[arch-general] What update left mandb scrambled?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 2019-02-26 at 14:33 +0200, Edvinas Valatka via arch-general
wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 8:57 AM David C. Rankin
> <drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
> > This was odd,
> > 
> >  $ apropos memcmp
> > memcmp: nothing appropriate.
> > 
> >  In fact, no man pages were available (checked 2 arch installs). I ended up
> > having to rebuild the database with 'mandb' and now all is well.
> > 
> >  My question is -- what did this? It must have occurred in the last couple of
> > days.
> > 
> After https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk?h=packages/man-db&id=a296a036a34944f714488f43bf576cca58bda604
> , you have to manualy enable man-db.timer

Seemingly not ;), see

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ systemctl status man-db.service
● man-db.service - Daily man-db regeneration
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/man-db.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)
     Docs: man:mandb(8)
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ sudo systemctl enable man-db.service
[sudo] password for rocketmouse: 
The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, Also=,
Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for template
units). This means they are not meant to be enabled using systemctl.
 
Possible reasons for having this kind of units are:
• A unit may be statically enabled by being symlinked from another unit's
  .wants/ or .requires/ directory.
• A unit's purpose may be to act as a helper for some other unit which has
  a requirement dependency on it.
• A unit may be started when needed via activation (socket, path, timer,
  D-Bus, udev, scripted systemctl call, ...).
• In case of template units, the unit is meant to be enabled with some
  instance name specified.