Linux – man page only found after ran with root

filesystemslinuxmanpagesredhat-enterprise-linuxroot

When I try to run man page on my Red Hat as a normal user I get "No manual entry for zip"
If I change to root run: "man zip" and then I get the man page and afterwards I see the same man page as I did with root. Is there some kind of man page generation process taking place when I run it for the first time with root?

I have checked the /usr/share/man/man1/ there seem to be all the man pages for tools I usually use cp, ls, zip etc. I have also set $MANPATH envvar, but still no help.

Am I doing something wrong or the configuration on Red Hats differs from that of other Linux distros?

Best Answer

My guess is that your MANPATH is set incorrectly.

To test this, first try unsetting it:

$ unset MANPATH
$ man zip

If my guess is right, then you will man will use its default path and find the man page.

Also try comparing the output of echo $MANPATH as normal user vs root user.

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