Reporting man-pages bugs

If, rather than a documentation bug, you think you've found a bug in a system call (i.e., in the Linux kernel), or in a library function (i.e., in glibc), look here.

If you want to report a bug for a man page that belongs to a package other than man-pages, look here.

When making a bug report please:

• Check that the bug is present in the latest version of the man pages. To do this, you can either download the latest version of the man-pages tarball, or look in the online manual pages. Alternatively, you can clone the current version of the Git repository and check if the bug is present.
  
  
• Note the name and release of the distribution that you are using. This information is useful because some distributions apply patches to the man-pages package, and it may be that your bug report relates to text that is part of a downstream change.
  
  
• Report logically separate bugs (even for the same page) as separate reports. This makes it possible to respond to the bugs in separate pieces.

The way to report a man-pages bug depends on the type of bug:

• Simple one-line or two-line errors (typos, spelling, grammar, etc.), or HTML rendering problems in the online pages can be reported by sending an email message to the maintainers and CCing linux-man@vger.kernel.org (no HTML mail please), Please do not report such bugs via the bugzilla. Doing so creates unnecessary bugzilla administrative overhead.
  
  
• For a more complex problem or error, if you know how to fix it, then, ideally, send a patch.
  
  
• If you believe there is a problem with a page, but don't know how to fix it, then there are two ways to report the bug:
  
  
  • Raise a bug report under the man-pages component of the kernel.org bugzilla. Doing this is the preferred mechanism, especially for difficult problems.

    You will need to create an account on this bugzilla if you don't already have one. This bugzilla is oriented toward Linux kernel bugs, so includes template text that is not relevant for most man-pages bug reports. Don't worry about reporting the Tree, Alias, or Kernel Version (just specify "n/a"), and you can ignore the template text under Description.
    
    The list of unresolved bugs in in the bugzilla can be seen here.

  • Send a message to the maintainers and CC linux-man@vger.kernel.org.