Strange problem with "man".

GianPiero Puccioni gip at ino.it
Wed Jul 7 09:02:37 UTC 2004


Hi,

There is a strange problem when I try to use "man" as root.

The first time I try "man" on a command, say "man ls" I get:

recursive I/O operation, unit 1, file (echo ".pl 1100i"; /usr/bin/gunzip
-c '/usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz'; echo ".\\\""; echo ".pl \n(nlu+10") |
/usr/bin/gtbl | /usr/bin/nroff -c --legacy ISO-8859-1 -mandoc
2>/dev/null

and the manual can be seen normally, after that it works without the
error, but I suppose now it uses the formatted version in /var/cache.
If I am not root the error is not seen but the formatted version in
/var/cache is not created either, shouldn't "man" run suid man? or the
cache dirs be writable to users?

Instead if I use "man" on a non existing command, say "man nothing"
I get:  "cannot overwrite existing file, unit -17155555, file"
and some random characters (the number changes too) and this seems to
happen to both root and user. 

Is there something wrong?


Ciao,
  GianPiero






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