SUMMARY: How to add man pages

From: Ramiro Gonzalez Maciel (ramiro@sol.info.unlp.edu.ar)
Date: Fri Aug 18 1995 - 22:45:56 CDT


Hello:
        First of all, thanks a lot for your help!!! I received a lot of mail of very nice people trying to help me!

        Original question:
        
> I've recently downloaded and compiled some software, but I'm
> having problems installing the man pages. I've copied the
> files, let's say, foo.8, to /usr/share/man/man8, typed catman
> -w but I still can't see the man pages, i.e. when I type man
> foo, I get No man page for foo.

        There was a mixture of problems in fact:

        First problem: the man pages file modes. Some of the pages were -r-----r--, so it seems that the catman command didn't care about that. As always, no error report or something helpful from the commands.
        Solution: change the files mode to:
        -r---r--r-- bin bin foo.8
        catman -w
        Now the pages appear.

        Second problem: weird man pages. I have one page for etherscan. The name of the file was netwatch.8, not etherscan.8.
        Solution:
                Changed the name to etherscan.8
                catman -w
                Now the page appears

        Third problems: bad man pages.That was my mistake.
        I have this problem with sendmail.8, wich is not properly formatted. I've tried :
nroff -h -Tman sendmail.8 > sendmail.0
nroff: cannot open /usr/share/lib/nterm/tab.man

          Then I tried nroff -h -man sendmail.8, but I got garbage. Then I moved to a linux box, and tried nroff -h -mandoc sendmail.8 > sendmail.0 . The page works, but the format is awful. So I'm still fighting this.

        If this doesn't work for you, you may try these two:

        lopez@abqato.scs.philips.com (Robert Lopez ) suggests two solutions:
        
        First: ( a little dirty ): alias man='man -F'. It works
        Second: ( dirtier ): Make a script to manually add the entries to the windex database.

        Robert Lopez has a very nice question: What must be done to have answerbook see the new man pages?

        Below are the anwers I received:

        Again, thanks a lot!

        Regards,
                Ramiro

Ramiro Gonzalez Maciel
LIFIA - Univ. Nacional de La Plata
C.C. 11 - La Plata ( 1900 )
Buenos Aires - Argentina

Email: ramiro@info.unlp.edu.ar
Te: +54 21 22 8252
Fax: +54 21 25 6809

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Joey Singh (joey@kbs.citri.edu.au) :

  I think you are heading in the right direction. When you typed in catman -w,
  it created the windex file which is used for creating database for man -f and
  man -k. I think what you need is catman -w -M /usr/share/man.

Well, I tried but nothing happened, still 'No manual entry for foo'
( I tried this before setting the correct file modes )

----------
Fletch fletch@ain.bls.com , Anatoly.Lisovsky@kamaz.kazan.su (Anatoly M. Lisovsky) , goff@CAST.MsState.Edu (Don Goff):

Make sure that /usr/share/man is in your MANPATH, and that the installed
pages are chmod'd readable by your account. Other than that it sounds
like you've got it installed o.k.

My MANPATH is :
MANPATH=/usr/share/man:/usr/openwin/share/man:/usr/demo/SOUND/man:/usr/lib/hpnp/man:/opt/SUNWrtvc/man:/opt/SUNWits/Graphics-sw/xil/man

I've checked the permissions on the files, and some were not world-readable, I've changed that, tried catman -w again, but still the same, No manual entry.....

--------------
Damian Murphy damian@bssssq.edu.au :

Ensure the MANSECTS line in /usr/share/man/man.cf is modified to include
8.

This is my man.cf, so I already have section 8

# Default configuration file for the SUNWman on-line manual pages.
#

MANSECTS=1,1m,1c,1f,1s,1b,2,3,3c,3s,3x,3i,3r,3t,3n,3m,3k,3g,3e,3b,9f,9s,9e,9,4,5,7,4b,6,l,n,8

---------------
clg@zygote.csph.psu.edu (Craig Gruneberg)

suggest that maybe there is a problem with the man pages:

Check the first few lines of the man file. I've had to copy
those lines from a known good man page file to the problem
file and then things worked fine.

---------------
anderson@neon.mitre.org (Mark S. Anderson)

 has the same idea:

1. Can you access any other man pages in /usr/share/man/man8 ? If so,
    then foo.8 may be corrupted, or the permissions may be incorrect.
    Make the permissions and ownership match the working manpage
    files.

--------------------

I got a huge letter from lopez@abqato.scs.philips.com (Robert Lopez ). He had the same problem ( and some others with Sun Support :)

He has two solutions:

 alias man to man -F, to force a search

 make a script to add manually the entries to the windex database

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