# tmux doesn't like apropos?



## ShelLuser (Jul 13, 2013)

Hi gang!

The weirdest thing: I'm using tmux and was looking for the exact name(s) of some of the base64 methods ('modules') available on my system. So I used apropos only to end up with...  Nothing?


```
smtp2:/home/peter $ apropos base64
smtp2:/home/peter $ whatis base64
smtp2:/home/peter $ apropos base64 | wc -l
       3
```
I noticed because at first I ran `apropos base64 | less` and only when I was about to look deeper into this did I use it without the pager and noticed nothing had returned.

The bizarre part is that as soon as I quit tmux everything behaves as normal:


```
smtp2:/home/peter $ apropos base64
BIO_f_base64(3)          - base64 BIO filter
APR::Base64(3)           - Perl API for APR base64 encoding/decoding functionality
MIME::Base64(3)          - Encoding and decoding of base64 strings
```
I did some diving into this and also noticed the cause of my problem:


```
smtp2:/home/peter $ echo $PAGER
less -Fe
```
I'm using less as my system pager, but also instructed it to automatically exit as soon as some output already fits on the screen (-F) and not to quit immediately when I'm at the end of a text collection (-e).

Also; this behaviour doesn't happen with screen either so I'm tempted to blame tmux.

Obvious question: Has anyone else ever noticed something like this? I'm tempted to blame tmux like I said, but before I start writing up a bug report of some sort figured I'd better dump this in here first.


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## kpa (Jul 13, 2013)

It's something in less(1) combined with sysutils/tmux. The command works fine for me inside tmux with my usual PAGER sysutils/vimpager. It also works if I set PAGER to more(1).


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