[Bug 1932084] Re: MANPAGER="grep -F {" man systemd.exec leads to man: command exited with status 1: sed -e ...

Mon Jan 24 04:22:16 UTC 2022

The problem with fixing this as you describe ("no output at all") is
that it would make it difficult to understand what's going on in the
more common case where your configured pager is accidentally not
installed.  Would you accept a less ugly error message (somehow)?

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Title:
  MANPAGER="grep -F {" man systemd.exec leads to man: command exited
  with status 1: sed -e ...

Status in man-db package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Hello, I wanted to search the systemd.exec(5) manpage for an opening
  brace character, {, in a manner that would be easy to copy-and-paste
  the results if there were any. This unfortunately gives an error
  message:

  $ MANPAGER="grep -F {" man systemd.exec
  man: command exited with status 1: sed -e '/^[[:space:]]*$/{ N; /^[[:space:]]*\n[[:space:]]*$/D; }' | LESS=-ix8RmPm Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$PM Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$ MAN_PN=systemd\.exec(5) grep -F {
  $ MANPAGER="grep -F {" man apparmor
                 profile foo flags=(audit) { ... }
  $ 

  It works fine on a simple example, apparmor(7). Other patterns work
  with systemd.exec(5):

  $ MANPAGER="grep -F aa" man systemd.exec
                 StateDirectory=aaa/bbb ccc
             then the environment variable "RUNTIME_DIRECTORY" is set with "/run/foo/bar", and "STATE_DIRECTORY" is set with "/var/lib/aaa/bbb:/var/lib/ccc".
  $ 

  Thus I think when the pager doesn't provide any output we get an ugly
  error message. I expected no output at all if the pattern doesn't
  match.

  Thanks

  And now the --debug output:

  $ MANPAGER="grep -F {" man --debug -s 5 systemd.exec
  ruid=1000, euid=1000
  rgid=1000, egid=1000
  ++priv_drop_count = 1
  From the config file /etc/manpath.config:
    Mandatory mandir `/usr/man'.
    Mandatory mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Mandatory mandir `/usr/local/share/man'.
    Path `/bin' mapped to mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Path `/usr/bin' mapped to mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Path `/sbin' mapped to mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Path `/usr/sbin' mapped to mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Path `/usr/local/bin' mapped to mandir `/usr/local/man'.
    Path `/usr/local/bin' mapped to mandir `/usr/local/share/man'.
    Path `/usr/local/sbin' mapped to mandir `/usr/local/man'.
    Path `/usr/local/sbin' mapped to mandir `/usr/local/share/man'.
    Path `/usr/X11R6/bin' mapped to mandir `/usr/X11R6/man'.
    Path `/usr/bin/X11' mapped to mandir `/usr/X11R6/man'.
    Path `/usr/games' mapped to mandir `/usr/share/man'.
    Path `/opt/bin' mapped to mandir `/opt/man'.
    Path `/opt/sbin' mapped to mandir `/opt/man'.
    Global mandir `/usr/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/fsstnd'.
    Global mandir `/usr/share/man', catdir `/var/cache/man'.
    Global mandir `/usr/local/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/oldlocal'.
    Global mandir `/usr/local/share/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/local'.
    Global mandir `/usr/X11R6/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/X11R6'.
    Global mandir `/opt/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/opt'.
    Global mandir `/snap/man', catdir `/var/cache/man/snap'.
    Added sections: `1', `n', `l', `8', `3', `2', `3posix', `3pm', `3perl', `3am', `5', `4', `9', `6', `7'.
  is a tty
  using grep -F { as pager
  path directory /home/sarnold/bin is not in the config file
  path directory /usr/local/sbin is in the config file
    adding /usr/local/man to manpath
    adding /usr/local/share/man to manpath
  path directory /usr/local/bin is in the config file
  path directory /usr/sbin is in the config file
    adding /usr/share/man to manpath
  path directory /usr/bin is in the config file
  path directory /sbin is in the config file
  path directory /bin is in the config file
  path directory /usr/games is in the config file
  path directory /usr/local/games is not in the config file
  path directory /snap/bin is not in the config file
  adding mandatory man directories
  warning: /usr/man: No such file or directory
  add_nls_manpaths(): processing /usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man
  checking for locale en_US.UTF-8
  adding /usr/local/man to manpathlist
  adding /usr/share/man to manpathlist
  final search path = /usr/local/man:/usr/share/man
  --priv_drop_count = 0
  searching in /usr/local/man, section 5
  trying section 5 with globbing
  Layout is GNU (1)
  update_directory_cache /usr/local/man: miss
  globbing pattern in /usr/local/man: man5*
  update_directory_cache /usr/local/man: hit
  globbing pattern in /usr/local/man: cat5*
  Failed to open /var/cache/man/oldlocal/index.db O_RDONLY
  searching in /usr/share/man, section 5
  trying section 5 with globbing
  update_directory_cache /usr/share/man: miss
  globbing pattern in /usr/share/man: man5*
  matched: /usr/share/man/man5
  update_directory_cache /usr/share/man/man5: miss
  globbing pattern in /usr/share/man/man5: systemd.exec.5*
  matched: /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz

  ult_src: File /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz in mantree /usr/share/man
  loading seccomp filter (permissive: 0)
  candidate: 0 0 systemd.exec /usr/share/man /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz A - 5 5
  Checking physical location: /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz

  ult_src: File /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz in mantree /usr/share/man
  loading seccomp filter (permissive: 0)
  found ultimate source file /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz
  converted /usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz to /usr/share/man/cat5/systemd.exec.5.gz
  is_changed: a=/usr/share/man/man5/systemd.exec.5.gz, b=/usr/share/man/cat5/systemd.exec.5.gz (-2)
  converted /var/cache/man/cat5/systemd.exec.5.gz to /var/cache/man/cat5/systemd.exec.5.gz
  will try cat file /var/cache/man/cat5/systemd.exec.5.gz
  loading seccomp filter (permissive: 0)
  pre-processors `t' from file
  page_encoding = ISO-8859-1
  source_encoding = ISO-8859-1
  locale_charset = UTF-8
  roff_device (locale) = utf8
  roff_encoding = ISO-8859-1
  output_encoding = UTF-8
  less_charset = utf-8
  Terminal width 172
  Terminal width 172 not within cat page range [80, 80]
  Using 167-character lines
  formatted_encoding = UTF-8
  format: 1, save_cat: 0, found: 1
  add_output_iconv: source UTF-8, target UTF-8
  Setting LESS to -ix8RmPm Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$PM Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$
  Setting MAN_PN to systemd\.exec(5)
  ++priv_drop_count = 1
  man: command exited with status 1: sed -e '/^[[:space:]]*$/{ N; /^[[:space:]]*\n[[:space:]]*$/D; }' | LESS=-ix8RmPm Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$PM Manual page systemd\.exec(5) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e (END):?pB %pB\%.. (press h for help or q to quit)$ MAN_PN=systemd\.exec(5) grep -F {
  $

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: man-db 2.9.1-1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-74.83-generic 5.4.114
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-74-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.18
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  Date: Wed Jun 16 00:15:22 2021
  SourcePackage: man-db
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-01-24 (508 days ago)

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