CATMAN(8)		      Manual pager utils		     CATMAN(8)



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

SYNOPSIS
       catman [-d?V] [-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  dis-
       play  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 hier-
       archy to determine which files need to be formatted.

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.

       -?, --help
	      Print a help message and exit.

       --usage
	      Print a short usage message and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information.

ENVIRONMENT
       MANSECT
	      If  $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sec-
	      tions 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-delim-
	      ited 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.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
       Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).



2.6.3				  2012-09-17			     CATMAN(8)