[CLUE-Tech] Still Fighting with man -k

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sat, 30 Nov 2002 20:12:41 -0700
Jeffery Cann <fabian at jefferycann.com> wrote:

> Jed,
> 
> I think this is rather system dependant.  But, I went snooping around my
> 
> Mandrake 8.2 server and found the following:
> 
> /etc/cron.daily/makewhatis.cron
> 
> -------------------- makewhatis.cron ------------------
> #!/bin/bash
> LOCKFILE=/var/lock/makewhatis.lock
> 
> # the lockfile is not meant to be perfect, it's just in case the
> # two makewhatis cron scripts get run close to each other to keep
> # them from stepping on each other's toes.  The worst that will
> # happen is that they will temporarily corrupt the database...
> [ -f $LOCKFILE ] && exit 0
> trap "rm -f $LOCKFILE" EXIT
> touch $LOCKFILE
> makewhatis -w
> exit 0
> ------------------------ end script -----------------------
> 
> Which makes me wonder two things:
> 
> 1. Why your makewhatis file would be open and thus killed during a
> system shutdown.  Unless you're updating the whatis database file, it
> really shouldn't be open for writing, right?

I can't think of any reason. I do know that the makewhatis.cron isn't
running. There aren't any schedules that would have it doing so at the
time I shut the machine down.

> 2.  Is there some type of lock file scheme that's happening?

I don't think so.

> 3.  Did you check your init scripts for (re)building the whatis
> database?

Yep, I've looked all through them. None of them do anything to the whatis
db.

jed
-- 
We're frogs who are getting boiled in a pot full of single-character
morphemes, and we don't notice. - Larry Wall; Perl6, Apocalypse 5