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I have installed iftop on Mac OS X 10.7 from source but the installer didn't copy the man page to where it should be. I have no idea where it should be either. Does anyone know where I should cp it to?

I found this thread http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=527075 but as you can see no one actually answers the question.

echo $MANPATH

returns nothing by the way.

Jez Caudle
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    You can pass `--path` to `man` to show the path of a page instead of the page itself, which can quickly reveal where most pages are kept (e.g. `man --path man`). For a more extensive discussion of where man pages can be, read "Search Path For Manual Pages” in [`man`’s man page](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/man.1.html). – duozmo Feb 19 '16 at 03:41
  • My previous comment now has a broken link, as Apple appears to removed man pages from their developer library on the web, but just type `man man` to view the page locally. – duozmo Apr 30 '16 at 14:54

5 Answers5

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The man pages on MacOS X are located in /usr/share/man.

Checking a nearby system, the $MANPATH variable's contents look like: /usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/X11/share/man

As for the application you compiled, how did you install the binary? Was this installed from a basic tarball?

ewwhite
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  • Followed the ./configure && make in the instructions. Thanks for the reply. I had found the answer before I posted my own answer but I had to wait 8 hours cos I'm new. – Jez Caudle May 24 '12 at 10:18
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On Mac OS X, the /private/etc/manpaths file is the default file that will tell man where to look for manpages.

On my machine, it contains two paths:

/usr/share/man /usr/local/share/man

m81
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  • Using macOS Big Sur (version 11.5.2) i can confirm `/usr/local/share/man/` is the desired location for storing manuals. – rtc11 Sep 11 '21 at 14:08
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As mentioned above - the path is /usr/share/man

As an option - you can install iftop using homebrew - then it will store man pages in /usr/local/Cellar/iftop/0.17/share/man

And to specify a right path to man pages during the install from sources - you can pass --mandir= parameter to ./configure script

i.e. something like

./configure --disable-debug --prefix=/usr/local --mandir=/usr/share//man and then do make install

Serhii Balbieko
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I found a link to someone writing a script to convert man pages to pdf so they could read them on their iPad.

The location of man pages on OS X is:

/usr/share/man/

Jez Caudle
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Another location (especially section 2 of the manpages) is:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/share/man/.

tk421
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