# My system updating mandoc.db again and again



## Swapjim (Feb 18, 2017)

I keep getting an update on two mandoc.db files. It's /usr/share/man/mandoc.db and /usr/share/openssl/man/mandoc.db. I keep a log of the update messages and I can spot 22 updates on these files. However, there are other updates interloping the mandoc ones.

These two files got updates in Oct 22, 26, 29, Nov 5, 12, 19, 26, Dec 3, ..., Feb 4, 11, 18-- the latest one was about 10 hours ago:


```
src component not installed, skipped
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 4 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 11.0-RELEASE from update4.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Preparing to download files... done.

The following files will be updated as part of updating to 11.0-RELEASE-p7:
/usr/share/man/mandoc.db
/usr/share/openssl/man/mandoc.db
Installing updates... done.
```

What is this? What's happening?


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## SirDice (Feb 22, 2017)

The /usr/share/openssl/man/ directory shouldn't exist. It's not on any of my systems (9.3-RELEASE to 11-STABLE and everything in between). I'm wondering where it came from.

Edit, scratch that. I seem to have it on some 10.3-RELEASE systems but not all of them. It looks like I don't have a mandoc.db though.


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## SirDice (Feb 22, 2017)

If I understood it correctly these files are dynamically created. And because they're dynamically generated it's quite reasonable to assume they'll always be out of sync and it's probably safe to exclude them from updates. You can do so in /etc/freebsd-update.conf:

```
# Paths which start with anything matching an entry in an IgnorePaths
# statement will be ignored.
IgnorePaths /usr/share/man/mandoc.db
IgnorePaths /usr/share/openssl/man/mandoc.db
```


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## dch (Feb 23, 2017)

There is an errata for this now, https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-EN-17:04.mandoc.asc has the details.


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## Swapjim (Feb 23, 2017)

Thank you for correcting my heading. I inserted BB markup in there but I couldn't change it myself.

This installation runs 11.0-RELEASE-p8 and I think I upgraded from 10.3-RELEASE. Is there any way to see the upgrades I've done in this installation? E.g. from 10.2 to 10.3 to 11.0.



dch said:


> There is an errata for this now, https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-EN-17:04.mandoc.asc has the details.



Yes! That explains it fully. I recieved the update a few hours ago. I guess I should have posted this a while back, and after that file a bug report.

For now, I'll keep these mandoc.db files outside /etc/freebsd-update.conf to see what happens.


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## Swapjim (Mar 5, 2017)

On March 4, I got another update on the two .db files so the patch didn't fix the problem for me. I'll try excluding them in /etc/freebsd-update.conf.


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## pvoigt (Mar 5, 2017)

Swapjim said:


> On March 4, I got another update on the two .db files so the patch didn't fix the problem for me. I'll try excluding them in /etc/freebsd-update.conf.


Yes, I can confirm this yesterday update on the two .db files. I have not applied any patch because expected it to be included in 11.0-RELEASE-p8. Is this correct? I am wondering, how many installations are affected by this issue.


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## pvoigt (Mar 7, 2017)

It looks like the issue is not yet solved. I have just stumbled over this related thread and two referenced bugs within:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/58553/


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## trev (Sep 2, 2018)

I've been running into it for the last week AGAIN...


```
The following files will be updated as part of updating to 11.2-RELEASE-p2:
/usr/share/man/mandoc.db
```

I'll exclude it as suggested above.


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## denrad (Jul 3, 2019)

Same problem suddenly started happening on one of my systems running FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-p5

Solved by reinstalling all man pages.
Adding exclusions to `/etc/freebsd-update.conf` is not required.

Install the src matching your version, then run the following command:
`cd /usr/src ; make all-man maninstall`  ( Credit and thanks to Galactic_Dominator for this post )


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