Package: man-db Version: 2.9.3-2 Followup-For: Bug #971965 X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
The issue is that groff HTML driver, is not available in groff-base. But it is in groff. man doesn't depend on groff, just groff-base. groff is in suggested packages instead. Without groff package installed, groff from groff-base shows this on stderr: $ groff -mandoc -Thtml groff: can't find 'DESC' file groff: fatal error: invalid device 'html' (try installing the 'groff' package?) $ (yes, it is on stderr) It would be nice, if the man showed diagnostic better, because all it does right now is just this: # man --html man man: command exited with status 3: (cd /tmp/hmanRcjIGc && /usr/lib/man-db/zsoelim) | (cd /tmp/hmanRcjIGc && /usr/lib/man-db/manconv -f UTF-8:ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8//IGNORE) | (cd /tmp/hmanRcjIGc && preconv -e UTF-8) | (cd /tmp/hmanRcjIGc && tbl) | (cd /tmp/hmanRcjIGc && groff -mandoc -Thtml) # It looks to me, that man is unintentionally closing stderr or doing a stderr redirect to dev null, which makes it harder than it needs to be. Regards, Witold -- System Information: Debian Release: bullseye/sid APT prefers unstable-debug APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.9.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/32 CPU threads) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages man-db depends on: ii bsdextrautils 2.36.1-5 ii bsdmainutils 12.1.7 ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.74 ii dpkg 1.20.7.1 ii groff-base 1.22.4-5 ii libc6 2.31-9 ii libgdbm6 1.18.1-5.1 ii libpipeline1 1.5.3-1 ii libseccomp2 2.5.1-1 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-2 man-db recommends no packages. Versions of packages man-db suggests: ii apparmor 2.13.6-3 ii firefox-esr [www-browser] 78.6.1esr-1 ii google-chrome-stable [www-browser] 87.0.4280.141-1 ii groff 1.22.4-5 ii less 551-2 ii links [www-browser] 2.21-1 ii lynx [www-browser] 2.9.0dev.6-1 ii w3m [www-browser] 0.5.3+git20210102-1 -- debconf information: man-db/auto-update: true man-db/install-setuid: false
