Is there an easy way to turn off all styling on man pages? Colors, bold, italics, everything… If not, what is an uneasy way?
How to disable styling on man pages
colorsmanterminal
Related Solutions
Starting from @derobert's answer, I worked my way to getting exactly the current version of all packages to reinstall.
Short version:
sudo dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | sed 's/ */\t/g' |cut -f 2,3 | sed 's/\t/=/' | xargs apt-get install --reinstall -y --ignore-missing
Explained:
The key is actually specifying the required version of each package.
The general command is:
apt-get install --reinstall <package>=<version>
Breaking down the long command line:
$ dpkg -l
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-===========================================================-==================================-============-========================================================================
ii adduser 3.113+nmu3 all add and remove users and groups
ii apt 0.9.7.8+rpi1 armhf commandline package manager
ii apt-utils 0.9.7.8+rpi1 armhf package managment related utility programs
ii aptitude-common 0.6.8.2-1 all architecture indepedent files for the aptitude package manager
ii atmel-firmware 1.3-4 all Firmware for Atmel at76c50x wireless networking chips.
$ dpkg -l | grep '^ii '
...gets rid of the header lines and a few packages with status 'hold
' (marked as hi
instead of ii
)
$ dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | sed 's/ */\t/g'
... converts any number of spaces to a single TAB character, preparing the ground for cut
.
(Btw: why, oh why, doesn't sed
support x+
regex for "character x, one or more times"? It can be emulated with xx*
- meaning 'x' once followed by 'x' zero or more times)
The output looks like this:
ii adduser 3.113+nmu3 all add and remove users and groups
ii apt 0.9.7.8+rpi1 armhf commandline package manager
ii apt-utils 0.9.7.8+rpi1 armhf package managment related utility programs
ii aptitude-common 0.6.8.2-1 all architecture indepedent files for the aptitude package manager
ii atmel-firmware 1.3-4 all Firmware for Atmel at76c50x wireless networking chips.
Next:
$ dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | sed 's/ */\t/g' | cut -f 2,3 | sed 's/\t/=/'
...gets the name and version of each package (the 2nd and 3rd fields), and replaces the tab that separates them with an '='
adduser=3.113+nmu3
apt=0.9.7.8+rpi1
apt-utils=0.9.7.8+rpi1
aptitude-common=0.6.8.2-1
atmel-firmware=1.3-4
Finally, pipe each of the above to apt-get as a long list of arguments using xargs
.
Notice the parameter --ignore-missing
- this command is run as 'best effort' - I don't want the updating to stop because some packages are not available to reinstall (those will stay unmodified)
$ dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | sed 's/ */\t/g' |cut -f 2,3 | sed 's/\t/=/' | xargs apt-get install --reinstall --ignore-missing
While testing, I also added a --dry-run
argument to apt-get.
Solaris 10's default MANPATH
is /usr/share/man
. You can add values to it:
MANPATH="/usr/share/man:/opt/sfw/man"
See the man page for more information.
Solaris 11's default MANPATH
is derived from PATH
, so you wouldn't need to set the environment variable.
Best Answer
man
's output is formatted by groff, and more specifically the last step is post-processing by grotty, which is responsible for turning the device-independent output ofgroff
into something that can be displayed on a terminal.So, the easiest option is to force
grotty
to use the simplest tty available, with no fancy formatting capabilities, that is the "dumb" terminal: