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49 lines
2.8 KiB
Text
49 lines
2.8 KiB
Text
By default, man-db can be installed alongside Slackware's man package
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without conflict, as it installs its binaries and man pages into
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/opt/man-db. After installation, either log out and back in, or source
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/etc/profile.d/man-db.sh in your shell (this adjusts $PATH so the man
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command from /opt/man-db will be found first).
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Alternately, man-db can be built as a replacement for Slackware's
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man package. To do this, set USR=yes in the script's environment,
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and "removepkg man" before installing man-db. No profile scripts are
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installed in this case.
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When installing man-db, the doinst.sh script may take several minutes to
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run. This is because it's indexing all the man pages on the system. Also,
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a cron job is installed in /etc/cron.daily, which adds newly-installed
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man pages to the database. The index speeds up searching via "man -k"
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or "apropos". The disadvantage is that newly-installed man pages won't
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be found in these searches until the database has been updated, so any
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time you install new man pages, you'll want to run "mandb" as root, or
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wait for cron to do it for you (if you don't do this, the new pages can
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still be displayed, they just won't be searchable). The indexing runs
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quickly once the initial database has been created, so the cron job or
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manual update shouldn't bring your system to its knees.
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The database is located in /var/cache/man, and on a full Slackware install
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will be approximately 5MB in size. During index creation, approximately
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10MB in /var is used. If you decide to removepkg man-db, you'll probably
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also want to get rid of its database with "rm -rf /var/cache/man". If
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the database gets corrupted somehow, it can be regenerated from scratch
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by running "mandb -c" or just reinstalling the man-db package.
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Although man-db supports caching formatted pages ("cat" pages), it's
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disabled in this build, to make man-db behave more like Slackware's man
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(which supports caching, but it's disabled). On modern (and even 10+
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year old) systems, the small amount of extra time it takes to format
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a man page every time it's viewed is probably not worth the headaches
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caused by stale cat pages.
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Unlike some distro packages of man-db, this build doesn't install man or
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mandb setuid. This prevents caching cat pages from working (see above),
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and prevents man from automatically adding new man pages to the database
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the first time a user views them (they will be indexed by the cron job,
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or by root manually running "mandb", if you're impatient).
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A word about i18n support: the whole reason I packaged man-db is because
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Slackware's man can't handle Japanese man pages, and I couldn't come
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up with a way to make them work after several hours of research and
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man.conf editing. With man-db, they Just Work, with LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8
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(now all I have to do is learn to read Japanese). In general, UTF-8
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locales are preferred for man-db, although non-UTF-8 is also supported.
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