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menuhin

Member

Registered: 2018-10-01

Posts: 8  

[SOLVED] man display nothing with "line ?/?" after recent updates

I am running Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf) x86_64 with the followings:
Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64
Shell: bash 5.0.3
DE: Xfce
WM: bspwm
Terminal: terminator

And every package has been recently updated but today I found out that the manual page command "man" has some problem, i.e. no content of manual is displayed with just blank content and a status line saying, e.g. for the ls command:

Manual page ls(1) line ?/? (END) (press h for help or q to quit)

for a

man man | wc

, the result is:

man: can't execute preconv: Operation not permitted
man: can't execute tbl: Operation not permitted
man: can't execute col: Operation not permitted
groff: couldn't exec troff: Operation not permitted
man: command exited with status 4: (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/zsoelim) | (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/manconv -f UTF-8:ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8//IGNORE) | (cd /usr/share/man && preconv -e UTF-8) | (cd /usr/share/man && tbl) | (cd /usr/share/man && nroff -mandoc -rLL=80n -rLT=80n -Tutf8)
      0       0       0

I found a similar bug for man-db package on a Ubuntu 2018 bug report page:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … ug/1778684

$>strace -f -o man.trace -s 1024 man man

results in:

man: command exited with status 4: (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/zsoelim) | (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/manconv -f UTF-8:ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8//IGNORE) | (cd /usr/share/man && preconv -e UTF-8) | (cd /usr/share/man && tbl) | (cd /usr/share/man && nroff -mandoc -rLL=80n -rLT=80n -Tutf8)

I can attach the output file of the above strace command if need.

P.s. What I have amended in my system is also adding /etc/default/grub.d/apparmor.cfg which eliminated the startup error message of apparmor daemon (content of apparmor.cfg:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT apparmor=1 security=apparmor"

And I also installed 3 apparmor packages: apparmor-utils apparmor-profiles apparmor-profiles-extra

Last edited by menuhin (2021-06-21 11:43:03)

menuhin

Member

Registered: 2018-10-01

Posts: 8  

Re: [SOLVED] man display nothing with "line ?/?" after recent updates

I probably encountered a bug in 2018 (eg: Debian, bug #890861) https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/426204/195770

The temporary solution is to add

export MAN_DISABLE_SECCOMP=1

to my .profile

It can possibly be related to apparmor as there are people reporting apparmor breaking man, e.g.
https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/20 … er-things/

Last edited by menuhin (2021-06-21 12:09:51)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,425  

Re: [SOLVED] man display nothing with "line ?/?" after recent updates

In my fully updated beowulf without apparmor, man is working fine.

I notice you're using an older kernel. It's probably not related to the problem, but current kernel package in beowulf is 4.19.0-17.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,059  

Re: [SOLVED] man display nothing with "line ?/?" after recent updates

Meta package linux-image-amd64 not installed?

rolfie

Marjorie

Member

From: Teignmouth, UK

Registered: 2019-06-09

Posts: 219  

Re: [SOLVED] man display nothing with "line ?/?" after recent updates

Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf) x86_64
Kernel: 4.9.0-17-amd64
Shell: bash 5.0.3
DE: Cinnamon
WM: Mutter
Terminal: gnome-terminal
Apparmor: 2:13.2-10

Man working fine:

marjorie@grendel:~$ man ls
LS(1)                                                     User Commands                                                    LS(1)

NAME
       ls - list directory contents

SYNOPSIS
       ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
..etc.

Last edited by Marjorie (2021-06-22 11:51:13)