INFOPATH not working

Fred Ma

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Apr 13, 2004, 1:08:37 AM4/13/04

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Hello,

Our sys admin installed info not too long ago. It lives in /opt/info.
As long as I type

info -f /opt/texinfo/info/texinfo

it works fine. If I type "info texinfo" it hangs for aboug 20 seconds
and comes back with

info: dir: No such file or directory

The only time I experienced such a temporary hanging in the past is when
solaris is searching through some paths and encounters a soft link to
a network file/directory which is not available. It seems that it
takes that long to realize that the link's target is not available.

To get more control over where info searches, I browsed around the
info pages and found that I can set INFOPATH (I'm not using emacs,
just info standalone). I did:

export INFOPATH=/opt/texinfo/info/

on the bash command line, but the response to "info info" is still the
same.

Can anyone suggest something else to try to either solve the problem
of info's search directories, or to troubleshoot what is going on?
Thanks.

Fred
--
Fred Ma
Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1S 5B6

Logan Shaw

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Apr 13, 2004, 1:15:26 AM4/13/04

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Fred Ma wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Our sys admin installed info not too long ago. It lives in /opt/info.
> As long as I type
>
> info -f /opt/texinfo/info/texinfo
>
> it works fine. If I type "info texinfo" it hangs for aboug 20 seconds
> and comes back with
>
> info: dir: No such file or directory

Do "truss -d info texinfo 2>truss.out" and then review truss.out
to see what too so long and hopefully get some clues as to what
it was doing before (and after).

- Logan

Paul Eggert

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Apr 13, 2004, 1:43:15 AM4/13/04

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At 13 Apr 2004 05:08:37 GMT, Fred Ma <f...@doe.carleton.ca> writes:

> Our sys admin installed info not too long ago. It lives in /opt/info.
> As long as I type
>
> info -f /opt/texinfo/info/texinfo
>
> it works fine. If I type "info texinfo" it hangs for aboug 20 seconds
> and comes back with
>
> info: dir: No such file or directory

Sounds like it wasn't installed correctly. By default, if "info"
can't find something, it tries "man"; and if that doesn't work, it
tries to show the directory. It sounds like "man" takes about 20
seconds to report back that it can't find anything (wow! 20 seconds!
that's slow! strike 1), and then your dir file isn't found (strike 2).

Try the "truss" command; it is your friend. Also, you might try
upgrading to the latest version (4.7) of texinfo, since you need to
reinstall it anyway, probably.

Fred Ma

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Apr 13, 2004, 3:40:12 AM4/13/04

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Hi, Logan & Paul,

Thanks for the tip about truss. A snipped version of the output is below. I
highlighted the line that says "sleeping", which is where the truss output
freezes (I used "tee" to see the output in flight). All the filenames upto
that point are nonexistent, but the file on which it's tripping,
"/usr/local/info/dir/index", exists as a soft link to a network path:

PRMOPT> cd /usr/local/info ; ls -ld dir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 51 Sep 28 2001 dir -> /net/chile/export/d0/tex/Solaris/teTeX-0.4/info/dir
PROMPT> ls dir
dir@
PROMPT> ls dir/*
dir/*: No such file or directory

As I suspected, the delay occurs when it follows a link off to
the network somehwere, and the target doesn't exist.

According to the truss man pages, the output codes are in
section 2 of the man pages. From a "man -s 2 intro", I got
that ENOENT means no such file or directory (no surprise
there, since those files don't exist).

I'm not even sure why info is searching through those paths.
Shouldn't it be respecting my INFOPATH?

Fred

======================================================================
Output from "truss -d info texinfo 2>&1 | tee truss.out"
======================================================================
Base time stamp: 1081840201.9938 [ Tue Apr 13 03:10:01 EDT 2004 ]
0.0000 execve("/opt/texinfo/bin/info", 0xFFBEE9AC, 0xFFBEE9B8) argc = 2
0.0331 mmap(0x00000000, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANON, -1, 0) = 0xFF3A0000
0.0550 resolvepath("/usr/lib/ld.so.1", "/usr/lib/ld.so.1", 1023) = 16
0.0692 open("/var/ld/ld.config", O_RDONLY) Err#2 ENOENT

<SNIP>

0.2558 ioctl(1, TCGETA, 0xFFBEE8B4) Err#22 EINVAL
0.2576 brk(0x000469B8) = 0
0.2580 brk(0x000489B8) = 0
0.2593 stat("/opt/texinfo/info/dir.info", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT
0.2599 stat("/opt/texinfo/info/dir.info.gz", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT

