The man-1.5f-1 package seems like it might have a problem. I was having a problem with man so I fetched the source (1.5f-1 is right for 5.2 right?) The INSTALL indicates that the config file has moved, but it says the new location is "/etc/man.conf" whereas the actual file installed from the binary package is "/etc/man.config". Neither of which matters though because, as configured, the source builds a man that want's the configuration file in "/usr/lib/man.conf". What started this all is a problem I had with a substitute shell that has built-ins for common commands (like "cat") that are dynamically linked. Since setgid makes LD_LIBRARY_PATH settings invalid, I was hoping to override the "cat" usage via the configuration file. As it turns out that wouldn't have helped anyway because of line 490 of man.c where "cat" is hardcoded without reference to the environment variable "CAT". Perhaps line 490 should be replaced with: char *cat = getval("CAT"); sprintf (eos(buf), "%s %s", cat ? cat : "cat", file); That's all.
This first part of the question seems to be untrue as compared to the src/man-config.c file: char *configuration_file = "[no configuration file]"; char *default_config_files[] = { CONFIG_FILE, /* compiled-in default */ "/usr/lib/man.config", "/usr/lib/man.conf", "/", "/etc/man.conf", "/usr/share/misc/man.config", "/usr/share/misc/man.conf" }; Just in case however, the order has been changed parse /etc/man.config first The CAT patch was added as well.