12o3l

L.S,

After installation of all patches in the slackware patch directory
ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/slackw...tches/packages
Something broke and I am unable to read manual pages in the console. The
error was some script line witch it was unable to execute. (I am sorry but
I can't reproduce the error right now, since it was on an other machine)
The less command also broke, and doesn't produce an error. I'll try to
reproduce the man-error in a few days.

Since one of the patches included vim, I thought this might be the problem.
the vi command however works fine. One other thing is that I didn't
uninstall previous packages (for instance of QT I have now qt-2.3.2 as well
as qt-2.3.3).

I am relatively new in linux so there are probably a lot of 'fine' manuals
I haven't read yet, well, maybe someone could tell me which one to read?
maybe you need some more info on my system? I have the kernel 2.6.9-rc3
running right now, but since it didn't work on previous kernels I don't
think its related to that. I have recently installed cxoffice pro as well.
The rest is just slackware-10.0.
thanx for your time,

Roel

12o3l

actually After some more googling I found someone with a similar bug on
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/230607

22:04:09 root@~/synaptics # man vim
Error executing formatting or display command.
System command (cd /usr/man && (echo ".ll 11.9i"; echo ".pl 1100i";
/bin/gunzip -c '/usr/man/man1/vim.1.gz'; echo ".\\\""; echo ".pl \n(nlu+
10") | /usr/bin/gtbl | /usr/bin/nroff -S -mandoc | /usr/bin/less -is)
exited with status 256.
No manual entry for vim

Reading some of the found sites it seems that the error might be related
to the patched kernel. For anyone with a similar problem: possible
solutions I found googling.
1. revert to previous kernel.
2. a workaround using vi to read man pages:
http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/s...?script_id=489

I recognize I should have done more googling before posting, but googling
was difficult since all kinds of irrelevant pages turned up when keywords
like 'man bug' or something similar was entered.

Roel

+alan hicks+

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In alt.os.linux.slackware, 12o3l dared to utter,


I'm taking a _very_ wild guess here and saying that's likely related to
the zlib update just recently put out. zlib is a general compression
library and in Slackware the man pages are compressed. If you go to say
/usr/share/man/man1 are you able to uncompress any of the man pages
using gunzip?

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It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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Hicks, Alan
188 Shady Dale Dr
Lizella, GA 31052
478-935-8132

no body

seems to be kernel-related. reverting to a 2.6.8 seems to make it go
away. it is somewhere in less: if you less ANYTHING and check returncode
(echo $?) it's NEVER 0. I straced less but haven't been able to get any
of the info out yet; i'm on a winXP laptop and using wireless ethernet
(and ipw2100 isn't being friendly .

-r

+alan hicks+

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In alt.os.linux.slackware, No Body dared to utter,


You mean to tell me the latest linux kernel broke less? That's got to
be a record for most commonly used non-network utility a kernel upgrade
has ever broken. How on earth do you break less?


You mean strace won't finish or what? Explain please.

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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+alan hicks+

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pgp trash troll delete

Hicks, Alan
188 Shady Dale Dr
Lizella, GA 31052
478-935-8132

no body

more like it broke some sort of ioctl interface. i think it's
tty-related ioctls, but i'm sure as hell no c guy, much less any sort of kernel guy.


i mean i have pretty much a full kernel bug report locked up in my
slackware partition on my laptop: i've not yet been able to transfer
them out of it linux partition. chalk it up to a brand new laptop,
figuring out which new modules i need , etc etc.. helping chase some new
kernel oddity is low on the priority chain right now.

-r

no body

followup to my own post; it appears to have been related to
slack-current itself after all. resyncing my laptop with -current makes
the problem go away. i suspect either the udev* or glibc* package
updates. reference to 'some problems with pty handling' in
udev-035-i486-1 from 11-Oct-04 kinda resembled what i saw with strace...

-r

12o3l

Reading this topic and others I think I'll be able to solve the problem:
1) find file udev.rules
2) replace line:
KERNEL="tty[p-za-e][0-9a-f]*", NAME="tty/s%n", SYMLINK="%k
with:
KERNEL="tty[p-za-e][0-9a-f]*", NAME="pty/s%n", SYMLINK="%k"

thanks for all replies, I wasn't able to correspond earlier.

Roel