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Dd May 20, 2018
Dt MAN.CGI 8
Os
Sh NAME
Nm man.cgi
Nd CGI program to search and display manual pages
Sh DESCRIPTION
The
Nm
CGI program searches for manual pages on a WWW server
and displays them to HTTP clients,
providing functionality equivalent to the
Xr man 1
and
Xr apropos 1
utilities.
It can use multiple manual trees in parallel.
Ss HTML search interface
At the top of each generated HTML page,
Nm
displays a search form containing these elements:
Bl -enum
It
An input box for search queries, expecting
either a name of a manual page or an
Ar expression
using the syntax described in the
Xr apropos 1
manual; filling this in is required for each search.
Pp
The expression is broken into words at whitespace.
Whitespace characters and backslashes can be escaped
by prepending a backslash.
The effect of prepending a backslash to another character is undefined;
in the current implementation, it has no effect.
It
A
Xr man 1
submit button.
The string in the input box is interpreted as the name of a manual page.
It
An
Xr apropos 1
submit button.
The string in the input box is interpreted as a search
Ar expression .
It
A dropdown menu to optionally select a manual section.
If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
Xr man 1
and
Xr apropos 1
Fl s
option.
Otherwise, pages from all sections are shown.
It
A dropdown menu to optionally select an architecture.
If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
Xr man 1
and
Xr apropos 1
Fl S
option.
By default, pages for all architectures are shown.
It
A dropdown menu to select a manual tree.
If the configuration file
Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
contains only one manpath, the dropdown menu is not shown.
By default, the first manpath given in the file is used.
El
Ss Program output
The
Nm
program generates five kinds of output pages:
Bl -tag -width Ds
It The index page.
This is returned when calling
Nm
without
Ev PATH_INFO
and without a
Ev QUERY_STRING .
It serves as a starting point for using the program
and shows the search form only.
It A list page.
Lists are returned when searches match more than one manual page.
The first column shows the names and section numbers of manuals
as clickable links.
The second column shows the one-line descriptions of the manuals.
For
Xr man 1
style searches, the content of the first manual page follows the list.
It A manual page.
This output format is used when a search matches exactly one
manual page, or when a link on a list page or an
Ic \&Xr
link on another manual page is followed.
It A no-result page.
This is shown when a search request returns no results -
either because it violates the query syntax, or because
the search does not match any manual pages.
It \&An error page.
This cannot happen by merely clicking the
Dq Search
button, but only by manually entering an invalid URI.
It does not show the search form, but only an error message
and a link back to the index page.
El
Ss Setup
For each manual tree, create one first-level subdirectory below
Pa /var/www/man .
The name of one of these directories is called a
Dq manpath
in the context of
Nm .
Create a single ASCII text file
Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
containing the names of these directories, one per line.
The directory given first is used as the default manpath.
Pp
Inside each of these directories, use the same directory and file
structure as found below
Pa /usr/share/man ,
that is, second-level subdirectories
Pa /var/www/man/*/man1 , /var/www/man/*/man2
etc. containing source
Xr mdoc 7
and
Xr man 7
manuals with file name extensions matching the section numbers,
second-level subdirectories
Pa /var/www/man/*/cat1 , /var/www/man/*/cat2
etc. containing preformatted manuals with the file name extension
Sq 0 ,
and optional third-level subdirectories for architectures.
Use
Xr makewhatis 8
to create a
Xr mandoc.db 5
database inside each manpath.
Pp
Configure your web server to execute CGI programs located in
Pa /cgi-bin .
When using
Ox
Xr httpd 8 ,
the
Xr slowcgi 8
proxy daemon is needed to translate FastCGI requests to plain old CGI.
Pp
To compile
Nm ,
first copy
Pa cgi.h.example
to
Pa cgi.h
and edit it according to your needs.
It contains the following compile-time definitions:
Bl -tag -width Ds
It Ev COMPAT_OLDURI
Only useful for running on www.openbsd.org to deal with old URIs containing
Qq "manpath=OpenBSD "
where the blank character has to be translated to a hyphen.
When compiling for other sites, this definition can be deleted.
It Dv CSS_DIR
An optional file system path to the directory containing the file
Pa mandoc.css ,
to be specified relative to the server's document root,
and to be specified without a trailing slash.
When empty, the CSS file is assumed to be in the document root.
Otherwise, a leading slash is needed.
This is used in generated HTML code.
It Dv CUSTOMIZE_TITLE
An ASCII string to be used for the HTML <TITLE> element.
It Dv MAN_DIR
A file system path to the
Nm
data directory relative to the web server
Xr chroot 2
directory, to be specified with a leading slash and without a trailing slash.
It needs to have at least one component; the root directory cannot be used
for this purpose.
The files
Pa manpath.conf ,
Pa header.html ,
and
Pa footer.html
are looked up in this directory.
It is also prepended to the manpath when opening
Xr mandoc.db 5
and manual page files.
It Dv SCRIPT_NAME
The initial component of URIs, to be specified without leading
and trailing slashes.
