Re: man -k doesn't work

["Brian J. Stults" <bs7452@csc.albany.edu>]

Fabrizio Polacco wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jan 04, 2000 at 01:04:49PM -0500, Brian J. Stults wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > When I type man -k [anything], I always get this result:
> >
> > [anything]: nothing appropriate
> 
> and when you try   man [anything]   what do you get?

man [anything] works (for appropriate anythings).

> If you get a manpage then it is the db to be rebuilt (mandb -c  from
> root), if you get   No manual entry for [anything]   then [anything] is
> really not appropriate :-)

I tried mandb -c and got:

Processing manual pages under /usr/man...
Updating index cache for path `/usr/man'. Wait...mandb: can't create a
temporary filename: Permission denied

I don't know enough about mandb to interpret this correctly.  Anyone
know what file it is trying to create and where?

> It is always better to leave that env var unset, unless you have very
> specific stuff to add there.
> In any case, /usr/bin/man cannot go there!
> Use the command manpath to see if this setting is harming you; it should
> reply:
>         /usr/local/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/man
> 

Thanks for the advice.  I don't remember when or why I added the manpath
env var, but I removed it now.  I do indeed get the above result from
"manpath".  Thanks.  Still can't get man -k to work, though.
-- 

Brian J. Stults
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Sociology
University at Albany - SUNY
Phone: (518) 442-4652  Fax: (518) 442-4936
Web: www.albany.edu/~bs7452