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.