How do I manually install a man page?

Question

How do I install a man page file system-wide?

For example, if I have a man page file examplecommand.1, how do I install it so that I can just type man examplecommand to view it?

Flimm · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-18 21:51:33Z

First, find out which section your man page belongs to. If its a command, it probably belongs to section 1. You can read the manpage for the man command to see a description of the different sections and their corresponding numbers.
Copy your man page to /usr/local/share/man/man1/ (change 1 to your section number if need be). You can also install it to /usr/share/man/man1/, but it's best practise to use the local directory for files that are installed without using the APT package manager:
```
sudo cp examplecommand.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1/
```
Run the mandb command. This will update man's internal database:
```
sudo mandb
```
That's it! You should be able to view the man page by running:
```
man 1 examplecommand
```

The manpage for the man command
The manpage for the mandb command
The source code in /usr/bin/dh_installman if you can read Perl, installed with the debhelper package.

1 Answer