catman(1Mbsd)

catman -- (BSD) create the cat files and whatis database for the manual pages

Synopsis

/usr/ucb/catman [-npw] [-M (-P) dir] [-T mac_file] [sections | section:section . . .]

Description

The catman command creates the preformatted version of the online manual from the nroff(1bsd) input files. Each manual page is examined and any page for which the preformatted version is missing or out of date is recreated. If any changes are made, catman recreates the whatis database. See whatis(4).

The following options are available:

-n: do not (re)create the whatis database (in /usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man)
-p: displays the action to be taken, but does not perform the action
-w: only create the whatis database (no manual reformatting is done)
-M, -P: update the manual pages located in the specified directory (/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man by default)
-T: use mac_file instead of the standard -man macro package

If catman receives a single option that does not start with a ``-'', catman interprets it as a list of manual page sections in which to look. For example, catman 123 only updates manual sections 1, 2, and 3. You can also update multiple sections by separating the section names with colons (:) on the command line. For example, catman 1:2:1M updates manual sections 1, 2, and 1M.

catman assumes that manual pages are named with an alphanumeric extension, such as man.1, nroff.1bsd, and adduser.1M.

To add new pages to the cat directories and update the whatis database:

Save the original whatis database:

cd /usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man
cp whatis whatis.bak
where LANG is the locale name of the man page's content language.
Place the new pages in the appropriate man directories with appropriate names, such as man.1bsd/nroff.1bsd and man.1M/adduser.1M.
Run catman to nroff the pages into the appropriate cat directories and create a new whatis database:

catman -p
catman
Sort the original and the new whatis files together into a new whatis database:

sort -o whatis -df whatis whatis.bak

Environment variable

TROFF: The name of the formatter to use when the -t flag is given. If not set, ``troff'' is used.

Files

/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man: root of the standard manual page directory subtree (/usr/lib/scohelp/en_US.ISO8859-1/man is linked to /usr/man for compatibility with SCO OpenServer)
/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/cat.section/*: nroffed (formatted) manual entries
/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/man.section/*: man macro source files (unformatted) for manual pages
/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/html.section/*: HTML source for manual pages
/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/whatis: master database of keywords
/usr/ucblib/makewhatis: command script to make whatis database

Diagnostics

This error indicates that the file outside the parentheses is missing, and is referred to by the file inside them:

man?/xxx.? (.so'ed from man?/yyy.?): No such file or directory

This error indicates that catman only allows references to filenames that are relative to the directory /usr/man:

target of .so in man?/xxx.? must be relative to /usr/man

This is a harmless warning message indicating that one of the directories catman normally looks for is missing:

opendir:man?: No such file or directory

This is a harmless warning message indicating that catman came across an empty directory:

*.*: No such file or directory

References

man(1), nroff(1bsd), troff(1bsd), whatis(4)