manpath errors -- standard way to set? does anyone even use it anymore?

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manpath errors -- standard way to set? does anyone even use it anymore?

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02-23-2010

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manpath errors -- standard way to set? does anyone even use it anymore?

Hello I'm finding a lot of results come up in google about manpath but none of them seem to help. I would like to add some files to my man path so that I can type things like `man -k fluxbox` and even though I don't have fluxbox installed at all, man will find that I have some personal notes on fluxbox. I'd also like to be able to type `man 7 fluxbox` because you can see here that 7 is a section for "miscellanea" (personal documentation).

After putting the following in my ~/.bashrc, I would type `manpath` and it would reveal no sign of my desired path:

Code:

MANPATH=$MANPATH:$HOME/new/path/

So, then I tried:

Code:

export MANPATH=$MANPATH:$HOME/new/path

but now I get the following when typing `manpath`:

Code:

$ manpath
manpath: warning: $MANPATH set, prepending /etc/manpath.config
/usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/home/me/public/man:/home/me/public/man

(i don't know why my desired path is repeated twice, but I also don't know whatto do about the warning manpath gave me)

See my directory of documents/pages below; I believe I have it set up correctly -- however, I'm hoping someone can tell me:

"no, everything has to be plain text" --OR--
"no you can leave those PDF/html files there and man will do its best"

Code:

$pwd
/home/me/

$ ls -a public/man/
.
..
man7

$ ls -a public/man/man7/
.
..
apt-get_cli-tool.html
auto-mount-partition.pdf
bookmark_me
cron_unix-geeks.html
fhs_wikipedia.html
file-system-hierarchy_standard-v2.3.html
file_sysytem_hierarchy
fluxbox_keys.html
intro-to-git.pdf
linux-permissions.html
LowMemorySystems.html
mutt_mail_scripts.html
ports_iana
redirect_std_output-error.html
setup_postfix
unix_haters.pdf
vim_advanced.html
vimrc_sample.html

jzacsh

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02-23-2010

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You need to (re) build the apropos database to get man -k to work properly.

Have you looked at the man page for mandb?

Quote:

mandb is used to initialise or manually update index database caches
that are usually maintained by man. The caches contain information
relevant to the current state of the manual page system and the infor-
mation stored within them is used by the man-db utilities to enhance
their speed and functionality.

When creating or updating an index, mandb will warn of bad ROFF .so
requests, bogus manual page filenames and manual pages from which the
whatis cannot be parsed.

Supplying mandb with an optional colon-delimited path will override the
internal system manual page hierarchy search path, determined from
information found within the man-db configuration file

.

Neo

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Neo has hit the nail on the head. "man" pages must be presented in a strict text format known only to unix and its predecessors called "nroff" (i.e. not html, pdf, etc.). On the PDP/11 the format was called "runoff".

See "man catman" "man nroff" "man 5 man" etc. etc. . When you read about this, understand it and finally succeed in creating a "man" page which works from "man" and "apropos" or ("man -k") commands that is the ultimate achievement in unix systems administration. I may get comments here.

Once you understand how "man" works you will understand the inner workings of computer typesetting software and of word processors such as Wordstar, Word Perfect, ... and the ultimate copycat M$ Word. I may get comments here too.

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