In Ubuntu 26.04, both Desktop and Server, the manual for ln is messed up. I’ve checked on three different systems.
Enter man ln to show the problem.
On 24.04, which is correct, the beginning looks like this:
LN(1) User Commands LN(1)
NAME
ln - make links between files
SYNOPSIS
ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME
ln [OPTION]... TARGET
ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...
DESCRIPTION
In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name LINK_NAME. In
the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in the current directory. In the
But on 26.04, the beginning looks like this:
LN(1) General Commands Manual LN(1)
NAME
ln - Make links between files.
SYNOPSIS
ln [--backup] [-b ] [-f|--force] [-i|--interactive] [-n|--no-derefer‐
ence] [-L|--logical] [-P|--physical] [-s|--symbolic] [-S|--suffix]
[-t|--target-directory] [-T|--no-target-directory] [-r|--relative]
[-v|--verbose] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] <files>
DESCRIPTION
Make links between files.
… and the ending has an “EXTRA” section that looks like the “DESCRIPTION” in 24.04:
EXTRA
In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name LINK_NAME. In
the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in the current directory. In the
<snip>
It seems to have been corrupted by something else — but by what? I wonder if that something else is also corrupted!
I checked Ubuntu’s online manual (it’s suffering from the MTU 1500/1320 problem right now). It’s the same there: the 24.04 version is correct, while the 26.04 version is corrupted. Interestingly, the 26.10 version is correct.
This might seem a small thing, but for people wishing to revise how ln works (which includes me, far too often!), this is unusable. It’s also worrying; as mentioned, might other entries have been corrupted?
As this is an LTS version, I imagine that I should report this as a minor bug on Launchpad, but what package do I report it under?
