Bug#973604: lintian reports spare-manual-page on PAM and NSS modules
Hi nicoo,
On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 4:39 AM nicoo <nicoo@debian.org> wrote:
>
> > $ lintian -iI /opt/deb/buildarea/libpam-u2f_1.1.0-1_amd64.deb
> > I: libpam-u2f: spare-manual-page usr/share/man/man8/pam_u2f.8.gz
We have a misunderstanding about the purpose of manual section 8. It
was not mentioned in the original UN*X Programmer's Manual [1], but I
believe it was created for system commands and daemons. They are
always executable, usually executed as root, and often (but not
always) located in /sbin or /usr/sbin.
[1] https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/manintro.html
On my Debian 10 system, 'man man' produces the following output:
1 Executable programs or shell commands
2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6 Games
7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions),
e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
The package libpam-u2f, on the other hand, contains these files:
lechner@lechner-desktop /l/l/l/git> dpkg-deb -c
/mirror/debian/pool/main/p/pam-u2f/libpam-u2f_1.0.8-1_amd64.deb
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./lib/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/security/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 34656 2019-07-20 04:01
./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/security/pam_u2f.so
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/share/doc/libpam-u2f/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 3990 2019-06-04 02:28
./usr/share/doc/libpam-u2f/README.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root 1317 2019-07-20 04:01
./usr/share/doc/libpam-u2f/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root 724 2019-06-04 03:37
./usr/share/doc/libpam-u2f/changelog.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root 3915 2019-07-20 04:01
./usr/share/doc/libpam-u2f/copyright
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/share/man/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2019-07-20 04:01 ./usr/share/man/man8/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 3007 2019-07-20 04:01
./usr/share/man/man8/pam_u2f.8.gz
There are no executables with the name 'pam_u2f'. That is why you see
the Lintian tag.
As you pointed out, many PAM-related packages ship manual pages in
section 8, but PAM modules are specially constructed shared libraries
and not system commands in a broader sense. I understand why someone
might have put them there, but I think they would do better in section
5, where 'pam.5' is also located.
I'll try to find some additional documentation for the different
manual sections. Please forward anything you might have also. Thank
you!
Kind regards
Felix Lechner
Reply to: