magnus%thep.lu.se@Urd.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) (03/19/91)
The manual pages for man (1) say that one can use the -P manpath option to search for manual pages in a different place than the usual /usr/man/man?. However, this means that the man command won't find the usual man pages. Is there a simple way of making man search first in the usual place, and then, if the mn page isn't found, in another directory (e.g. /usr/local/man)? It's a bit irritating to have to install the manual pages for local software in /usr/man - we lost some manual pages for this reason the last time we upgraded the system. Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_ Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q University of Lund, Sweden | >----< Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se | / \===== g Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
magnus%thep.lu.se@Urd.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) (03/20/91)
In article <1991Mar19.143738.5663@lth.se> I wrote: >Is there a simple way of making man search first in the usual place, >and then, if the mn page isn't found, in another directory (e.g. >/usr/local/man)? It's a bit irritating to have to install the manual >pages for local software in /usr/man - we lost some manual pages for >this reason the last time we upgraded the system. I've received several emails with the advice to do setenv MANPATH /usr/man:/usr/local/man. While this may work on other BSD systems, it doesn't seem to do it under Ultrix. Other solutions are required. Does anybody know why DEC have lobotomized their own system in this way (by removing the MANPATH environment variable?) Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_ Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q University of Lund, Sweden | >----< Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se | / \===== g Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio) (03/20/91)
The man program is very old under ULTRIX. MANPATH was not taken out. The man program under ULTRIX is from September 1983. Fred
pierre@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Nikitser) (03/21/91)
In article <1991Mar19.143738.5663@lth.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes: >Is there a simple way of making man search first in the usual place, >and then, if the mn page isn't found, in another directory (e.g. >/usr/local/man)? Try the following in your .cshrc file: setenv MANPATH /usr/man:/usr/local/man Pierre. -- Peter.Nikitser@csis.dit.csiro.au CSIRO Division of Information Technology Phone: +61-6-2750926 Centre for Spatial Information Systems Fax: +61-6-2571052 GPO Box 664 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
neideck@kaputt.enet.dec.com (Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz) (03/21/91)
As stated earlier, the man program in Ultrix is aged. Embarassing as that
may be, I'd suggest you replace it with a more modern version like the
GNU version. This should be available from
gatekeeper.dec.com pub/GNU/man-1.0.tar.Z
in a couple of days.
Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz, CEC Karlsruhe
PS: I'm *not* taking bug reports on this one, please refer to the original
authors. I'm willing to take some mail orders for people without
anonymous FTP capability (although they could use the ftp-mail servers
as well).magnus%thep.lu.se@Urd.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) (03/21/91)
In article <1991Mar20.142337.4489@decuac.dec.com> avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio) writes: >The man program is very old under ULTRIX. MANPATH was not taken >out. The man program under ULTRIX is from September 1983. Then why doesn't DEC do anything about it? As it is, it's rather inconvenient. Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_ Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q University of Lund, Sweden | >----< Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se | / \===== g Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) (03/25/91)
In article <1991Mar21.114600.29641@lth.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes: > In article <1991Mar20.142337.4489@decuac.dec.com> avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio) writes: > >The man program is very old under ULTRIX. MANPATH was not taken > >out. The man program under ULTRIX is from September 1983. > > Then why doesn't DEC do anything about it? As it is, it's rather inconvenient. Of course it's inconvenient, but rememeber that Ultrix is based on BSD 4.2, with only very selective enhancements from 4.3 BSD, SunOS and other sources. While I'm not pleased with this position, it does explain why various "features" of Ultrix are either outdated, or have been re-implemented in ways that are somewhat different than what you might otherwise expect. The man command distributed with Ultrix does support 'l' and 'n' manual sections, on my system these are symbolic links to /usr/local/{man,cat}{l,n}, which allows me to keep local manual entries segregated from what DEC distributes. This sometimes requires changing installation scripts to put the man pages in the right place, with the approprite suffix and not posting man pages for file formats and the like, but you get used to it. I've never seen an install script that does what I want anyway... 8-) -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)