Bug 481650

Summary:	makewhat fails if /usr is read-only
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Bruce Jerrick <bmj001>
Component:	man	Assignee:	Ivana Varekova <varekova>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	10	CC:	varekova
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-02-12 14:08:14 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Bruce Jerrick 2009-01-26 20:27:55 UTC

Description of problem:
/usr/sbin/makewhatis skips man directories if they're read-only, because it
  thinks the 'whatis' database files go there.  In reality, the database is
  /var/cache/man/whatis .

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
man-1.6f-11.fc10

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. [Re-]mount /usr read-only
2. Run 'makewhatis -w -v'
  
Actual results:
Messages for virtually all man page directories, such as:
  skipping /usr/share/man - directory is readonly 
and the database file is not rebuilt.

Expected results:
Silence, with a new database file.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Bruce Jerrick 2009-01-30 20:24:20 UTC

The fix is simple -- the entire 'if' statement following this comment
can be removed (it's completely superfluous; the 'whatis' files are no
longer in the man dirs):

    # if $mandir is on a readonly partition, and the whatis file
    # is not a symlink, then let's skip trying to update it
    if ...
    ...
    fi

This is a better description of what a user sees:
On a freshly installed system (with no /var/cache/man/whatis
database yet):

    % man -k man
    man: nothing appropriate

If /usr is read-only, after running 'makewhatis', the same thing happens.

Comment 2 Ivana Varekova 2009-02-12 14:08:14 UTC

Thanks. Fixed in man-1.6f-16.fc11.