GNU/linux kernel 2.6, Slackware 12.0
man 1.6c

Hi:
If I do 'man mplayer' I get 'No manual entry for mplayer'. If I do 'less /usr/local/share/man/man1/mplayer.1' or 'man /usr/local/share/man/man1/mplayer.1' then the manual is displayed in a perfectly readable form. I don't understand because, in /usr/lib/man.conf I have the line

MANPATH /usr/local/share/man/man1

Could somebody give me a clue on this mystery? Thanks.

What is the value of $MANPATH when you are at a command prompt? echo $MANPATH will show.

It should only be:

That is to say, leave off the man1

In Linux you don't have to explicitly set MANPATH - man will use the config file if it isn't set.

However, on CentOS it is in /etc/man.config rather than the one the OP mentioned. Not sure if the man page there says differently. On CentOS it says:

In Slackware $MANPATH is set in /etc/profile and extended from the various config files in /etc/profile.d/*.
So the OP can unset $MANPATH and use /usr/lib/man.conf, or add /usr/local/share/man in the MANPATH definition in /etc/profile.

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It is
/usr/local/man:/usr/man:/usr/lib/java/man:/usr/share/texmf/man

Thanks for your kind post, katkin.

Thanks everybody who replied. If I want to test if man now sees the page should I reboot the machine or can I do it somehow else?

Aha! That doesn't include the necessary /usr/local/share/man. Assuming you are using bash, have a look at /etc/profile, /etc/profile.d/*.sh, ~/bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile (only the first two are created during installation, later ones may not exist) and you will hopefully find where MANPATH is being set and can adjust accordingly.

You can run either
to use /usr/lib/man.conf, or
and check.

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It shouldn't require a reboot.

The way it is done on CentOS it doesn't require anything after you add it to the man.config.

On UNIX (and maybe Slackware?) it require re-sourcing the file (.bashrc, .profile or /etc/profile etc...) that contains the MANPATH= line.

You source a file but typing ". filename" note - the space between the dot and the filename. If it were say .bashrc it would be ". .bashrc".

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Well, it is in /usr/lib/man.conf and, there, I have removed MANPATH /usr/local/share/man/man1
and left only
MANPATH /usr/local/share/man
(among other MANPATH's).

But it's just the same. The problem is mplayer doesn't belong to the distro. It was compiled and installed by me from source. That is, I think this might be the problem.

To everybody else: I think I now have enough material to work with. I'll set to work and let you know. Thanks.

If I unset MANPATH then I see man reads /usr/lib/man.conf (because 'man mplayer' gets the manual) and, if I insert 'MANPATH /usr/local/share/man' in /etc/profile this, works too. But I cannot understand why, in spite of the remarks heading /usr/lib/man.conf, man does not read /usr/lib/man.conf. Because obviously it does not read it unless I unset MANPATH. That is, long before I installed mplayer, /usr/lib/man.conf must have been there, from the time I installed slackware. But what is the purpose of that file if the only way for the system to use it is to unset MANPATH?
Thanks a lot, bathory.

man reads /usr/lib/man.conf, but the MANPATH variable is overwritten by the value of MANPATH at /etc/profile. Quote from /usr/lib/man.conf:

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I see: in /etc/profile I see:
export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man
I'll reboot and carefully write down the value of MANPATH, because I see in /usr/lib/man.conf I have several MANPATH sentences. Good bye.

Hi again:
reading man man, I now see there are at least two solutions to the problem. One is to use
MANPATH_MAP bynary_path manual_path.

The other is to unset MANPATH in /etc/profile, perhaps simply by removing the statement MANPATH=.
Still another one would be to mkdir a subdir in the dir which contains the binary and place the manual there, but to do this I have to have AUTOPATH enabled in man.conf, which whould man waste time. And of course, like bathory said, I could enlarge the MANPATH variable in /etc/profile inserting the required path into it.

When I have decided in favor of one of these and seen that it works, I'll post it here in case some linux newbie like me finds it helpful.
Cheers.