[plug] accessing html docs

[sol]

Hi,

This might sound like a trivial problem but it's a nuisance that I just can't 
figure. I'm running KDE2.2 on Debian Woody and lately I just can't access any 
of the html documentation which comes with KDE and KOffice etc, which is a 
pain because I really like using these tutorials. Every time I search for 
anything i get:
"The requested help file could not be found. Check that you have installed 
the documentation."

First thing I did was worked out the central repository of documentation ( 
/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/ )and tried chgrp'ing stuff and then just chmod'ing 777 
entire directories to see if this made any difference. Then I tried using 
less as a regular user. I noticed that even if a file has global read 
permissions it can't be less'd by a regular user. For example:

localhost:/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread# ls -l index.html
-rwxr--r--    1 root     root         6369 Apr  1 15:59 index.html
### Then as user:
sol at tesla:~$ less /usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread/index.html
/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread/index.html: Permission denied

I thought that less could read it because o=r even though it is chown'ed and 
chgrp'd to root. But then get this:

localhost:/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread# chmod 777 index.html
localhost:/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread# ls -l index.html
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root         6369 Apr  1 15:59 index.html
### Then as user:
sol at tesla:~$ less /usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread/index.html
/usr/doc/kde/HTML/en/kspread/index.html: Permission denied

What's with that? If the permissions are totally open then why can't I less 
it? 

thanks,
sol