What use are these (rpm) entries in 'man'?

Rick Stevens rstevens at internap.com
Fri Nov 2 21:57:26 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 15:10 -0600, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 09:00 -0400, Robert Locke wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 11:02 +0000, Chris G wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > Adding the (rpm) entries means that the whatis database is no longer a
> > > "set of database files containing short descriptions of system
> > > commands" because the things it puts in there are *not* system
> > > commands.
> > 
> > Never has been.  Only the things in "chapter 1" are really "system
> > commands".  The whatis database was initially a summary of the
> > description lines of each of the man pages, but that has included
> > commands, files, library functions, etc.  Looking at the chapter told
> > you what it was.  But now there are things on the system that have no
> > traditional man page, but might be what you are looking for.  So some
> > folks hacked in the (rpm) chapter so that we at least no about the
> > existence of those facilities when we "search our system" even though
> > they do not have a traditional man page....
> > 
> > I think it's a neat idea....
> > 
> > --Rob
> > 
> Well there are two problems.
> 1. chapter 8 also has system commands..

Chapter 1 is supposed to be "user commands".  Chapter 8 is supposed to
be "maintenance commands" (used to be chapter 1m).

Chapter 2 is "system calls", chapter 3 is "library calls", chapter 4 are
"devices", chapter 5 are "file formats", chapter 6 was rarely used,
chapter 7 is "configuration files".

Lots of stuff got changed since the original layout was proposed back in
the old System 3 days.

> 2. Something has ruined this process so that now all I get from man -k
> or apropos is (rpm) files. It must have been an update of some sort. Any
> ideas out there? For example system-config-printer shows up as a (rpm)
> file.

There was never a man page for that program.  It's a python script for
the most part and being a GUI-based program, it's _supposed_ to be
self-explanatory.  Uh, huh.  :-/

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc.                http://www.internap.com -
-                                                                    -
-      Do you know how to save five drowning lawyers?  No?  GOOD!    -
----------------------------------------------------------------------




More information about the fedora-list mailing list