bug#37761: closed (man pages not displaying on Guix System 1.0.1 fresh install)

[GNU bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Tue, 27 Sep 2022 16:27:45 -0400
with message-id <877d1oy33y.fsf@gmail.com>
and subject line Re: bug#37761: man pages not displaying on Guix System 1.0.1 
fresh install
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #37761,
regarding man pages not displaying on Guix System 1.0.1 fresh install
to be marked as done.

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37761: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=37761
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--- Begin Message --- Subject: man pages not displaying on Guix System 1.0.1 fresh install Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2019 19:00:49 +1100

Hi bug-guix,

I’m emailing about an issue I was having with man pages, where man pages were not displaying on a fresh install of Guix System 1.0.1 on a Thinkpad x200 laptop. I did not experience the issue at any point on another install of Guix, which I had installed using the Guix System 1.0.0 installer in a QEMU virtual machine. I’ve outlined the issue further along in this email.

The issue:
After I had installed man-db and man-pages, if I ran e.g. `man ls`, I got an empty man page with the following at the footer of the page:

Manual page ls(1) line ?/? (END) (press h for help or q to quit)

I was able to use the h key to look for help with man. When I pressed q to quit, I got a message like the following from stdout:

man: command exited with status 255: (cd /run/current-system/profile/share/man && /gnu/store/[...]-man-db-2.8.5/libexec/man-db/zsoelim) | [...]

To replicate the issue:

1. Do a clean install of Guix System using the 1.0.1 installer. The nurses installation wizard is used with standard settings, no WM/DE, and with one ext4 filesystem on / with disk encryption and a swap partition.
2. Install `man-db’, either as a package in a profile or as a package in the OS configuration - in the case of the latter, do a `guix system reconfigure’ with the new OS configuration.
3. Run the man command with any input, e.g. `man ls’ or `man pwd’.
4. Install any other package, e.g. emacs, and run the man command with this too, i.e. `man emacs’.
   

My `solution’:
My solution was to do a fresh install of Guix System 1.0.0 (using the ncurses installation wizard and with very similar settings, and doing the fix for %base-packages) on my x200 laptop and update to the latest distribution, which has made the issue go away; however, I was never able to make the issue go away on my original Guix System 1.0.1 installation.

Of course, I can’t blame the issue on the installation image without having a bigger picture of how the software works, but the installation image I used is the only difference I could find between the two systems I installed (with the caveat that I never tried installing Guix System 1.0.1 on a VM). If this can be replicated by anyone else, maybe there is an issue with the installation image. If not, let me know if there is any troubleshooting I can do which could be of use - I’m happy to do a fresh install on my x200 and run any diagnostics you’d like me to.

Thanks,
Kenan

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--- End Message ---

> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
>
> Subject: 
>
> Re: bug#37761: man pages not displaying on Guix System 1.0.1 fresh install
>
>
>
>
> Date: 
>
> Tue, 27 Sep 2022 16:27:45 -0400
>
>
>
>
> User-agent: 
>
> Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.1 (gnu/linux)
>
>
>
>
> Hi Kenan,
>
> Kenan Toker <kenan@kdtsh.net> writes:
>
> > Hi bug-guix,
> >
> > I’m emailing about an issue I was having with man pages, where man pages
> > were not displaying on a fresh install of Guix System 1.0.1 on a
> > Thinkpad x200 laptop. I did not experience the issue at any point on
> > another install of Guix, which I had installed using the Guix System
> > 1.0.0 installer in a QEMU virtual machine. I’ve outlined the issue
> > further along in this email.
> >
> > The issue:
> > After I had installed man-db and man-pages, if I ran e.g. `man ls`, I
> > got an empty man page with the following at the footer of the page:
> >
> >     Manual page ls(1) line ?/? (END) (press h for help or q to quit)
> >
> > I was able to use the h key to look for help with man. When I pressed q
> > to quit, I got a message like the following from stdout:
> >
> >     man: command exited with status 255: (cd
> >     /run/current-system/profile/share/man &&
> >     /gnu/store/[...]-man-db-2.8.5/libexec/man-db/zsoelim) | [...]
> >
> >
> > To replicate the issue:
> >
> >  1. Do a clean install of Guix System using the 1.0.1 installer. The
> >     nurses installation wizard is used with standard settings, no WM/DE,
> >     and with one ext4 filesystem on / with disk encryption and a swap
> >     partition.
> >  2. Install `man-db’, either as a package in a profile or as a package
> >     in the OS configuration - in the case of the latter, do a `guix
> >     system reconfigure’ with the new OS configuration.
> >  3. Run the man command with any input, e.g. `man ls’ or `man pwd’.
> >  4. Install any other package, e.g. emacs, and run the man command with
> >     this too, i.e. `man emacs’.
>
> Sorry for failing to get back to you earlier; I suppose this is fixed in
> newer versions, the latest released one which is 1.3.0, so I'll close
> it.  Please re-open the issue if it's still actual.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Maxim
>
>
> --- End Message ---