man works, man -k doesn't

woodm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 75

how does one get man -k to work?
I know that man -k is equivelent to apropo, but I've never been able to get it working on any computer that didn't have it working to start with.

Not a big deal, but man -k is so handy.
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sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

I think you have to do a makewhatis mabey you could add it as a cron job.

woodm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 75

I needed to run /usr/sbin/makewhatis

Now I just have to figure out the cron system enough to do this every week or maybe every morning.
_________________
There are thousands of types of people in this world:
The type that seperates people into two groups,
and the thousands of other types.

woodm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 75

You are so prompt with the help that I hadn't even refreshed the screen.

Thanks though. I appreciate the help.
_________________
There are thousands of types of people in this world:
The type that seperates people into two groups,
and the thousands of other types.

phong · Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2002 7:26 pm Post subject:

There's an example cron script in /etc/cron.daily that fills this exact purpose. Just comment out the makewhatis line in it and make sure cron is running (if you did an "rc-update add ?cron default" where ?cron is the cron you installed, you're all set). I also recommend having a daily cron that does an updatedb so that locate will work.
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"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
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woodm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 75

I wasn't aware that there were several available. I'm probably just used to other *nix systems that come with one and you don't ever think about it.

Is there a thread in the forums that discusses the different options?
_________________
There are thousands of types of people in this world:
The type that seperates people into two groups,
and the thousands of other types.

dioxmat · Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2002 6:33 pm Post subject:

btw there is something weird about makewhatis... first, it keeps trowing "zcat: stdout: Broken pipe" errors. second, its doesnt work very well... :

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

man -k always returns nothing ...
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