man not working

S

Salecta

Registered
I don't know what I did - if anything, but now man doesn't work.

if I type:

man ls

it says:

/usr/bin/more: permission denied: .DS_Store [1]
Usage: CFInforPlistConverter <bundlePath> <infoPlistPath> <bundleType>

I think it is caused by "more" not working, which also comes up with an error message.
 
Did you login as root and browse around in the UNIX directories? There shouldn't be any .DS_Store files unless you browsed it with the Finder.

You could do this to try to fix your problem:
Code: 
sudo find /usr/bin -name ".DS_Store" -exec rm {} \;
 
Thankyou for the reply.

I always log in as root, because sudo doesn't accept my root password - whereas the OSX login does. Also, when logged in as anyone but root, the up arrow does not scroll through previous commands, it just puts ^[[A on the command line. I am still working on getting this machine to work as our MySQL/Apache server, I have worked out how to get it to operate without using the root account, but if I want to change anything I have to log in as root.

If browsing using the finder logged in as root something I shouldn't do? I can't seem to get to the /usr directory anyway.

I tried that command, and I think it did delete a file, it seemed successful in what it did, but it didn't fix man/more.
 
PLEASE, please read the various posts about enabling the root user and the associated risks. Apple ships OS X with the root user disabled for very, very good reasons. Largely, they boil down to 1). security, so your system isn't compromised, and 2). so uninformed users don't accidently do something they shouldn't and hose their system.

root is disabled on my system. I get by with either sudo or in rare cases sudo -s. You should never need to enable and login as the root user or even su root. Also, Brian Hill wrote a GUI application called Pseudo that will allow you to launch GUI applications (including the Finder) with Administrator (sudo) privileges. You should never need to login to the Finder as root.

Back to the problem at hand... Did you perhaps try to browse the man directories while logged in the finder as root? If so, this will remove the .DS_Store file that seems to be causing your man errors:

Code: 
sudo find /usr/share/man/man1/ -name ".DS_Store" -exec rm {} \;
 
like I said; sudo rejects my password. The server software was installed by someone else, I think the passwords for root login to the GUI and root login to the command line are different somehow.... is this possible? I looked in NetInfo and saw amongst the properties for user - root
tim_password and passwd. Are these the two passwords?

Its not too much of a stress if I stuff something up here. I think we should do a re-install of the OS anyway.

I typed (logged on as root)

find /usr/share/man/man1/ -name ".DS_Store"

and it didn't find anything.
 
sudo asks for your personal accounts password, not roots...and its advised that you do not log in as root if you do not have to, you can do severe damage without knowing it done...

You could also try:
sudo find / -name .DS_Store -exec chown username:wheel {} \;
where username is your username... it set's all .DS_Store-files owned by you, thus allowing you in or something.
 
In other words, to use sudo, you must:
1) log in as an Admin user - these are defined in the System Preferences.

2) get into the terminal (duh) and type sudo <command> or sudo -s

3) now type *your* password.

Like the others said, I really would try and avoide logging in as root all together.

BTW, if you would prefer to authenticate with root's password, just use the binary su.

(so, type su, hit return, and type root's password and hit return)

As for the different shell behavior under the root user, try copying your shell enviroment files from ~root to ~user where ~user is your user name. Example for bash user:

cp ~root/.bashrc ~user/.bashrc

for tcsh, the default osx shell I believe this will work:

cp ~root/.cshrc ~user/.cshrc

You may wish to back up your old shell config files first. ~/.login may also be a factor.

And, you will have to own the files to your user. for example:

[root@macintosh ~]> chown user:wheel ~user/.bashrc
 
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