CATMAN(8)                                              Manual pager utils                                              CATMAN(8)



NAME
       catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages

SYNOPSIS
       catman [-dhV] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...

DESCRIPTION
       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  format-
       ted.

OPTIONS
       -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.

ENVIRONMENT
       MANSECT
              If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sections and it is used to determine which manual  sec-
              tions 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.

FILES
       /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.

SEE ALSO
       man(1), manpath(5), mandb(8).

AUTHOR
       Wilf. (G.WilfordATee.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolaccoATdebian.org).
       Colin Watson (cjwatsonATdebian.org).



2.5.7                                                      2010-02-16                                                  CATMAN(8)