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I run RaspBMC.

If I recall correctly, the man utility is NOT installed by default with RaspBMC (although I may be mistaken).

The problem is, packages installed prior to installing the actual man utility do not install their man pages. This includes the packages that come pre-installed with the system.

Example: I tried with udisks-glue (which comes pre-installed)

$ man udisks-glue
No manual entry for udisks-glue

After re-installing that package, the man page is there.

$ apt-get remove udisks-glue
$ apt-get install udisks-glue
$ man udisks-glue
[Man page gets displayed]

The question is: can I somehow install all the missing man pages easily?

From what I can see, installing the man pages is a step that's run for each apt-get install command: 

Unpacking udisks-glue (from .../udisks-glue_1.3.4-1_armhf.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
[...]

Using divide-and-conquer, I assume this could be obtained by:

  1. getting a list of all installed packages ( dpkg -l | grep ??? | cut ??? | ??? )
  2. finding a way to tell apt-get to re-install a package without messing with the config (a remove + install kinda fits the bill, but I don't think it plays nice with dependencies)
    EDIT: this should do it:
    sudo apt-get install --reinstall packagename
  3. run 2. over each item in 1.
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  • Has this been solved? If so, please mark the answer that fixed it as such. We're trying to get this site up to par and the Q:A ratio is really bad. Thanks!
    – RPiAwesomeness
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 7:52
  • Cross posted with answer (from the same OP) here.
    – Sparhawk
    Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 5:28

2 Answers 2

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1

if you need a working linux with all man pages included, why don't you get another SD card and install Raspbian there?

RaspBMC is very stripped/limited, and I would not even think about using is as a general purpose linux.

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  • Well, I'm lazy :) plus so far, RaspBMC fit the bill just fine as a general-purpose linux, and handled everything I threw at it. Umm... except C#/Mono
    – Cristian Diaconescu
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 22:18
  • from my experience, raspbmc does not like very much when I use apt-get to reinstall packages at will. might get broken eventually.
    – lenik
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 22:31
1

As far as I know installing a program installs its man page(s) as well, so AFAIK you would have to uninstall and the reinstall any program you want the man pages for.

Or, option 2, you can look on the either http://www.linuxmanpages.com or manpages.debian.net, and read them there.
I would go for the manpages.debian.net, as Raspbmc (and Raspbian) is based off Debian, so that site would be the closest you would get to an official Raspbmc/Raspbian man page site.

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