man <command> doesn't display anything after package installation with conda on Ubuntu 17.10
When I try to get the manpages with man
it seems to display nothing and behaves as though I just pressed enter
~$ man ls
~$ man man
I have tried solutions from these pages to no avail
question1 question2. This last question matches my condition exactly but the fixes doesn't seem to work. Although info
seems to work.
Here are some additional information:
~$ man --version
man 2.7.6.1
~$ type -p man
/usr/bin/man
~$ type -t man
file
~$ manpath
/home/abhilash/anaconda3/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/man
~$ uname -a
Linux abhilash-ThinkPad-T440 4.13.0-38-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 14 15:20:44 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
UPDATE
~$ type -a man
man is /usr/bin/man
~$ env | grep 'PAGER\|^MAN'
~$
UPDATE 2
~$ ls -1 /usr/share/man/man1 | wc -l
2145
~$ ls -l "$(type -p pager)"
lrwxrwxrwx 1 abhilash abhilash 18 Apr 16 18:43 /home/abhilash/anaconda3/bin/pager -> ../lib/R/bin/pager
~$ ls -l "$(readlink "$(type -p pager)")"
ls: cannot access '../lib/R/bin/pager': No such file or directory
Solution 1:
Turns out, after the anaconda installation or some package installation through conda, the default pager is re-written. The exact cause of this is unknown. Just some more information
~$ anaconda --version
anaconda Command line client (version 1.6.9)
~$ conda --version
conda 4.4.10
~$ history | grep conda
108 bash Anaconda3-5.1.0-Linux-x86_64.sh
110 anaconda-navigator
181 anaconda-navigator
187 anaconda-navigator
311 conda info --envs
312 conda install rpy2
313 conda search PySide
314 conda search Python
366 conda install findspark
367 conda info --envs
370 conda install findspark
373 conda search findspark
374 conda install -c conda-forge findspark
495 anaconda --version
496 conda --version
497 conda list
499 history | grep conda
My strongest guess is that rpy2 installation had this effect of changing the pager information given the time of events.
But these are the steps I took to solve the issue.
~$ update-alternatives --display pager
pager - auto mode
link best version is /bin/less
link currently points to /bin/less
link pager is /usr/bin/pager
slave pager.1.gz is /usr/share/man/man1/pager.1.gz
/bin/less - priority 77
slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/less.1.gz
/bin/more - priority 50
slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/more.1.gz
~$ rm /home/abhilash/anaconda3/bin/pager
Ensure that the pager defaults to the one that came with man-db by typing the following to confirm
~$ ls -l "$(type -p pager)"
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 Apr 9 13:57 /usr/bin/pager -> /etc/alternatives/pager
This solution was arrived at after going through this link in an attempt to set the pager to default.
Thanks to glenn and terdon for their inputs in solving this issue.