malformed man pages [SOLVED]

[Sagara Wijetunga]

Dan Nelson wrote:
> In the last episode (Dec 05), Sagara Wijetunga said:
>   
>> Dan Nelson wrote:
>>     
>>> In the last episode (Dec 04), Sagara Wijetunga said:
>>>       
>>>> We have an issue on Tomahawk Desktop (an upcoming FreeBSD-based distro)
>>>> that all man pages malformed.
>>>>
>>>> Eg. man tar shows as follows:
>>>> 1mNAME0m
>>>>      1mtar 22m-- format of tape archive files
>>>>
>>>> 1mDESCRIPTION0m
>>>>      The 1mtar 22marchive format collects any number of files, 
>>>> directories, and
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> That looks sort of like malformed ANSI escape codes (bold would be "ESC
>>> [ 1 m", but the man utilities shouldn't be generating those.  If you run
>>> "man 5 tar | hd | head", what do you get?  I get this:
>>>
>>> 00000000  54 41 52 28 35 29 09 09  09 20 20 46 72 65 65 42  |TAR(5)...  FreeB|
>>> 00000010  53 44 20 46 69 6c 65 20  46 6f 72 6d 61 74 73 20  |SD File Formats |
>>> 00000020  4d 61 6e 75 61 6c 09 09  09 54 41 52 28 35 29 0a  |Manual...TAR(5).|
>>> 00000030  0a 4e 08 4e 41 08 41 4d  08 4d 45 08 45 0a 20 20  |.N.NA.AM.ME.E.  |
>>> 00000040  20 20 20 74 08 74 61 08  61 72 08 72 20 2d 2d 20  |   t.ta.ar.r -- |
>>> 00000050  66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20 6f  66 20 74 61 70 65 20 61  |format of tape a|
>>> 00000060  72 63 68 69 76 65 20 66  69 6c 65 73 0a 0a 44 08  |rchive files..D.|
>>> 00000070  44 45 08 45 53 08 53 43  08 43 52 08 52 49 08 49  |DE.ES.SC.CR.RI.I|
>>> 00000080  50 08 50 54 08 54 49 08  49 4f 08 4f 4e 08 4e 0a  |P.PT.TI.IO.ON.N.|
>>> 00000090  20 20 20 20 20 54 68 65  20 74 08 74 61 08 61 72  |     The t.ta.ar|
>>>
>>> The doubled letters are handled by /usr/bin/less and converted to bold
>>> before displaying.  If you get the same hd output as I have above, then
>>> we know that the manpage is fine, and your problem is in /usr/bin/less
>>> or your terminal type is incorrect.  If you see ANSI escape codes in the
>>> hd output, then we know the problem is with the manpage tools.
>>>       
>> Here is what I get:
>>
>> man 5 tar | hd | head
>>
>> /usr/share/groff/1.20.1/tmac/doc.tmac:3375: bad character definition
>>     
>
> ^ this looks suspicious. doc.tmac should live at /usr/share/tmac/doc.tmac
>
>   
>> 00000000  54 41 52 28 35 29 09 09  09 20 20 20 20 42 53 44  |TAR(5)...    BSD|
>> 00000010  20 46 69 6c 65 20 46 6f  72 6d 61 74 73 20 4d 61  |File  Formats Ma|
>> 00000020  6e 75 61 6c 09 09 09 54  41 52 28 35 29 0a 0a 31  |nual...TAR(5)..1|
>> 00000030  6d 4e 41 4d 45 30 6d 0a  20 20 20 20 20 31 6d 74  |mNAME0m.     1mt|
>> 00000040  61 72 20 32 32 6d 2d 2d  20 66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20  |ar 22m-- format |
>> 00000050  6f 66 20 74 61 70 65 20  61 72 63 68 69 76 65 20  |of tape archive |
>> 00000060  66 69 6c 65 73 0a 0a 31  6d 44 45 53 43 52 49 50  |files..1mDESCRIP|
>> 00000070  54 49 4f 4e 30 6d 0a 20  20 20 20 20 54 68 65 20  |TION0m.     The |
>> 00000080  31 6d 74 61 72 20 32 32  6d 61 72 63 68 69 76 65  |1mtar 22marchive|
>> 00000090  20 66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20  63 6f 6c 6c 65 63 74 73  | format collects|
>> Error executing formatting or display command.
>> system command exited with status 36096
>> No entry for tar in section 5 of the manual
>>     
>
> ^ the above 3 lines you can ignore; man is just complaining because we
> ^ stopped reading its output after a few lines. 
>
>   
>> We use /usr/bin/less from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/less, the 
>> less-382.tar.gz, unpatched.
>>
>> Does the less need to be patched in FreeBSD? If so, is there such a 
>> patch exist?
>>     
>
> Since your output differs from mine, the manpages are getting damaged before
> they reach /usr/bin/less.
>
> Have you maybe installed your own copy of GNU groff?  The original source
> enables ANSI escapes in manpages, but the version in FreeBSD disables them. 
> Make sure your /usr/share/tmac/troffrc matches the content at
> http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/stable/8/contrib/groff/tmac/troffrc?view=markup
> , especially the last 10 lines or so, and check for other installations of
> groff.
>
>   
Yes, we have installed the groff-1.20.1.tar.gz from 
http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/ .

Patch our troffrc to match FreeBSD troffrc solved the problem. Any idea 
is this all we got to do? Anyway, Dan, thank you very much for the info.

Now all most all man pages I checked looks ok except for ls. The man 
page for ls still looks malformed, may be it is cached somewhere.

Regards
Sagara