[maemo-users] man pages: dangling symlinks?

[From: Paul Hartman]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Francisco Diaz Trepat - gmail
<francisco.diaztrepat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi just out of curiousity I apt-get installed man to see man pages for
> the mplayer or other program
>
> the instalation threw a lot of:
>
> Updating index cache for path `/opt/man/fr/man1'. Wait...mandb:
> warning: /opt/man/fr/man1/ex.1.gz is a dangling symlink
> mandb: warning: /opt/man/fr/man1/fakeroot.1.gz is a dangling symlink
> mandb: warning: /opt/man/fr/man1/vi.1.gz is a dangling symlink
> mandb: warning: /opt/man/fr/man1/view.1.gz is a dangling symlink
> mandb: warning: /opt/man/fr/man1/faked.1.gz is a dangling symlink
>
>
> 3 questions:
>
> 1) what are dangling symlinks?

It is a way of saying the target of the symlink does not exist.

> 2) are they bad?

Only if you are trying to read the manpage that does not exist. :)

> 3) should I correct my installation due to these messages?

The cause could be related to the removal of documentation from some
packages, maybe the manpage alternative is defined by the package but
the actual man page is not installed to the filesystem. If you don't
need to read one of those 4 manpages then I don't think it's anything
to worry about.