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I installed a locally compiled version of OpenSSL and I forgot to skip the man pages. Now I can't access the man page for the OS's passwd(1).

  • OS: Raspberry's Debian Stretch (with GUI)
  • OpenSSL: 1.1.1g

Using apropos gave me a hint that there are also extensions to be browsed with -e flag (man man):

passwd(1) - change user password passwd(1ssl) - compute password hashes

However, none of the following worked for me

  • man passwd
  • man 1 passwd (from answer but still doesn't work)
  • man -s 1 passwd
  • man -s 1 -e '' passwd
  • man -s 1 -e posix passwd

It seems that man will default to the ssl extension, which makes me wonder... How can I look at the original passwd(1) man page?

Note: no uninstalling allowed.

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  • 1
    What Operating System is it? Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 16:42
  • I am working on an R-Pi with Debian Buster Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 18:46
  • Can you please share the output of man -f passwd (which should list passwd(1) and passwd(1ssl), as you already posted) and man -aw passwd? (Hoping your man version supports these options). I suspect you have two files named passwd.1.gz (actually, more than one passwd.1, with an optional extension) in distinct directories and that your question has been misread. Commented Aug 29, 2020 at 11:30
  • Depending on your man implementation you may be interested in Why man -k or Apropos cannot find some pages while man -a can? Commented Sep 29, 2020 at 21:25

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

You were close - don't use any flag, just man <section> command:

$ man 1 passwd ... $ man 1ssl passwd ...

(I confirmed this on Ubuntu 20.04, which happens to default to section 1 when none specified.)

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  • I hopped into the terminal and tested it. It does not work. man 1 passwd still shows the entry for openssl-passwd Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 18:47
  • That's weird; I've been using the man command in that way since 1995 on SunOS. Check man man - it should say something like man [section] command where section is optional. Do you have man aliased in some way? What does type -f man tell you? Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 19:43
  • man [man options] [[section] page ...] ... man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/man.1.html Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 19:45
  • type -f man outputs man is /usr/bin/man Commented Aug 6, 2020 at 7:43
1

I found a temporary solution with the -a flag and skip the OpenSSL page

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  • If anybody proposes something better, I'll mark it as the answer Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 16:23

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