Missing Man Pages (Bad Softlink?)

mcsjgsmcsjgs
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I am running 10.3.1 on a G4 Dual. Everything seems to be running fine. However, on the CRON weekly, I get what looks like an error message on missing man pages. Should I be worried about this? Possible fixes?



The only reference I could find on this was a bad softlink in PERL because of case-sensitivity in 10.2.8 update, but I do not have a clue on how to repair this.



It looks as if every file in /man3/ sub-directory is "missing"



The message (in part):



Rebuilding whatis database:

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_nc_tracebits.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_traceattr.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_traceattr2.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracechar.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracechtype.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracechtype2.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracedump.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracef.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/_tracemouse.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/add_wch.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/addch.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/addchnstr.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/addchstr.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/addnstr.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/addstr.3x

Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/assume_default_colors.3x

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Are the directories there? See if you can find the files. I imagine that would be the first step.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    mcsjgsmcsjgs Posts: 244member
    It's a very strange problem (which other are also having). The /man3 subdirectory is there, but every file is a pointer which points to nowhere. Tried manpath, tried reinstalling just the /man folder using Pacifist (the /man folder contains the /man3 folder). No joy, same problem. It appears to be a bug in the 10.3 installer. I sent a bug report to Apple. A search for the files only turns up the pointers (which are useless).



    See discussion here:



    Cocoa Development Link
  • Reply 3 of 4
    mcsjgsmcsjgs Posts: 244member
    Here is what i found on Apple about this problem:



    Following an upgrade installation of Panther from 10.2.8, the weekly cron job reports it cannot find about 25 files - the message is:



    "Rebuilding whatis database:

    Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/HMAC.3ssl

    Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/HMAC_cleanup.3ssl

    etc etc etc....."



    Does any one know why it is looking, if the files should be there and, if so, where are they?



    Gary Kerbaugh

    (Helper)

    RE: Missing files in whatis database?

    (msg # 1.: Posted Nov 6, 03 10:20



    Hi blackwattle,

    ___These appear to be Perl man pages that are casualties of Perl's assumption that it is installed on a case-sensitive filesystem. They are actually softlinks that point to nothing because they were meant to point to the real man page that had the same name but with all lower case letters. However, because HFS is case insensitive, the creation of the softlink probably blew away the original file. This apparently occurred when the Panther installer was created because the originals aren't listed in the install receipts either. I'm sure they are readily available but I don't know where. If you find them, let us know.

    --

    Gary



    Thread is here:



    Apple Thread
  • Reply 4 of 4
    mcsjgsmcsjgs Posts: 244member
    I finally found what appears to be the answer.



    The short version is that the weekly cron script appears to look for files in the /man3 subdirectory when it should not. An installer glitch from Jaguar to Panther in the bsd subsystem.



    Type man malloc in terminal



    if the man page shows up, you do not have a problem.



    Apple Missing Man Pages Thread
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