|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | DESCRIPTION | SEARCH PATH | FORMAT | BUGS | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
MANPATH(5) /usr/local/etc/man_db.conf MANPATH(5)
manpath - format of the /usr/local/etc/man_db.conf file
The manpath configuration file is used by the manual page
utilities to assess users' manpaths 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 /usr/local/etc/man_db.conf will not
override it.
By default, man-db examines the user's $PATH. For each
path_element found there, it adds manpath_element to the search
path.
If there is no MANPATH_MAP line in the configuration file for a
given path_element, then it adds all of path_element/../man,
path_element/man, path_element/../share/man, and
path_element/share/man that exist as directories to the search
path.
It then adds any MANDATORY_MANPATH entries from the configuration
file to the search path.
Finally, if the --systems option is used or the $SYSTEM
environment variable is set, then that should consist of a
sequence of operating system names separated by commas or colons.
This acts as a template, expanding the search path once more to
allow access to other operating systems' manual pages: for each
system name, man-db looks for that name as a subdirectory of each
entry in the search path, and adds it to the final search path if
it exists. A system name of man inserts the normal search path
without subdirectories. For example, if the search path would
otherwise have been /usr/share/man:/usr/local/man, and $SYSTEM is
set to newOS:man, then the final search path will be
/usr/share/man/newOS:/usr/share/man:/usr/local/man/newOS:
/usr/local/man.
The $MANPATH environment variable overrides man-db's default
manual page search paths. Most users should not need to set it.
Its syntax is similar to the $PATH environment variable: it
consists of a sequence of directory names separated by colons. It
overrides the default search path described above.
If the value of $MANPATH starts with a colon, then the default
search path is added at its start. If the value of $MANPATH ends
with a colon, then the default search path is added at its end.
If the value of $MANPATH contains a double colon (::), then the
default search path is inserted in the middle of the value,
between the two colons.
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 particularly
important if man is a setuid program, as (when in the
system configuration file /usr/local/etc/man_db.conf 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 hierarchy 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,
otherwise 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 3type 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 missing) 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 overrides
MINCATWIDTH and MAXCATWIDTH.
NOCACHE
This flag prevents man(1) from creating cat pages
automatically.
Unless the rules above are followed and observed precisely, the
manual pager utilities will not function as desired. The rules
are overly complicated.
https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
This page is part of the man-db (manual pager suite) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.nongnu.org/man-db/⟩. If you have a bug report for this
manual page, send it to man-db-devel@nongnu.org. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://gitlab.com/cjwatson/man-db⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-05-19.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
2.13.1 2025-05-02 MANPATH(5)
Pages that refer to this page: apropos(1), man(1), manpath(1), whatis(1), catman(8), mandb(8)
|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|