MANPATH(5)							 /etc/man_db.conf							MANPATH(5)

NAME

       manpath - format of the /etc/man_db.conf file

DESCRIPTION

       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 /etc/man_db.conf 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  particularly  important	if  man  is  a	setuid	program, as (when in the system configuration file
	      /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 configu-
	      ration 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 exten-
	      sions 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 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.

2.6.3								    2012-09-17								MANPATH(5)