HowToFixSgisBrokenMan

Fixing Man on Sgi boxes

SGI expects people that wish to read manpages to purchase and install the Documenter's Workbench. I'd rather use groff.

See the question: How can I format unformatted manpages? in

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sgi/faq/apps/

Start by adding these lines to =/etc/profile=

MANPATH=/usr/share/catman:/usr/share/man:/usr/catman:/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/catman
export MANPATH

and =/etc/cshrc=

setenv MANPATH /usr/share/catman:/usr/share/man:/usr/catman:/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/catman

So you can find your man pages. Make sure the package =fw_groff.sw.groff= is installed.

Delete or rename =/usr/freeware/bin/eqn= and replace it with the following script:

#!/bin/sh
: ${GROFF_BIN_PATH=/usr/freeware/bin}
export GROFF_BIN_PATH

rest=`echo ${1+"$@"} | sed -e 's+/usr/pub/eqnchar++'`
PATH=$GROFF_BIN_PATH:$PATH geqn $rest

Now edit the nroff command, and change the last few lines:

: ${GROFF_BIN_PATH=/usr/freeware/bin}
export GROFF_BIN_PATH

#PATH=$GROFF_BIN_PATH:$PATH groff $safer -Wall -mtty-char $T $opts ${1+"$@"}
# Fix for busted sgis, see faq
rest=`echo ${1+"$@"} | sed -e 's+/usr/lib/tmac+/usr/freeware/share/groff/1.17.2/tmac+'`
PATH=$GROFF_BIN_PATH:$PATH groff $safer -Wall -mtty-char $T $opts $rest
# eof

My version of groff didn't bring tmac.an and tmac.andoc, I did this:

# cd /usr/freeware/share/groff/1.17.2/tmac
# ln -s an.tmac tmac.an
# ln -s andc.tmac tmac.andoc

Now =man ssh= works.

Alternate method

Create a script that takes a single argument (the filename to format) and formats it correctly, and set the environment variables =MANPATH= and =MANFMTCMD=.

-- Main.HumbertoOrtiz - 28 Jan 2003