Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 14:38:55 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Chuck <crtb@capecod.net> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why is man so slow? Message-ID: <19971107143855.42884@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <199711070338.WAA02551@capecod.net>; from Chuck on Thu, Nov 06, 1997 at 10:38:02PM -0500 References: <199711070338.WAA02551@capecod.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, Nov 06, 1997 at 10:38:02PM -0500, Chuck wrote: > In FreeBSD-2.0.5 and now 2.2.2R, I find the man command to be > ridiculously slow. If I time "zcat /usr/share/man/man1/tar.1.gz" > it takes less than 1 sec. wall clock time. But "man tar" takes a > full 20 seconds before anything appears. > > And /usr/share/man/man1/tar.1.gz is the only file in $MANPATH with > a name matching "tar.*". It's only 4894 bytes long! Could it be that you are missing the directories /usr/share/man/cat[1-9], or they are not writeable? When a new version of the system is installed, the contents of these directories are removed, and the first time you access a man page, it needs to be formatted with nroff. It then *tries* to save the formatted man page in the cat* hierarchy, but if it doesn't succeed, it won't complain, and it will reformat the man page every time. 20 seconds is still *very* slow. Greg
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19971107143855.42884>