Hi,
$ uname -a
Linux e130 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1 (2020-01-26) x86_64
GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/debian_version
10.2
I have recently installed buster and I am running into problems with
custom man pages.
I have a pkgsrc [1] installation with a custom prefix /usr/pkg. Binaries
are in /usr/pkg/bin and /usr/pkg/sbin and man pages are in /usr/pkg/man.
Let's say I want to view the manual page of pkgin(1), I can see this
page fine. It pulls it correctly from /usr/pkg/man/man1/pkgin.1
However, neither apropos or whatis cannot see it:
$ whatis pkgin
pkgin: nothing appropriate.
$ apropos pkgin
pkgin: nothing appropriate.
In my previous Debian installation, all I did was to add this line to
/etc/manpath:
MANDB_MAP /usr/pkg/man/ /usr/pkg/var/cache/man
and then run `mandb -d` as root, however mandb this time complained that
/usr/pkg/var/cache/man could not be created, even if I was root.
So I added this:
MANDB_MAP /usr/pkg/man/ /var/cache/man/pkg
and run `mandb -d`` but the neither whatis nor apropos can read from
/var/cache/man/pkg. I've tried both as root and single user to no avail.
I have also added:
MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/pkg/man
and:
MANPATH_MAP /usr/pkg/bin /usr/pkg/man
MANPATH_MAP /usr/pkg/sbin /usr/pkg/man
and run:
# mandb -d
# mandb -c
and it looks like the catdirs are created:
$ ls -al /var/cache/man/pkg/
total 1716
drwxr-xr-x 7 man man 4096 Mar 22 12:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 37 man man 4096 Mar 22 12:44 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 man man 190 Mar 22 12:00 CACHEDIR.TAG
drwxr-xr-x 2 man man 4096 Mar 22 11:56 cat1
drwxr-xr-x 2 man man 4096 Mar 22 11:56 cat3
drwxr-xr-x 2 man man 4096 Mar 22 11:56 cat5
drwxr-xr-x 2 man man 4096 Mar 22 11:56 cat7
drwxr-xr-x 2 man man 4096 Mar 22 11:56 cat8
-rw-r--r-- 1 man man 1724416 Mar 22 12:01 index.db
but still to no avail for whatis/apropos.
My full /etc/manpath.conf is here:
https://paste.debian.net/hidden/06f37279/
Any help will be appreciated.
[1] http://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.html