When we cross compiling coreutils, there is an problem of generating man pages, because the source script use the binaries generated by make process to produce man pages, but the cross compiled binaries cannot run on build machine.

In order to resolve this problem, we should compile the coreutils using native compiler, and generate the man pages, then copy the man pages (.x .1) to the cross compiling source directory, and restart the make process.

prebuilt man info source tarball:

http://distfiles.gentoo.org/distfiles/coreutils-8.23-man.tar.xz

Usage:

tar xf coreutils-8.23.tar.xz

tar xf coreutils-8.23-man.tar.xz

#configure && make && make install

If that still fails, after you unpack both, try doing:

set -- man/*.x

touch ${@/%x/1}

Ref:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-11/msg00003.html