How can I access a man page that is masked by another man page?

Question

I installed a locally compiled version of OpenSSL and I forgot to skip the man pages. Now I can't access the man page for the OS's passwd(1).

Using apropos gave me a hint that there are also extensions to be browsed with -e flag (man man):

passwd(1)    - change user password
passwd(1ssl) - compute password hashes

However, none of the following worked for me

It seems that man will default to the ssl extension, which makes me wonder... How can I look at the original passwd(1) man page?

Note: no uninstalling allowed.

Can you please share the output of `man -f passwd` (which should list `passwd(1)` and `passwd(1ssl)`, as you already posted) and `man -aw passwd`? (Hoping your `man` version supports these options). I suspect you have two files named `passwd.1.gz` (actually, more than one `passwd.1`, with an optional extension) in distinct directories and that your question has been misread. — fra-san, Aug 29 '20 at 11:30
Depending on your `man` implementation you may be interested in [Why man -k or Apropos cannot find some pages while man -a can?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/609561/315749) — fra-san, Sep 29 '20 at 21:25

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 04 '20 at 16:33

5

You were close - don't use any flag, just man <section> command:

$ man 1 passwd
...
$ man 1ssl passwd
...

(I confirmed this on Ubuntu 20.04, which happens to default to section 1 when none specified.)

answered Aug 04 '20 at 16:33

Aaron D. Marasco

I hopped into the terminal and tested it. It does not work. `man 1 passwd` still shows the entry for `openssl-passwd` – hanzo2001 Aug 04 '20 at 18:47
That's weird; I've been using the `man` command in that way since 1995 on SunOS. Check `man man` - it should say something like `man [section] command` where _section_ is optional. Do you have `man` aliased in some way? What does `type -f man` tell you? – Aaron D. Marasco Aug 04 '20 at 19:43
`man [man options] [[section] page ...] ...` https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/man.1.html – Aaron D. Marasco Aug 04 '20 at 19:45
`type -f man` outputs `man is /usr/bin/man` – hanzo2001 Aug 06 '20 at 07:43

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 04 '20 at 16:22

1

I found a temporary solution with the -a flag and skip the OpenSSL page

answered Aug 04 '20 at 16:22

hanzo2001

If anybody proposes something better, I'll mark it as the answer – hanzo2001 Aug 04 '20 at 16:23

2 Answers2