'man' only displays an empty line

[pingpong]

My 'man' command doesn't work anymore. When I type 'man' for any existing Unix command I don't get any error message, but 'man' only displays a single empty line instead of the corresponding manpage.
The MANPATH is set correctly, and the manpages are indeed in /usr/share/man.
Oh, and it doesn't seem to be a problem of 'man' itself – I copied the 'man' file from another machine running MacOS 10.2.8 onto my computer. The 'man' worked correctly on the other machine, but doesn't on mine.
Can anybody help me out here?

[slur]

The only suggestion I can provide up-front is to run Repair Permissions in the Disk Utility application. There might be permission problems. Beyond that I'm not sure what you can do short of reinstalling the system.

[pingpong]

Thanks - I'm afraid I'll have to go for the re-install since I've run into other problems as well.