1MANPATH(5) /etc/man_db.conf MANPATH(5)
2
6 manpath - format of the /etc/man_db.conf file
7
9 The manpath configuration file is used by the manual page utilities to
10 assess users' manpaths at run time, to indicate which manual page hier‐
11 archies (manpaths) are to be treated as system hierarchies and to as‐
12 sign them directories to be used for storing cat files.
13 If the environment variable $MANPATH is already set, the information
15 contained within /etc/man_db.conf will not override it.
16
18 The following field types are currently recognised:
19 # comment
21 Blank lines or those beginning with a # will be treated as com‐
22 ments and ignored.
23 MANDATORY_MANPATH manpath_element
25 Lines of this form indicate manpaths that every automatically
26 generated $MANPATH should contain. This will typically include
27 /usr/man.
28 MANPATH_MAP path_element manpath_element
30 Lines of this form set up $PATH to $MANPATH mappings. For each
31 path_element found in the user's $PATH, manpath_element will be
32 added to the $MANPATH.
33 MANDB_MAP manpath_element [ catpath_element ]
35 Lines of this form indicate which manpaths are to be treated as
36 system manpaths, and optionally where their cat files should be
37 stored. This field type is particularly important if man is a
38 setuid program, as (when in the system configuration file
39 /etc/man_db.conf rather than the per-user configuration file
40 .manpath) it indicates which manual page hierarchies to access
41 as the setuid user and which as the invoking user.
42 The system manual page hierarchies are usually those stored un‐
44 der /usr such as /usr/man, /usr/local/man and /usr/X11R6/man.
45 If cat pages from a particular manpath_element are not to be
47 stored or are to be stored in the traditional location, cat‐
48 path_element may be omitted.
49 Traditional cat placement would be impossible for read only
51 mounted manual page hierarchies and because of this it is possi‐
52 ble to specify any valid directory hierarchy for their storage.
53 To observe the Linux FSSTND the keyword FSSTND can be used in
54 place of an actual directory.
55 Unfortunately, it is necessary to specify all system man tree
57 paths, including alternate operating system paths such as
58 /usr/man/sun and any NLS locale paths such as
59 /usr/man/de_DE.88591.
60 As the information is parsed line by line in the order written,
62 it is necessary for any manpath that is a sub-hierarchy of an‐
63 other hierarchy to be listed first, otherwise an incorrect match
64 will be made. An example is that /usr/man/de_DE.88591 must come
65 before /usr/man.
66 DEFINE key value
68 Lines of this form define miscellaneous configuration variables;
69 see the default configuration file for those variables used by
70 the manual pager utilities. They include default paths to vari‐
71 ous programs (such as grep and tbl), and default sets of argu‐
72 ments to those programs.
73 SECTION section ...
75 Lines of this form define the order in which manual sections
76 should be searched. If there are no SECTION directives in the
77 configuration file, the default is:
78 SECTION 1 n l 8 3 0 2 5 4 9 6 7
80 If multiple SECTION directives are given, their section lists
82 will be concatenated.
83 If a particular extension is not in this list (say, 1mh) it will
85 be displayed with the rest of the section it belongs to. The
86 effect of this is that you only need to explicitly list exten‐
87 sions if you want to force a particular order. Sections with
88 extensions should usually be adjacent to their main section
89 (e.g. "1 1mh 8 ...").
90 SECTIONS is accepted as an alternative name for this directive.
92 MINCATWIDTH width
94 If the terminal width is less than width, cat pages will not be
95 created (if missing) or displayed. The default is 80.
96 MAXCATWIDTH width
98 If the terminal width is greater than width, cat pages will not
99 be created (if missing) or displayed. The default is 80.
100 CATWIDTH width
102 If width is non-zero, cat pages will always be formatted for a
103 terminal of the given width, regardless of the width of the ter‐
104 minal actually being used. This should generally be within the
105 range set by MINCATWIDTH and MAXCATWIDTH.
106 NOCACHE
108 This flag prevents man(1) from creating cat pages automatically.
109
111 Unless the rules above are followed and observed precisely, the manual
112 pager utilities will not function as desired. The rules are overly
113 complicated.
114 https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
1162.9.4 2021-02-08 MANPATH(5)