man-db: Cannot access any manuals

[seamusdemora (Seamus)]

I run macOS Mojave (10.14.6). I recently updated MacPorts to 2.11.5, but since then I've been unable to access any manuals (man pages) on my system. For example:

$ man bash
seems to start 'less', but all I get is this:
 Manual page bash(1) line ?/? (END) (press h for help or q to quit)

This also fails to work:

$ pwd
/opt/local/share/man
$ find . -type f -iname "*jdupe*"
./man1/jdupes.1.gz
$ man /opt/local/share/man/man1/jdupes.1.gz
man: command exited with status 127: /opt/local/libexec/man-db/zsoelim | tbl | /opt/local/bin/nroff -rLL=171n -rLT=171n -Tutf8 | col

Sorry - NO IDEA AT ALL re what's caused this! It's this way on ALL man pages I've tried.

How do I restore functionality?

~S

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Does the problem still happen if you don't have the man-db port installed, or if you explicitly run /usr/bin/man instead of man?

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Because I was thinking this might be a duplicate of #68647.

[seamusdemora (Seamus)]

So I tried both suggestions - results shown below

$ port installed man-db
The following ports are currently installed:
  man-db @2.13.0_0 (active) 
$ /usr/bin/man jdupes

... THIS WORKS! ...

However, I'm still at a loss wrt what the "FIX" for this is??

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Well depending on why you have the man-db port installed, a fix workaround could be to uninstall it.

If you want man-db installed because it has features you need that /usr/bin/man doesn't have, you might talk to the developers of man-db about this problem and see if they know why it happens or how to fix it.

[seamusdemora (Seamus)]

I do not recall installing 'man-db' at all... but I've had MacPorts on this system for quite some time.

At any rate, I've un-installed 'man-db' just now, and after starting a new terminal 'man jdupes' displays the man page satisfactorily.

Thanks for your help! :)

~S