<SNIP>

0.2754 stat("/usr/local/info/dir-info.Z", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT
0.2761 stat("/usr/local/info/dir-info.Y", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT
stat("/usr/local/info/dir/index", 0xFFBEE450) (sleeping...) <<<===========
30.3076 stat("/usr/local/info/dir/index", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT
30.3106 stat("/usr/local/info/dir/index.gz", 0xFFBEE450) Err#2 ENOENT

<SNIP>

30.5359 stat("/usr/local/info/dir.z", 0xFFBEE558) Err#2 ENOENT
30.5383 stat("/usr/local/info/dir.Z", 0xFFBEE558) Err#2 ENOENT
30.5402 stat("/usr/local/info/dir.Y", 0xFFBEE558) Err#2 ENOENT
30.5487 stat("dir", 0xFFBEE6C8) Err#2 ENOENT
info30.5503 write(2, " i n f o", 4) = 4
: 30.5515 write(2, " : ", 2) = 2
dir: No such file or directory30.5522 write(2, " d i r : N o s u c h".., 30) = 30

30.5527 write(2, "\n", 1) = 1
30.5533 llseek(0, 0, SEEK_CUR) = 402687
30.5535 _exit(1)

Logan Shaw

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Apr 13, 2004, 3:56:57 AM4/13/04

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Fred Ma wrote:
> I'm not even sure why info is searching through those paths.
> Shouldn't it be respecting my INFOPATH?

Probably, although in my personal opinion, the only thing
that info *truly* should be doing is not existing.

In other words, I tend to avoid it and just use e.g.
"ls -1d gcc.info* | sort -t- +1n | xargs more | less"
to read the documentation when necessary. :-)

- Logan

Paul Eggert

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Apr 13, 2004, 6:11:16 PM4/13/04

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At 13 Apr 2004 07:40:12 GMT, Fred Ma <f...@doe.carleton.ca> writes:

> I'm not even sure why info is searching through those paths.
> Shouldn't it be respecting my INFOPATH?

It looks at some other directories, in addition to what you specified
in INFOPATH; also, if your INFOPATH uses a special syntax (":" at the
end) it appends some more. You can use the '-d' option to shut off
all that stuff, but probably the right way to fix it is to rebuild
texinfo and specify INFODIR and DEFAULT_INFOPATH correctly.

Fred Ma

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Apr 14, 2004, 3:05:07 AM4/14/04

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Logan, if you're expressing discontent at the info interface,
I can see that it's not the most natural interface for some-
one use to shortcuts from bash/tcsh/gvim. However, I still
find the hyperlinking essential for big complex bodies of
documentation. Thanks for the above workaround, though.

Fred Ma

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Apr 14, 2004, 3:20:48 AM4/14/04

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It's amazing. It doesn't work:

If I press "?" inside info to get the help menu, I am also told:

The current search path is:
/opt/texinfo/info:/usr/local/info:/usr/local/info:/usr/info:/usr/local/lib/in\
fo:/usr/lib/info:/usr/local/gnu/info:/usr/local/gnu/lib/info:/usr/gnu/info:/usr\
/gnu/lib/info:/opt/gnu/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/share/lib/info:/usr/local/shar\
e/info:/usr/local/share/lib/info:/usr/gnu/lib/emacs/info:/usr/local/gnu/lib/ema\
cs/info:/usr/local/lib/emacs/info:/usr/local/emacs/info:.

An "ls -ld" for each directory shows that none of them exist. No
delay or anything, and no dir in any of those directories.

Anyway, I will have to decide whether to ask our sys admin to look at
this. The reason why info is available at all is because he gave some
priority to a request of mine to install it. And I've made a number
of requests recently, some of which are quite needed for my work, and
I have yet to follow up on them. I am but one student in a whole
department. Anyway, enough excuses, the situation is what it is.
Thanks for the above hint on which environment variables to be careful
about, should the opportunity arise to rebuild info.

jpd

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Apr 14, 2004, 4:46:00 AM4/14/04

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On 2004-04-14, Fred Ma <f...@doe.carleton.ca> wrote:
[snip]

> Logan, if you're expressing discontent at the info interface,
> I can see that it's not the most natural interface for some-
> one use to shortcuts from bash/tcsh/gvim.

If being able to use emacs is a prerequisite for effectively using info,
and info is a prerequisite to understand what is going on, it isn't as
much an helpful[1] tool, as it is a move in a holy war that should not
be fought there, nevermind at all. Luckily it largely lost.

> However, I still
> find the hyperlinking essential for big complex bodies of
> documentation. Thanks for the above workaround, though.

I find hyperlinking the way info does it an excellent way to hide the
information that I need THIS MOMENT FOR THERE ARE SCREAMING PEOPLE AT
MY DESK[3] in a maze of little footnotes, all recursive.

