How to for man pages


If your problem looks something like this:
Recently I have been trying to add to my man pages on our Solaris 2.3 machines. But when I made the additions, man was unable to "see" the new man pages. I tried to run catman but it bombed, so I mounted the man directory on a SunOS 4.1.2 and ran catman on it. When I was done, man could still not see the new man pages.

The man pages must be in


        /<somedir>/man/man[0-9]/<program-name>.[0-9]

now run

        /usr/lib/makewhatis /<somedir>/man/.

that will create

        /<somedir>/man/windex

and add

        /<somedir>/man
to your MANPATH

k/sh: MANPATH=$MANPATH:/<somedir>/man export MANPATH
t/csh: if ($?MANPATH) then setenv MANPATH /usr/man:<somedir>/man else setenv MANPATH $MANPATH:<somedir>/man endif
To maintain formatted man pages, you need to keep
        /<somedir>/man/cat[0-9] counterparts of the 
        /<somedir>/man/man[0-9] dirs and keep them 
chmod 777 <somedir>/man/man[0-9] (writable by the world).
When a user "man's" a man page, man will create a formatted copy of the man page in the cat dirs if they don't yet exist.


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