IDL On-Line Help on Linux Platforms

QUESTION: I can't seem to get my IDL on-line help to work. I get the error message No selection is avaliable. Unable to execute the command. Any ideas how to fix this on my Linux version of IDL?

ANSWER: Readers on the IDL newsgroup have had the following suggestions that have helped them solve the problem.

I solved this problem on my FreeBSD system with this command:

   sysctl -w kern.fallback_elf_brand=3

One has to brand the ELF libraries. This is something I forgot to do in FreeBSD while installing IDL. The command I used was this:

   brandelf -t Linux idl-elf-files

I had to brandelf the binary:

   brandelf -t Linux /usr/local/rsi/idl_5.4/bin/bin.linux.x86/idlhelp

Of course, everyone pretty much agrees that the on-line help system distributed with LINUX is a "dog's dish", as they say in England. If you really want decent on-line help, you will have to install the IDLWAVE mode for EMACS.