GNU Octave documentation failure

Question

When starting GNU Octave, I get this error window

Looking in /usr/share/octave/4.4.1/doc I found I did not have write access to the .qhc file there. I tried to give everyone write access to it, but that didn't help. Octave runs just fine, but the documentation tab does not work properly. No documentation is shown, and when navigating to the Contents page of that tab, all that shows is a busy cursor, no text.

I hope this is understandable, and that someone can give me a hint.

FYI: Ubuntu 19.10, running octave from a desktop file with this content:

cat octave.desktop #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Icon=octave Name=octave Exec=octave --gui

Do you have octave docs installed? If unsure run sudo apt install octave-doc octave-htmldoc octave-info and retry. — N0rbert, May 04 '20 at 09:48
That is indeed installed. I actually solved the case myself – look further down this page. — Bernt Ribbum, May 05 '20 at 10:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '20 at 10:36

2

I found the solution myself. The secret was to grant "other" write access not only to the files in directory /usr/share/octave/4.4.1/doc, but also the directory itself. A bit brute force maybe, but it works and solved the problem for me!

answered May 05 '20 at 10:36

Bernt Ribbum

846

GNU Octave documentation failure

1 Answers1