Re: "man" crashes

[Ed Donovan <edonovan@world.std.com>]

Hamish Moffatt <moffatt@yallara.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> writes:

> When I try to view a manual page that's located in /usr/local/man,
> man says it's updating a local index, then gives a segmentation fault.
> Any ideas on how to fix this?

Christoph Lameter <clameter@fuller.edu> writes:

> Any way to fix those problems?

This is going back a step: I waited, thinking I might be duplicating
Dale's answer--but I'd suggest one more thing.  I had this problem a
little while ago.  (I wasn't using an experimental version of dpkg,
though I didn't ever find out just what caused it.)  What worked for me
was running mandb with the -c option to completely rebuild the database:

-c, --create
              By default, mandb will try to update any previously
              created databases. If a database does not exist, it
              will create it. This option forces mandb to  delete
              previous databases and re-create them from scratch.
              This may be necessary if a database becomes corrupt
              or  if  a new database storage scheme is introduced
              in the future.                                           

I ran it from the command line as root, and without specifying any path,
letting it read /etc/manpath.config.  I don't recall what directory I
ran it from, but don't think it mattered.  Segfaults went away as silently as
they'd come.

I didn't get the impression you've tried this yet, and if you haven't,
do, because it sounds pretty much like my experience.  Hope it helps,
 
-- 

Ed Donovan			edonovan@world.std.com