It can be empty.
El
Pp
After editing
Pa cgi.h ,
run
Pp
Dl make man.cgi
Pp
and copy the resulting binary to the proper location,
for example using the command:
Pp
Dl make installcgi
Pp
In addition to that, make sure the default manpath contains the files
Pa man1/apropos.1
and
Pa man8/man.cgi.8 ,
or the documentation links at the bottom of the index page will not work.
Ss URI interface
Nm
uniform resource identifiers are not needed for interactive use,
but can be useful for deep linking.
They consist of:
Bl -enum
It
The
Cm http://
or
Cm https://
protocol specifier.
It
The host name.
It
The
Dv SCRIPT_NAME ,
preceded by a slash unless empty.
It
To show a single page, a slash, the manpath, another slash,
and the name of the requested file, for example
Pa /OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1 .
This can be abbreviated according to the following syntax:
Sm off
Op / Ar manpath
Op / Cm man Ar sec
Op / Ar arch
Pf / Ar name Op \&. Ar sec
Sm on
It
For searches, a query string starting with a question mark
and consisting of
Ar key Ns = Ns Ar value
pairs, separated by ampersands, for example
Pa ?manpath=OpenBSD-current&query=mandoc .
Supported keys are
Cm manpath ,
Cm query ,
Cm sec ,
Cm arch ,
corresponding to
Xr apropos 1
Fl M ,
Ar expression ,
Fl s ,
Fl S ,
respectively, and
Cm apropos ,
which is a boolean parameter to select or deselect the
Xr apropos 1
query mode.
For backward compatibility with the traditional
Nm ,
Cm sektion
is supported as an alias for
Cm sec .
El
Ss Restricted character set
For security reasons, in particular to prevent cross site scripting
attacks, some strings used by
Nm
can only contain the following characters:
Pp
Bl -dash -compact -offset indent
It
lower case and upper case ASCII letters
It
the ten decimal digits
It
the dash
Pq Sq -
It
the dot
Pq Sq \&.
It
the slash
Pq Sq /
It
the underscore
Pq Sq _
El
Pp
In particular, this applies to all manpaths and architecture names.
Sh ENVIRONMENT
The web server may pass the following CGI variables to
Nm :
Bl -tag -width Ds
It Ev SCRIPT_NAME
The initial part of the URI passed from the client to the server,
starting after the server's host name and ending before
Ev PATH_INFO .
This is ignored by
Nm .
When constructing URIs for links and redirections, the
Dv SCRIPT_NAME
preprocessor constant is used instead.
It Ev PATH_INFO
The final part of the URI path passed from the client to the server,
starting after the
Ev SCRIPT_NAME
and ending before the
Ev QUERY_STRING .
It is used by the
Cm show
page to acquire the manpath and filename it needs.
It Ev QUERY_STRING
The HTTP query string passed from the client to the server.
It is the final part of the URI, after the question mark.
It is used by the
Cm search
page to acquire the named parameters it needs.
El
Sh FILES
Bl -tag -width Ds
It Pa /var/www
Default web server
Xr chroot 2
directory.
All the following paths are specified relative to this directory.
It Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi
The usual file system path to the
Nm
program inside the web server
Xr chroot 2
directory.
A different name can be chosen, but in any case, it needs to be configured in
Xr httpd.conf 5 .
It Pa /htdocs
The file system path to the server document root directory
relative to the server
Xr chroot 2
directory.
This is part of the web server configuration and not specific to
Nm .
It Pa /htdocs/mandoc.css
A style sheet for
Xr mandoc 1
HTML styling, referenced from each generated HTML page.
It Pa /man
Default
Nm
data directory containing all the manual trees.
Can be overridden by
Dv MAN_DIR .
It Pa /man/manpath.conf
The list of available manpaths, one per line.
If any of the lines in this file contains a slash
Pq Sq /
or any character not contained in the
Sx Restricted character set ,
Nm
reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
It Pa /man/header.html
An optional file containing static HTML code to be inserted right
after opening the <BODY> element.
It Pa /man/footer.html
An optional file containing static HTML code to be inserted right
before closing the <BODY> element.
It Pa /man/OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1
An example
Xr mdoc 7
source file located below the
Dq OpenBSD-current
manpath.
El
Sh COMPATIBILITY
The
Nm
CGI program is call-compatible with queries from the traditional
Pa man.cgi
script by Wolfram Schneider.
However, the output looks quite different.
Sh SEE ALSO
Xr apropos 1 ,
Xr mandoc.db 5 ,
Xr makewhatis 8 ,
Xr slowcgi 8
Sh HISTORY
A version of
Nm
based on
Xr mandoc 1
first appeared in mdocml-1.12.1 (March 2012).
The current
Xr mandoc.db 5
database format first appeared in
Ox 6.1 .
Sh AUTHORS
An -nosplit
The
Nm
program was written by
An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt [email protected]
and is maintained by
An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt [email protected] ,
who also designed and implemented the database format.

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