makewhatis(1M)makewhatis(1M)NAME
makewhatis, manwhat - make manual page "whatis" database for use with
apropos
SYNOPSIS
/usr/lib/makewhatis [-M manpath] [filename]
DESCRIPTION
makewhatis scans the manual page (also known as reference page) trees,
parses the manual pages, and strips out the NAME section information to
create the "whatis" database used by apropos(1), man(1), and whatis(1).
By default, makewhatis creates the file /usr/share/catman/whatis.
Another file can be created as the database by specifying its filename on
the command line.
An alternate manual page tree can be specified by using the -M option to
specify a path or paths to a manual page tree or trees. See the
discussion of the -M option in man(1) for more details.
The format of the "whatis" file is based on that used by William Joy's UC
Berkeley version of apropos.
ENVIRONMENT
The environment variables used by man(1) apply to makewhatis.
SEE ALSOawf(1), apropos(1), man(1), sgindexAdmin(1), whatis(1).
FILES
/usr/share/catman manual page tree
/usr/share/catman/whatis "whatis" database
/usr/lib/manwhat The specialized version of the man(1) program that is
used to build the database.
CAVEATS
Expect execution times of about 10-30 minutes, depending on the number of
manual pages installed. The reason is that the first portion of EVERY
manual page on the system is read.
If unformatted (nroff source) man pages are present, the dwb product
should be installed, or makewhatis may issues warning messages, because
it falls back on an awk script called awf(1) that emulates nroff -man.
You must run makewhatis as root.
NOTE
This program is run automatically in the background during system bootup,
whenever products have been installed or removed (when /var/inst/hist is
newer than /usr/s), from the script /etc/init.d.configmsg. As of the
IRIX 6.5 release, the sgindexAdmin(1) program will run first, and use the
installed information where possible, to reduce runtime. Only if that
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makewhatis(1M)makewhatis(1M)
program is not found, or fails, will makewhatis run to build the
database.
Manual pages in source form that use the .so directive will cause
makewhatis to complain that the other file can't be found, unless it is a
full pathname.
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