Suddenly can't read man pages

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Matthew Saltzman wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Clint Harshaw wrote:
> 
> > Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > > What would cause some users (me and root, in particular, but not others)
> > > to be suddenly unable to read any man page that isn't already in
> > > /var/cache/man/?  Any other man page displays a blank screen with the
> > > (END) prompt from less.  Happens in GNOME and on the console.
> > >
> > > TIA.
> >
> > Matthew:
> > Does the same behavior show up when you are using xterm?
> > Clint
> 
> Yes, it does.  Also, root's problem is a red herring.  The problem occurs
> for root if I "su", but not if I "su -" or log in as root on a console.
> So the problem is definitely just me, and it must be something I set but I
> can't think what.  I'll be trying replacing .bashrc and .bash_profile
> later today to see if I can identify the setting that causes the problem.

Matthew,

There are several ways that man figures out what directories to look at 
for pages.  Try doing a "man man" and then "/SEARCH" and "n" and you'll 
find the section on search order.

As a quicky, I'd ensure that you have an /etc/man.conf file and that you 
haven't set the MANPATH variable in your ~/.bash* scripts.  The "env" 
command will show you what your environment variables are.

HTH,

Ben