[Bug 1001189] Re: 'man' command fails with lseek error

[Paul Crawford]

Thanks for the package identification, result is:

$ apt-cache policy man-db
man-db:
  Installed: 2.6.1-2
  Candidate: 2.6.1-2
  Version table:
 *** 2.6.1-2 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

It seems to be a permissions issue, in that if I su to root (we have a
root account enabled on this machine) it works, and if I su to a local
user it also works, but not with the NIS log-in identity.

So there seems to be two issues here:
(1) Why can't a NIS account holder access the man pages?
(2) Why, in the event it can't access them, does it not give a more helpful message to say what went wrong?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1001189

Title:
  'man' command fails with lseek error

Status in “man-db” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  When trying to look up the on-line documentation using the 'man'
  command it fails on 12.04 with lseek error. For example:

  $ man resolvconf
  gdbm fatal: lseek error

  This lseek error applies to other requests as well (e.g. ls, fdisk,
  etc). System information is:

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  Release:	12.04

  apt-cache policy man
  man:
    Installed: (none)
    Candidate: (none)
    Version table:

  However, it is installed since it runs as a command, and I find:

  $ which man
  /usr/bin/man

  $ man --version
  man 2.6.1

  What I expect is to read the manual page appropriate to the
  command/program, and not get a software error.

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