I have been surface-checking a new disk drive, using badblocks(8).
While waiting for this to complete (estimate 20 hours for 160GB drive)
I was reading the man.page. Found something that did not make sense.
Eventually went and read the program source, and found the help
message that the program prints.
Here is output from the man page. Edited with explicit line breaks to
show the different parts.
$ man badblocks
. . .
SYNOPSIS
badblocks [ -svwnf ] [ -b block-size ] [ -c blocks_at_once ] \
[ -i input_file ] [ -o output_file ] [ -p num_passes ] \
[ -t test_pattern ] \
device [ last-block ] [ start-block ]
. . .
Here is output from the actual program. Note that --help is not a
valid option, but it produces the help message. Also edited with
explicit line breaks.
$ /sbin/badblocks --help
/sbin/badblocks: invalid option -- -
Usage: /sbin/badblocks [-b block_size] [-i input_file] \
[-o output_file] \
[-svwnf] [-c blocks_at_once] [-p num_passes] \
[-t test_pattern [-t test_pattern [...]]] \
device [last_block [start_block]]
The option [ ] brackets showing the possibility of different
test_patterns have disappeared. This is sort of OK because it is
mentioned in the text. The option [ ] brackets around the
specification of last_block start_block have been mangled. This is
where I saw the problem. Because as given in the man.page there is no
way to distinguish a last_block number from a start_block number if
only one of them is present.
Grr. Nobody reads man pages? It is like this in the oldest and
newest RedHat type systems I have running, RH9 and FC6. Just in case,
I checked the info page. Identically bad there. Same badness in
openSuSE 10.3, and in assorted sample man pages found on the web.
I suppose it's time to check the Troff source for the page. Some day.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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