pre-grohtml command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix pre-grohtml command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

pre-grohtml: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: pre-grohtml: command not found

Solutions to pre-grohtml: command not found

How To Fix pre-grohtml: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu pre-grohtml is provided by groff package.

groff is:

This package contains optional components of the GNU troff text-formatting system. The core package, groff-base, contains the traditional tools like troff, nroff, tbl, eqn, and pic. This package contains additional devices and drivers for output to DVI, HTML (when recommended packages are installed - see below), PDF, HP LaserJet printers, and Canon CAPSL LBP-4 and LBP-8 printers.

The X75, X75-12, X100, and X100-12 devices, which allow groff output to be conveniently viewed on an X display using the standard X11 fonts, are now included here. They were previously in a separate package, groff-x11.

Besides these, the groff package contains man pages describing the language and its macro sets, info documentation, and a number of supplementary programs:

  • gxditview, which is used to display the output of the X* devices, and can also be used to view PostScript output from groff;
  • grn, a preprocessor for pictures in the ‘gremlin’ format;
  • tfmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tdvi’;
  • hpftodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tlj4’;
  • afmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tps’;
  • refer, which preprocesses bibliographic references for use with groff;
  • indxbib, which creates inverted indices for bibliographic databases used by ‘refer’;
  • lkbib and lookbib, which search bibliographic databases;
  • addftinfo, which adds metric information to troff font files for use with groff;
  • pfbtops, which translates a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII for use with groff;
  • mmroff, a simple groff preprocessor which expands references in mm;
  • pic2graph, which converts PIC diagrams into cropped image files;
  • eqn2graph, which converts EQN equations into cropped image files;
  • pdfmom, which runs ‘groff -mom’ to produce PDFs.

All the standard macro packages are supported.

Some facilities only work if certain recommended packages are installed:

  • ghostscript, netpbm, psutils: required for HTML output;
  • imagemagick: required for the pic2graph and eqn2graph programs;
  • libpaper1: paper size detection in dvi, lbp, lj4, and ps devices (falls back to a4 if not installed);
  • perl: required for PDF output and for the chem preprocessor.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install groff

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install groff.

sudo apt -y install groff

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install groff

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix pre-grohtml command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.