.\" Man page for format of the manpath.config data file
.\"
.\" Copyright (C), 1994, 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License as specified in the file COPYING that comes with the
.\" man_db distribution.
.\"
.\" Sat Oct 29 13:09:31 GMT 1994  Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) 
.\" 
.TH manpath 5 "July 12th, 1995" "2.3.10" "/usr/local/etc/man_db.config"
.SH NAME
manpath \- format of the /usr/local/etc/man_db.config file
.SH 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 `global' and to assign them directories to be used for storing 
cat files.

If the environment variable
.RB $ MANPATH
is already set, the information contained within /usr/local/etc/man_db.config will
not override it.
.SH FORMAT
The following field types are currently recognised:
.TP
.BI # \ comment
Blank lines or those beginning with a 
.B #
will be treated as comments and ignored. 
.TP
.BI MANDATORY_MANPATH \ manpath_element
Lines of this form indicate manpaths that every automatically generated 
.RB $ MANPATH
should contain. This will typically include 
.IR /usr/man .
.TP
.BI MANPATH_MAP \ path_element\ manpath_element
Lines of this form set up 
.RB $ PATH 
to 
.RB $ MANPATH 
mappings. For each 
.I path_element
found in the user's 
.RB $ PATH , 
.I manpath_element 
will be added to the 
.RB $ MANPATH . 
.TP
\fBMANDB_MAP \fImanpath_element \fR\|[\| \fIcatpath_element\fR \|]
Lines of this form indicate which manpaths are to be treated as `global'
and optionally, where their cat files should be stored.
This field type is particularly important if 
.B man 
is a setuid program, as it indicates
which manual page hierarchies to access as the setuid user and which as the
invoking user. 

The `global' manual page hierarchies are usually those stored under 
.I /usr
such as
.IR /usr/man , 
.I /usr/local/man
and
.IR /usr/X11R6/man .

If cat pages from a particular
.I manpath_element
are not to be stored or are to be stored in the traditional location, 
.I 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 
.B Linux FSSTND
the keyword 
.RB ` FSSTND ' 
can be used in place of an actual directory. 

Unfortunately, it is necessary to specify
.B all
`global' man tree paths, including alternate system paths such as
.I /usr/man/sun
and any 
.B NLS locale
paths such as
.IR /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
.I /usr/man/de_DE.88591
must come before
.IR /usr/man .
.SH BUGS
Unless the rules above are followed and observed precisely, the manual pager
utilities will not function as desired. The rules are overly complicated.