OpenVZ CentOS 7 - "man" command not installed by default?

emg

I just installed CentOS 7 on one of my OpenVZ VPSs, and was surprised to discover that the "man" command is not included by default. It is easy enough to install it, but my question is "why?"

Does CentOS expect you to read man pages in a web browser on the internet instead of using man at the console? Is the VPS provider supplying a "minimum" installation? ... or is there some other explanation?

Jarry

Must be something broken on the template your vps-hoster is using. Got installed centos7/64b-minimal on my vps, and "man" was of course included...

raindog308

emg said: I just installed CentOS 7 on one of my OpenVZ VPSs, and was surprised to discover that the "man" command is not included by default. It is easy enough to install it, but my question is "why?"

"by default" is kind of loaded here. You'd probably have to look in the RHEL docs or the Linux Standards Base to see if man is required. I suspect it's not.

Does CentOS expect you to read man pages in a web browser on the internet instead of using man at the console? Is the VPS provider supplying a "minimum" installation? ... or is there some other explanation?

I seem to recall TinyVZ didn't even install sshd by default...

There's some logic in only installing what you need...leaving out man pages is probably a bit much, though. But provider's templates are sometimes...entertaining.

BTW, CentOS expects you to read your man pages:

• via the man command

• via the info command, in a godawful emacs-style interface

• on freedesktop.org if you want to know about something core like, oh, systemd

Welcome to Linux. It's free. And it's overpriced.

hostnoob

It's 2016, people don't use man anymore. Just open up a thread on LET.

Neoon

@hostnoob said:
It's 2016, people don't use man anymore. Just open up a thread on LET.

ehab

you'll need man if you are doing a Linux certification test. or there is no internet.

what i came across is a man page not installed for a particulate command. Also in minimal docker containers. jist go ahead yum/apt-get install man.

raindog308

ehab said: Also in minimal docker containers

I think the idea with docker is not to go "in" the containers...I can't imagine why you'd need man there...?

ehab

@raindog308 i agree with most part until you are trying a package that has a man page

ehab

just continued the above ..... and you don't have the man locally

emg

@raindog308 said:

"by default" is kind of loaded here. You'd probably have to look in the RHEL docs or the Linux Standards Base to see if man is required. I suspect it's not.

[...]

Thank you for your insights.

When I said "by default", I meant whatever CentOS 7 template that this particular VPS provider has in their relatively small list of available operating systems. Based on previous queries, the provider gets them from the OpenVZ website. In the past, the provider did not update them - once they were put on the list, the provider did not bother to check OpenVZ for template updates.

I looked in the Linux Standards Base. If I am reading it correctly, "man" is required. It is listed in the Linux Standard Base Common Definitions; Chapter 2. Requirements; Section 2.2 Relevant Commands. See:

http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_5.0.0/LSB-Common/LSB-Common/rcommands.html#TBL-CORECMD

I did not bother to look in the RHEL docs.

P.S. to @ehab - That's what I did before I posted here: "yum install man". Still I have never encountered a Linux or Unix that didn't come with "man", in over 30 years of using them.

emg

Additional Update:

I tested the CentOS 6 (both 64 and 32 bit) templates and neither of them have "man", but CentOS 5 (64 bit) does have "man".

Furthermore, Debian 8 did not have "man". I tried installing it, but "apt-get install man" failed. The error read, "unable to locate package man." I ran apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade. After that, "apt-get install man" worked as expected.

I am not going to waste any more of my time on further testing, but it makes me wonder what other packages may be missing from the various distros supplied by this VPS provider, and how common this issue is for other VPS providers.

I hope this proves helpful to someone. Happy Fathers Day! to the relatively few people here who are old enough to be fathers.

rds100

There are more people wanting "minimal" templates than people wanting man preinstalled.

sin

emg said: I am not going to waste any more of my time on further testing, but it makes me wonder what other packages may be missing from the various distros supplied by this VPS provider, and how common this issue is for other VPS providers.

There's a lot of users who don't like to have a bunch of packages installed on a new server and like to tailor the server to their needs.

ehab

btw if you do this

export BROWSER=firefox
man -H chmod  # this brings up chmod in firefox, if it is in the path

awvnx

Just upgrade from Minimal installation to Base

yum groupinstall "Base"

There's a lot of packages like man-pages, words, ntpdate, bc, etc that it installs. On my server it's an extra 100 packages with dependencies and 60 MB of stuff.

sman

The minimal templates really are minimal so you might find some basic things missing. Usually yum groupinstall core && yum groupinstall base will take care of it.

emg

Thanks to all who commented, especially for the suggestions and hints.

I have seen "minimal" OpenVZ templates from other VPS providers. As some suggested, I suppose the ones from my provider are minimal templates, but they are not labeled as such.

sdglhm

Minimal and "Zen"-Minimal