CATMAN(8) manual page
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catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages
catman
[-dhV] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...
catman is used to create
an up to date set of pre-formatted manual pages known as cat pages. Cat
pages are generally much faster to display than the original manual pages,
but require extra storage space. The decision to support cat pages is that
of the local administrator, who must provide suitable directories to contain
them.
The options available to catman are the manual page hierarchies and
sections to pre-format. The default hierarchies are those specified as system
hierarchies in the man-db configuration file, and the default sections are
either the colon-delimited contents of the environment variable $MANSECT
or the standard set compiled into man if $MANSECT is undefined. Supplying
catman with a set of whitespace-delimited section names will override both
of the above.
catman makes use of the index database cache associated with
each hierarchy to determine which files need to be formatted.
- -d,
--debug
- Print debugging information.
- -M path, --manpath=path
- Specify an alternate
colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path. By default, this is all
paths indicated as system hierarchies in the man-db configuration file.
- -C file, --config-file=file
- Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
- -h,
--help
- Print a help message and exit.
- -V, --version
- Display version information.
- MANSECT
- If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list
of sections and it is used to determine which manual sections to search
and in what order.
- MANPATH
- If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted
as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path to use.
- /etc/man_db.conf
- man-db configuration file.
- /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
- A traditional global
index database cache.
- /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
- An alternate or FSSTND
compliant global index database cache.
man(1)
, manpath(5)
, mandb(8)
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
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