up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

When I try to see man for socket I get an empty page. What's going on?

I get the following text in man

Manual page socket(3) line ?/? (END)

It seems man can not identify line (maybe).

How can I make it work?

My socket file for manpages is also available:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3365 2010-05-03 09:30 /usr/share/man/man3/socket.3.gz
link|improve this question
75% accept rate
1  
nope. works on a fairly stock Ubuntu 10.04 install. but different distributions include different manpages in different packages; not all get installed in a default system. what Linux distribution and version are you using? – quack quixote May 3 '10 at 3:48
I use ubuntu 9.04. It's not all the man page cannot be shown. some of it can but some of the others cannot. <br> when i type man man I can see the manual.<br> but when i try man socket, I cannot see it. <br> do you have any suggestion ? – deddihp May 3 '10 at 4:37
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Well I think my manpages file is not supported by man-db 2.5.5. After I install older man-db (2.4) I can see the manpages.


Confusing....

link|improve this answer
hmm. sounds like something's broken in the formatting of that manpage that doesn't work with the newer package. perhaps recompiling/regenerating the manpage from the source package would help, but keeping the older man-db package is probably the simpler solution. – quack quixote May 3 '10 at 19:35
a simpler fix, if this is the only manpage you're seeing a problem with, might be to grab that manpage from a later version of Ubuntu (9.10 or 10.04). i wouldn't install the whole package; instead, extract just the one file to replace /usr/share/man/man3/socket.3.gz – quack quixote May 3 '10 at 19:54
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

Did you check your man settings? Do you have a valid MANPATH, or better: did not set MANPATH at all, so you can be sure, man finds the proper page?

Did you have a look in /usr/man/man3* or /usr/share/man/man3* (not sure, where it is on Ubuntu)? Is there a valid source file for the socket system call?

There is a chance that some other tool installed its own version of a socket man page, e.g. TCL; run man -a socket to see every man page related to socket or maybe better, run "man -k socket" or "apropos socket" to find all man pages that refer to sockets in any way.

Did you check your installation packages? Nothing damaged or missing?

Good luck,

Klaus

link|improve this answer
sure, i got this one. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3365 2010-05-03 09:30 /usr/share/man/man3/socket.3.gz – deddihp May 3 '10 at 9:03
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.