NAME

       manpath - format of the /etc/manpath.config 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/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 particularly 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 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 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 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.