Troubleshooting : Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) … taking a hell lot of time during installation and removal of applications in Ubuntu.

I was trying to install curl today and the installer took more than a couple of minutes on the below step.

Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) …

This is not the first time I have noticed it. With any application, the installer seems to be stuck at this point for a noticeable amount of time. A quick Google search showed there is a bug filed on Launchpad for the same issue in Ubuntu 20.04 but is not yet assigned.

This issue seems to be quite old. AskUbuntu have queries dating back to Ubuntu 12.04!

MAN provides useful information about any applications. They are the official documentation for an application and terminal commands. You can even run below command to get manual of MAN. 

man man
Man Pages

I couldn’t find any definitive fix for Processing triggers for man-db, however recreating the man-db index made the wait time a little less. In the next step, we are removing the cache and recreating the mandb index.

Processing triggers for man-db – Recreating mandb index

Open a terminal and type in below command to clear cache and recreated mandb index. 

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/man
sudo mandb -c
Processing triggers for man-db

It took its time to create the index, of course it will if you search for stray cats under /var/cache/man* 😀

The next installation time was pretty much reduced and it didn’t wait that much longer.

The other fully working step asks you to completely remove (purge) mandb, however I am strictly against it. Man pages are great way to learn and it’s the first thing most of the Linux users read when they don’t know about something or need more information.

Have you noticed the step Processing triggers for man-db slowing down the installation process? Do you wait for it to finish or have tried things to get rid of it? Let us know in the comments.