Bug 55018

Summary: man behaves badly
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: John Berninger <johnw>
Component: manAssignee: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Ben Levenson <benl>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.2Keywords: Security
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2001-10-25 08:52:32 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 John Berninger 2001-10-24 14:19:33 UTC 
Description of Problem:
when running the "man /etc/shadow" command, the man executable attempts to
read the actual /etc/shadow file and display it to the screen; when run as
root, the file is displayed, otherwise, the message "/etc/shadow:
Permission denied" appears immediately prior to "No manual entry for
/etc/shadow"

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
man-1.5i2-0.7x and man-1.5i2-6

How Reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. man /etc/shadow
2. 
3. 

Actual Results:
see above

Expected Results:
see above

Additional Information:
Comment 1 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2001-10-24 14:25:45 UTC 
Why do you think this is a problem?

I think it's a feature (man /usr/src/foo/doc/foo.1 can be quite useful at 
times).

Someone with root access is probably not stupid enough to type "man 
/etc/shadow" while someone is watching his screen (and even then, nobody will 
be able to remember the MD5 hashes).
Comment 2 John Berninger 2001-10-24 14:34:01 UTC 
This is (IMHO) a problem from the standpoint that I want to get information on
the /etc/shadow file, I don't want it to try to use the /etc/shadow file as the
actual man page.  

I agree that "man /usr/src/foo/file.1" can be useful; it seems (to me at least)
too confusing, though - perhaps a switch telling man to "use the argument as the
man file name, not the man query term" would work just as well (i.e. "man -f
/usr/src/foo/file.1")?
Comment 3 Michael Schwendt 2001-10-25 08:50:16 UTC 
"man 5 shadow" is what you want.
Comment 4 Michael Schwendt 2001-10-25 08:52:27 UTC 
Or "whatis shadow".
Comment 5 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2001-10-25 09:00:08 UTC 
I think by using a "/", you clearly indicate you want a file, so an extra 
switch is not necessary.