What is your MANPATH?
No, it is not your machismo destiny! To see your current MANPATH, type
echo $MANPATH
You will see a list of UNIX directory names separated by colons. This is where UNIX looks for the man pages that come up when you type man "command_name."
The MANPATH is an environment variable that should be set by the system in a file called
/usr/share/standard/sys.login
that is called from your personal .login file. (Your personal .login file is in your home directory.)
You will want to add some lines to your personal .login file (or .cshrc) file to make sure that your MANPATH is set properly. For example,
setenv MANPATH /usr/local/X11/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/lang/man:/usr/man
is enough for most people.
However, if you add certain packages to your path and if you log on to both sunos and solaris machines at various times, you will want to add a "switch" command to your .login (or .cshrc) file so that your MANPATH is set correctly depending on what kind of machine you are on. The following sequence of lines works nicely:
switch (`uname -r`) # those are backquotes around uname -r
case 5*:
set system=solaris
breaksw
default:
set system=sunos
breaksw
endsw
switch ($system)
case sunos:
set tempmanpath = ( /usr/man /usr/*/man /usr/local/*/man/ )
set manpath=`echo $tempmanpath | sed 's/ /:/g'`
setenv MANPATH $manpath
breaksw
case solaris:
set tempmanpath = ( /usr/man /usr/*/man /usr/local/*/man/ /opt/*/man )
set manpath=`echo $tempmanpath | sed 's/ /:/g'`
setenv MANPATH $manpath
breaksw
endsw
If you don't want to risk botching up your .cshrc file, click HERE, fill out the form, follow the simple instructions, then click on SUBMIT at the bottom of the form. A sample .cshrc file will be displayed that you can download and install (or you can just study it as an example). The problem of expanding your $MANPATH variable is handled as it is above.
More info about the MANPATH is available at: