MANPATH(5)                             /etc/manpath.config                             MANPATH(5)



NAME
       manpath - format of the /etc/manpath.config file

DESCRIPTION
       The  manpath configuration file is used by the manual page utilities to assess users' man‐
       paths at run time, to indicate which manual page hierarchies (manpaths) are to be  treated
       as system hierarchies and to assign them directories to be used for storing cat files.

       If  the  environment  variable  $MANPATH  is already set, the information contained within
       /etc/manpath.config will not override it.

FORMAT
       The following field types are currently recognised:

       # comment
              Blank lines or those beginning with a # will be treated as comments and ignored.

       MANDATORY_MANPATH manpath_element
              Lines of this form indicate manpaths that every  automatically  generated  $MANPATH
              should contain.  This will typically include /usr/man.

       MANPATH_MAP path_element manpath_element
              Lines  of this form set up $PATH to $MANPATH mappings.  For each path_element found
              in the user's $PATH, manpath_element will be added to the $MANPATH.

       MANDB_MAP manpath_element [ catpath_element ]
              Lines of this form indicate which manpaths are to be treated  as  system  manpaths,
              and optionally where their cat files should be stored.  This field type is particu‐
              larly important if man is a setuid program, as (when in  the  system  configuration
              file  /etc/manpath.config  rather than the per-user configuration file .manpath) it
              indicates which manual page hierarchies to access as the setuid user and  which  as
              the invoking user.

              The  system  manual  page  hierarchies  are usually those stored under /usr such as
              /usr/man, /usr/local/man and /usr/X11R6/man.

              If cat pages from a particular manpath_element are not to be stored or  are  to  be
              stored in the traditional location, catpath_element may be omitted.

              Traditional  cat  placement  would  be impossible for read only mounted manual page
              hierarchies and because of this it is possible to specify any valid directory hier‐
              archy  for  their  storage.  To observe the Linux FSSTND the keyword `FSSTND can be
              used in place of an actual directory.

              Unfortunately, it is necessary to specify all  system  man  tree  paths,  including
              alternate operating system paths such as /usr/man/sun and any NLS locale paths such
              as /usr/man/de_DE.88591.

              As the information is parsed line by line in the order written, it is necessary for
              any manpath that is a sub-hierarchy of another hierarchy to be listed first, other‐
              wise an incorrect match will be made.  An example is that /usr/man/de_DE.88591 must
              come before /usr/man.

       DEFINE key value
              Lines  of  this  form define miscellaneous configuration variables; see the default
              configuration file for those variables used by the manual  pager  utilities.   They
              include  default paths to various programs (such as grep and tbl), and default sets
              of arguments to those programs.

       SECTION section ...
              Lines of this form define the order in which manual sections  should  be  searched.
              If there are no SECTION directives in the configuration file, the default is:

                     SECTION 1 n l 8 3 0 2 5 4 9 6 7

              If multiple SECTION directives are given, their section lists will be concatenated.

              If  a particular extension is not in this list (say, 1mh) it will be displayed with
              the rest of the section it belongs to.  The effect of this is that you only need to
              explicitly  list extensions if you want to force a particular order.  Sections with
              extensions should usually be adjacent to their main section (e.g. "1 1mh 8 ...").

              SECTIONS is accepted as an alternative name for this directive.

       MINCATWIDTH width
              If the terminal width is less than width, cat pages will not be created  (if  miss‐
              ing) or displayed.  The default is 80.

       MAXCATWIDTH width
              If  the  terminal  width  is  greater than width, cat pages will not be created (if
              missing) or displayed.  The default is 80.

       CATWIDTH width
              If width is non-zero, cat pages will always be formatted  for  a  terminal  of  the
              given  width,  regardless  of  the width of the terminal actually being used.  This
              should generally be within the range set by MINCATWIDTH and MAXCATWIDTH.

       NOCACHE
              This flag prevents man(1) from creating cat pages automatically.

BUGS
       Unless the rules above are followed and observed precisely,  the  manual  pager  utilities
       will not function as desired.  The rules are overly complicated.



2.7.0.2                                     2014-09-28                                 MANPATH(5)