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man pages

  • May 7, 2021
  • 2 replies
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Lionel Dyck
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With the IBM z/OS supplied man pages it is easy to find the command you want by using the command:

     man -k xxxxx

This will NOT find any of the conda installed man pages even if the MANPATH has been updated correctly.

Note: I can do a 'man gunzip' to read the specific man page which indicates the MANPATH is correct but 'man -k gunzip' finds nothing.

The -k explanation is:  

Searches a precomputed database of syntax lines for information about keywords.

Is there a way to update, or rebuild, the man precomputed database?

------------------------------
LionelDyck <><
https://github.com/zigi
https://github.com/lbdyck
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    2 replies

    Lionel Dyck
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    • Lionel Dyck
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    • 72 replies
    • May 7, 2021
    With the IBM z/OS supplied man pages it is easy to find the command you want by using the command:

         man -k xxxxx

    This will NOT find any of the conda installed man pages even if the MANPATH has been updated correctly.

    Note: I can do a 'man gunzip' to read the specific man page which indicates the MANPATH is correct but 'man -k gunzip' finds nothing.

    The -k explanation is:  

    Searches a precomputed database of syntax lines for information about keywords.

    Is there a way to update, or rebuild, the man precomputed database?

    ------------------------------
    LionelDyck <><
    https://github.com/zigi
    https://github.com/lbdyck
    ------------------------------
    I did find that the command to do the rebuild it mandb but I don't find a port of that ?

    mandb is used to initialise or manually update index database caches. The caches contain information relevant to the current state of the manual page system and the information stored within them is used by the man-db utilities to enhance their speed and functionality.

    ------------------------------
    LionelDyck <><
    https://github.com/zigi
    https://github.com/lbdyck
    ------------------------------
    Jorn Thyssen
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    • Jorn ThyssenRocketeer
    • Rocketeer
    • 22 replies
    • May 11, 2021
    I did find that the command to do the rebuild it mandb but I don't find a port of that ?

    mandb is used to initialise or manually update index database caches. The caches contain information relevant to the current state of the manual page system and the information stored within them is used by the man-db utilities to enhance their speed and functionality.

    ------------------------------
    LionelDyck <><
    https://github.com/zigi
    https://github.com/lbdyck
    ------------------------------
    man -k reads the contents of /usr/man/C/whatis which is just a flat file in USS containing a single line per command which the description of the command.

    You can probably write a script that extracts the relevant line from /rsusr/ported/man/catn/command.1 and append it to /usr/man/C/whatis

    Edit: I experimented by creating an additional whatis file in my MANPATH, but "man" appears to only read from the first whatis file it finds

    ------------------------------
    Joern Thyssen
    Rocket Software
    ------------------------------


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