -m to be ignored.
A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual page hierarchy structured into
sections as described in the man-db manual (under "The manual page system"). . . .
* * * *
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual pages.
When I had the $MANPATH variable set, it did not seem to make a difference to man-db.
I do think man-db is an improvement, but it seems the whole man page topic is kind of a backwater. IMHO, this is unfortunate because it could be a really great source of information.
Thank you Alien Bob, only ${MANPATH}; the curly braces are needed when you want to concatenate added text to what is stored under the MANPATH variable. Covered here: when-do-we-need-curly-braces-around-shell-variables. FWIW, I used your slackware64-current-install-dvd-iso to create an install usb stick and then the jdk slackbuild from 14.2 with jdk-8u231-linux-x64.tar.gz. I honestly only install the jdk because some programs seem to want it, and I might not have done the right thing here.
However, I want my comments to be about the man page situation is slackware-current and not bash commands or the jdk. Again, man-db is an improvement, but is there some directory listing like xman provides?
And I would add that, while we sell no wine before its time, when a user like me has to install -current, it may be a sign that it is time for 15.0, IMHO. Especially since this -current (kernel 5.4.30) is working very well on my t440p, thank you. I have used Slackware for many years and never strayed from the stable version before.
When I built my AM2 machine many, many years ago (I think it was 2008), I had to do some legwork to find one with a floppy port. Many of the boards I looked at lacked that drive and I still wanted to have one included (even though I don't think I used it for anything other than seeing what was on old disks I had laying around). It is very probable that the port was included on various boards since then (and you might even be able to find some modern boards with it), but it certainly isn't standard to include it and I'd imagine 90% of the boards released in the last 10 years lack floppy ports.
But it is also very easy to add a floppy drive to a computer via USB, either using an internal USB header or plugging in an external. But how many people are going to want to boot a modern system off a floppy drive?
I just looked on Amazon and you can get a 10 pack of 1.44MB floppies for $18US. That is $1279/GB. In comparison, you can pick up a 32GB Sandisk USB 2.0 drive for $6.50. That is $0.20/GB. Why anyone would use a floppy for anything beyond supporting extremely old legacy systems or to see what is on a long lost, but recently found disk? There is just no value to use a floppy, especially when you couple cost with the extremely slow transfer rates (USB1.0 is 50x faster than floppy speeds).
If anyone is wanting to boot a modern Slackware off of a floppy drive, it is likely as a fun exercise, not as a necessity. It is very likely that everyone would have a USB drive they could use in place of that. Because of that, I like the idea to change it to an "external device" and then let the person specify the device. If it happens to be a floppy, more power to them.
But then I've never used that functionality of the installer. If I ever need a rescue boot, I just use the Slackware ISO dd'd onto a USB drive and will fix it from there.
I guess thats all I am trying to get at. Leave it as floppy for 32-bit, but to better reflect the more modern Slackware at least for the 64-bit - changing it to 'external' device or again USB might better reflect the change. For 32-bit for the hold outs, floppy would be fine still I guess.
I guess thats all I am trying to get at. Leave it as floppy for 32-bit, but to better reflect the more modern Slackware at least for the 64-bit - changing it to 'external' device or again USB might better reflect the change. For 32-bit for the hold outs, floppy would be fine still I guess.
I think you've misunderstood what this option for. If you want to boot from USB, make a USB boot stick. There's already an option for this.
For years, slackware.com ran on an ancient Celeron server. This machine's motherboard couldn't handle a hard drive of any reasonable size, so we added a PCI hard drive controller. The BIOS could not boot a hard drive on this controller directly, and the machine did not have USB. Writing the LILO boot sector to a floppy allowed the machine to boot.
We also hid the floppy drive inside the case so that nobody could eject the floppy disk.
I think you've misunderstood what this option for. If you want to boot from USB, make a USB boot stick. There's already an option for this.
For years, slackware.com ran on an ancient Celeron server. This machine's motherboard couldn't handle a hard drive of any reasonable size, so we added a PCI hard drive controller. The BIOS could not boot a hard drive on this controller directly, and the machine did not have USB. Writing the LILO boot sector to a floppy allowed the machine to boot.
We also hid the floppy drive inside the case so that nobody could eject the floppy disk.
I have misunderstood as I seen that option during the installation at an earlier part. I know it won't harm anything by keeping it as is, and my argument was obviously from more of an aesthetic one.
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sorry for the typo.
