Procps Man Page & Bad Output From Apropos / Man -k

[Randall R Schulz <rrschulz at cris dot com>]

Hi,

Recently I've noticed that certain invocations of "apropos" or "man -k" 
(many of them, in fact) include a huge blob of text instead of a proper 
synopsis line.

The man page whose content appears blobified in the apropos output is the 
"procps" manual page, which for some reason (probably something to do with 
the "Quick hack conversion" by Mr. Cahalan) is pre-formatted:

-==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==-
.\" Man page for ps.
.\" Quick hack conversion by Albert Cahalan, 1998.
.\" Licensed under version 2 of the Gnu General Public License.
.\"
.\" This man page is a horrid hack because *roff sucks.
.\" The whole system is way obsolete. The internal header
.\" stuff must die, and will when I figure out how to kill it.
.\" I've already killed the wasteful left margin and screwy
.\" old perfect justification. Gross! You'd think someone
.\" invented this crap in 1973. Oh yeah, they did. Sorry.
.\"
.TH PS 1 "July 5, 1998" "Linux" "Linux User's Manual"
.SH \fRNAME\fR
ps \- report process status
.ad r
.na
.ss 12 0
.in 0
.nh
.nf

SYNOPSIS
ps [options]


DESCRIPTION
ps gives a snapshot of the current processes. If you want
...
-==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==-


Apparently apropos and "man -k" don't tolerate this, though "whatis ps" is 
not upset. I've rebuilt the whatis database, of course, and looking at it 
directly ("/usr/man/whatis") shows that it does not contain the blob 
(though some entries span multiple lines, for some reason, and others look 
spurious).


Another odd thing I just noticed is that all apropos output, whether 
correct or not, with our without spurious inclusions, is repeated. Here's a 
short one:

% apropos benchmark
Benchmark (3)        - benchmark running times of Perl code
Benchmark (3pm)      - benchmark running times of Perl code
ab (8)               - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
Benchmark (3)        - benchmark running times of Perl code
Benchmark (3pm)      - benchmark running times of Perl code
ab (8)               - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool

I tend to doubt this is connected with the props blob, but I suppose it 
could be.


Lastly, when I run "makewhatis," I get these diagnostics:

% makewhatis
Read file error: ./iniomega.1 No such file or directory
Read file error: ./lambda.1 No such file or directory
Read file error: ./viromega.1 No such file or directory



Oh, yeah. I demand that someone fix this. My sensibilities are offended, 
and this will not stand.

Randy 

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