Re: [Groff] man stopped working - groff: can't find `DESC' file

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Blake,

> I am running Ubuntu Linux 7.10.  man has worked fine until I installed
> the latest (current) groff.  The new groff seems to work fine but man
> doesn't anymore.  Now when I try 'man ls' I get:
> 
>     groff: can't find `DESC' file
>     groff:fatal error: invalid device `utf8'
>      Manual page ls(1) line ?/? (END)

man runs nroff with -Tutf8 as an argument with my locale settings.

    $ strace -f -o /tmp/t -e trace=execve man man
    $ grep utf8 /tmp/t
    23172 execve("/usr/bin/nroff", ["nroff", "-mandoc", "-rLL=136n",
        "-rLT=136n", "-Tutf8"], [/* 22 vars */]) = 0
    23175 execve("/usr/bin/groff", ["groff", "-mtty-char", "-Tutf8", "-mandoc",
        "-rLL=136n", "-rLT=136n"], [/* 23 vars */]) = 0
    23176 execve("/usr/bin/troff", ["troff", "-mtty-char", "-mandoc",
        "-rLL=136n", "-rLT=136n", "-Tutf8"], [/* 24 vars */]) = 0
    $
    $ locate utf8 | grep DESC
    /usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devutf8/DESC
    $

I'd guess the troff man's finding (is that the original Ubuntu one or
your installed version?) isn't finding font/devutf8/DESC, probably
because it's looking in the wrong place, e.g. in the other versions
files.

    $ strace -f -o /tmp/t -e trace=open man man
    $ grep DESC /tmp/1
    23154 open("/usr/share/groff/site-font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY) = -1
        ENOENT (No such file or directory)
    23154 open("/usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY) = 3
    23155 open("/usr/share/groff/site-font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY <unfinished 
...>
    23155 open("/usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY 
<unfinished ...>
    23156 open("/usr/share/groff/site-font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY <unfinished 
...>
    23156 open("/usr/share/groff/1.18.1/font/devutf8/DESC", O_RDONLY 
<unfinished ...>
    $

You should be able to use similar strace commands to diagnose your
problem.

Cheers,


Ralph.