Author: Erwin J. van Eijk
Email: eijk@huygens.org
Web Page: http://www.huygens.org/~eijk
Date Submitted: Sat, Apr 18, 1998
Status: New Entry

Releases: all
Platform: all
Category:  Common Problems with Linux\Unix Commands
Category Listing:  "WHY IS WHATIS NOT WORKING"

Issue

If I type 

	whatis whatis

or 
	man -k man 

nothing is returned, what am I doing wrong?

Response

You have to rebuild the whatis database by running

	makewhatis

If you often install new manual pages, you might put makewhatis in your
crontab, so the whatis database is updated every night automagically. Like this:

	0 2 * * * root /usr/sbin/makewhatis

References

This information was from some helpful people on the redhat
mailing list.