[SOLVED] Two manuals of the same program depending on who issues 'man'.

stf92 · 04-21-2012, 03:09 PM

Kernel 2.6.21.5, Slackware 12.0

Hi:
When I am at a root console, 'man sox' shows me a 1240 lines manual. But in a regular user console, 'man sox' prints a 3472 lines manual. One is dated 2001 and the other, 2009. I have /var/log/packages/sox/14.3.1-i486-1 and there is the path of the manual (man page). This manual is the long one.

Now, Slack 12 came with sox 12.18.1. So, I must have installed 14.3.1 after having removepkg'd 12.18.1. Suppose the old manual was left behind on the hard disk. But how can man access one file in the root console and another one on the other console?

From any of the two consoles the program run when invoking is version 14.3.1.

Nominal Animal · 04-21-2012, 03:29 PM

Most likely because one has MANPATH environment variable set, and the other does not, or they are set to different values.

You could check for the sox manpage locations using

Code:

find /usr/ -name 'sox.[1-9]*'

You can then check which one is which by using

Code:

man -l /path/to/man/page

the option being dash lowercase-L.

stf92 · 04-21-2012, 03:48 PM

I do not understand.

Code:

# find /usr/ -name 'sox.[0-9]*'
/usr/man/man1/sox.1.gz

Only one! And it is the new version, that is, that installed by me.

Petri Kaukasoina · 04-21-2012, 04:00 PM

How about

Code:

# find /var/man -name 'sox.[0-9]*'

gapan · 04-21-2012, 04:26 PM

Run

Code:

man -w sox

both as user and root. That will show you the location of the manpage that is used each time.

stf92 · 04-21-2012, 04:26 PM

There is one /var/man/cat1/sox.1.bz2. Unfortunately, the -l (lower case L) is not recognized by man.

Code:

root@darkstar:~# man -w sox
/usr/man/cat1/sox.1.bz2 (<-- /usr/man/man1/sox.1.gz)
root@darkstar:~# 

semoi@darkstar:~/mozart/Mozart - Symphonies 25, 28,29, 35, 39-40 - Bruno Walter/CD1$ man -w sox
/usr/man/man1/sox.1.gz

Nominal Animal · 04-21-2012, 09:40 PM

Does

Code:

MANPATH="" man sox

show the same man page when run as root, as when run as a normal user?

If it does, check what

Code:

echo "$MANPATH"

says.

You might also wish to show us what

Code:

find /root /usr /var /opt -name 'sox.[0-9]*' -ls

shows (when run as root), just in case you have some leftover sox manpages lying around elsewhere. They might be only readable by root.

stf92 · 04-21-2012, 09:53 PM

Unfortunately, I had already removed /var/man/cat/sox.1.bz2, the old man page. So, now, the two users get the same page. The file in /var/man/cat/ has therefore been created by man.

Code:

root@darkstar:~# find /root /usr /var /opt -name 'sox.[0-9]*' -ls
817037   56 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root        49660 Feb  8  2011 /usr/man/man1/sox.1.gz
1580711   48 -r--r--r--   1 root     root        46662 Apr 21 22:12 /var/man/cat1/sox.1.bz2
root@darkstar:~#

echo $MANPATH outputs the same in both consoles, now.

gnashley · 04-22-2012, 03:23 AM

*/man/cat/* contains pre-formatted pages which are cached there by man when you ask for each page the first time. man will not cretae them if the 'cat' directories are not present. The file wil be of a different length because of the formatting process. I simply delete the cat dirs from the system to avoid 'phantom' files.