I don't see anything wrong with the SEE ALSO section in manpages. It
generally works much better than starred, underlined ``click here''
notices, if you're looking at the paper version.

In this light I like DocBook much better: it allows for generating
hyperlinked html as well as acceptable printable versions in a variety
of formats. Pity that the formatting isn't the best I've ever seen, but
that can be fixed. Or maybe it tells us that setting text is still an
art. The body of text at least has some useable structure, and not the
spaghetti nature.

As you can see, Logan is not the only one discontented with info.
The count doesn't seem to be two, either, since there used to be a lot
of ``man is outdated[2], use info'' type manpages on linux systems, but
those seem to have largely vanished. That wouldn't happen if everybody
agreed that man was really outdated.

[1] In the gn00 sense.
[2] ``we just decided and didn't tell you, nyah nyah nyah''
[3] Even if not, I'll be, RSN.

--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .

Paul Eggert

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Apr 14, 2004, 11:13:43 AM4/14/04

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At 14 Apr 2004 07:20:48 GMT, Fred Ma <f...@doe.carleton.ca> writes:

> It's amazing. It doesn't work:

Thanks for reporting this. I've emailed a bug report to the "info"
maintainer. You can follow further progress on this by visiting
<http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/>.

Fred Ma

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Apr 15, 2004, 2:25:29 AM4/15/04

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Thanks, Paul.

Fred Ma

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Apr 15, 2004, 2:57:01 AM4/15/04

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jpd wrote:
>
> > Logan, if you're expressing discontent at the info interface,
> > I can see that it's not the most natural interface for some-
> > one use to shortcuts from bash/tcsh/gvim.
>
> If being able to use emacs is a prerequisite for effectively using info,
> and info is a prerequisite to understand what is going on, it isn't as
> much an helpful[1] tool, as it is a move in a holy war that should not
> be fought there, nevermind at all. Luckily it largely lost.

I get the feeling that my posting came across alot more
provocatively than intended. When I said it's not the
most natural interface for someone use to gvim/bash/tcsh,
I mean that I understand completely, because I use those
environments.

> > However, I still
> > find the hyperlinking essential for big complex bodies of
> > documentation. Thanks for the above workaround, though.
>
> I find hyperlinking the way info does it an excellent way to hide the
> information that I need THIS MOMENT FOR THERE ARE SCREAMING PEOPLE AT
> MY DESK[3] in a maze of little footnotes, all recursive.

I don't exactly love the footnotes either, but find redeeming
qualities in info's other pluses.

I'm sure there are situations where that is not the best format.
However, if hyperlinked documentation wasn't so valuable, we
wouldn't see it in so much online documentation. Perldoc.com,
cpan, Python online tutorials, gnu manuals, soft copies of hardware
systems, online copies of C++ standards, many STL references online,
and that's without even trying to recall or search for examples.

> I don't see anything wrong with the SEE ALSO section in manpages.

Me neither. They are very helpful.

> It
> generally works much better than starred, underlined ``click here''
> notices, if you're looking at the paper version.

I think they both have their merits, and are not mutally exclusive.
I don't print out man pages much anymore. Maybe that's why I find
info not so bad. I'm not using it in the same way as a paper reference.
Just a way to crawl through a database of info for which a linear layout
is not necessarily the best, or to rummage around some related concepts.

> In this light I like DocBook much better: it allows for generating
> hyperlinked html as well as acceptable printable versions in a variety
> of formats. Pity that the formatting isn't the best I've ever seen, but
> that can be fixed. Or maybe it tells us that setting text is still an
> art. The body of text at least has some useable structure, and not the
> spaghetti nature.

I haven't heard of DocBook, but then again, there's probably many
documentation systems I haven't heard of. I try to make the best
use of what's available in the environment I work in. I use
cygwin alot, and lots of stuff is on info. Man reins on solaris,
but the options of using either would be nice. I find man pages
good for reference, and info good to ramp up on new stuff.

> As you can see, Logan is not the only one discontented with info.
> The count doesn't seem to be two, either, since there used to be a lot
> of ``man is outdated[2], use info'' type manpages on linux systems, but
> those seem to have largely vanished. That wouldn't happen if everybody
> agreed that man was really outdated.

_I_ have some dissatisfaction with info. But then, I also have some
dissatisfactions with man, perldoc, and hyperlinked html (can't do
regular expression searches using a common browser). But each have
their own benefits, too.

> [1] In the gn00 sense.
> [2] ``we just decided and didn't tell you, nyah nyah nyah''
> [3] Even if not, I'll be, RSN.
>
> --
> j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .

I'll be more careful not to inadvertently convey provocation,
especially when I meant that I agreed somewhat.