Howto Install man pages if you must

JKnott

I usually search google for "freebsd man <command>" for the commands where the Linux man pages aren't suitable (yes, there are some differences).

lohphat

@jknott I wonder if the added man pages will be wiped during a pfSense release. Does it nuke everything under /usr/share so that the man/ directory is removed, and the copied man and apropos binaries in /usr/bin ?

JKnott

@lohphat

Can't say for certain, but I suspect it might.

daplumber

@lohphat Yes, yes it does nuke the manpages when FreeBSD gets updated.

daplumber

@daplumber said in Install man pages if you must:

cp -r man /usr/share

That copy should probably be:
cp -l man* apropos whatis /usr/bin

and yes, you'll need to do the:

chflags -R noschg *

to remove the based you created, I forgot to include that.

Interestingly “makewhatis” worked for me after the above cp.

lohphat

@jknott Confirmed. Just updated 22.05 -> 23.01 and man pages nuked.

daplumber

@lohphat Yup, any major update, and 22 -> 23 counts, will require the man pages to be reinstalled. Fir 23 you’ll also have to source the CURRENT base file instead of RELEASE to be consistent.

lohphat

@daplumber I couldn't find the 14.0-CURRENT release file for arm64 at that FTP site only 13.1-RELEASE and BETA[1|2] directories were available.

http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/arm64/

What concerns me is that pfSense 23.01 is running on FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT which isn't set to RELEASE until July 2023. https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/schedule/

daplumber

@lohphat No matter opinions on the issue the base file you want for the man pages is in: http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm64/14.0-CURRENT/

I’m not developing pfSense, so I’m not really concerned about the decision. It doesn’t seem to be affecting reliability or stability so far. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Jinxed it, sigh. Just noticed my dnsbl service seems to keep crashing and getting watchdogged, so I’ll need to check into that… later.

Dobby_

please don´t forget performing a proper "chmod"
after downloading files from outside.

FreeBSD chmod