[CentOS] CentOS 7, man

Robert Nichols
Wed, 27 Jan 2016 20:06:46 -0000

On 01/27/2016 10:31 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us
wrote:
> This is... odd.
>
>  From my workstation, where I'm directly logged in, if I ssh to any
CentOS
> 7 box, as myself, and try to run man, it fails.
> Example 1:
>   man dd
> man:
> cannot write to /var/cache/man/cat1/dd.1.gz in catman mode
> dd.
>
> Example 2:
>   man dd
> man: can't chmod (null): Bad address
> man: can't unlink (null): Bad address
> dd.
>
> In all cases, if I sudo -s to root, I have no trouble reading the manpage.
> In all cases I've tried, selinux is in permissive mode.
>
>  From one of these boxes:
> ls -laF /var/cache/man/ | more
> total 832
> drwxr-xr-x. 38 root root   4096 Jan 27 07:52 ./
> drwxr-xr-x.  9 root root    105 Dec 28 12:42 ../
> -rw-r--r--.  1 root root    190 Dec 28 13:18 CACHEDIR.TAG
> drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root     62 Jan 27 07:52 ca/
> drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root     20 Jan 27 11:27 cat1/
> <...>
>
> But it's the same in CentOS 6. Clues?

I've had NOCACHE set in /etc/man.config for a long time. On a modern
machine there's not that much overhead generating the text page on
demand, and eliminating that avoids issues with pages formatted for
one window size being viewed on another.

--
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.