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└─⟦87ddcff64⟧ Bits:30001253 CPHDIST85 Tape, 1985 Autumn Conference Copenhagen
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.TH RMAN 1 "3 August 1985"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
rman \- find manual information by keywords; print out the manual
.SH SYNOPSIS
.br
\fBrman\fP [ \- ] [ \-r ] [ \-t type ] [ \fBsection\fP ] \fBtitle\fP ...
.br
\fBrman\fP \-a | \-f  [ \-m ] \fBfile\fP
.br
\fBrman\fP \-k | \-w  [ \-m ] \fBkeyword\fP
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fIRman\fP is a program which uses the local area network and
a remote server process to retrieve information from the 
online programmer's manual.  It can be asked for one line descriptions 
of commands specified by name, or for all commands whose description
contains any of a set of keywords.  It can also provide on-line access 
to the sections of the printed manual.
.SH OPTIONS
When given one of the \fI\-k\fP or \fI\-w\fP options and a set of keywords,
\fIrman\fP prints out a one line synopsis of each manual sections whose
listing in the table of contents contains one of those keywords.  This
is identical in operation to the \fIwhatis\fP command.
.PP
When given one of the options \fI\-a\fP or \fI\-f\fP
and a list of file names, \fIrman\fR will attempt to locate manual
sections appropriate to those files, printing out the table of contents
lines for those sections. This is similar to the \fIapropos\fP command.
.PP
When none of \fI\-a\fP, \fI\-f\fP, \fI\-k\fP, or \fI\-w\fP
is specified,
\fIrman\fP will search for and print the specified set of manual pages,
reformatting pages if they are out of date.
If a section specifier is given then \fIrman\fP
will look in the that section of the manual for the named \fItitles\fP.
\fISection\fP may be either an Arabic section number (3 for instance), 
or a name, typically one of the words ``new'', ``local'', ``old'', or
``public''.  The first letter, i.e.  \fIn\fP, \fIl\fP, \fIo\fP, or \fIp\fP, 
respectively, can also be used.
A section \fInumber\fP may be followed by
a single letter classifier to restrict the search to a single category
within the section (for instance, 1g, indicating a graphics program 
in section 1).
If \fIsection\fP is omitted, \fIrman\fP
searches all sections of the manual, giving preference to commands
over subroutines in system libraries, and printing the first section
it finds, if any.
.PP
The \fI\-t\fP option can be used to specify the machine \fItype\fP 
that should be used when searching for any machine-specific pages,
overriding the actual type of the current host.
.PP
When using \fIrman\fP to view the manual pages (the default mode)
with standard output to a terminal, \fIrman\fP will use \fImore\fP 
as an output pagination filter, with the \fI\-s\fP option to crush 
out multiple blank lines.  The \fI\-m\fP flag can be used with 
the \fI\-a\fP, \fI\-f\fP, \fI\-k\fP, \fI\-w\fP, and \fI\-r\fP 
options to force the use of \fImore\fP when in one of these modes.
Likewise, the \fI\-\fP option tells \fIrman\fP to \fBnot\fP use \fImore\fP.
The environment variables `MANPAGER' and `PAGER' can be used to name the
paginator to use (instead of \fImore\fP).  \fIRman\fP will duplicate the
shell's method of searching for the command, so a full pathname need not
be specified.  Note that the specified paginator should understand
(or at least ignore) the \fI\-s\fP option that is normally passed to
\fImore\fP.
.PP
The \fI\-r\fP flag causes \fIrman\fP
to produce the raw (unformatted) set of pages to standard output,
suitable for input to \fItroff\fP with the \fI\-man\fP macros; see
\fItroff\fP (1).
.SH SEARCH STRATEGY
\fIRman\fP first searches the local man directory (typically /usr/man/manl)
for a local version of the requested \fItitle\fP, then 
if the desired page has not been located, \fIrman\fP will ask the
remote server for the \fItitle\fP, initiating a network
connection if one has not already been made.
.br
If the shell environment variable \fIMANPATH\fP is set, \fIrman\fP
will search each directory listed there (instead of the default) for the 
named \fItitle\fP, reformatting pages if needed. \fIMANPATH\fP 
should be a set of 
colon-separated directory names, like ``/usr/cad/man:~/man'',
each of which is the root of a subtree of ``man?'' and ``cat?'' directories.
Note that this variable completely overrides searching of the 
standard \fI/usr/man\fP directory, so you if you still want /usr/man to be
searched, you must include it in your \fIMANPATH\fP. Remote searching
will still occur if the local search is unsuccessful.

.SH REMOTE OPERATION
\fIRman\fP uses a remote manual page daemon (\fImand\fP) running 
on a strategically-placed server host, allowing an entire local 
network to share one copy of the manual pages.  This is beneficial 
in several areas, primarily in the savings in disk space (up to 20
megabytes per host!), and the ease of updating pages without needing 
to distribute to numerous hosts.
.PP
The decision as to which server to connect to (assuming that several 
are available) is made by first `pinging' each known server host on
a relatively inexpensive datagram socket, then waiting
for responses indicating a host's load average and willingness 
to be a server.  A stream socket connection is then made to 
the one with the lowest load.  This simple protocol may need 
to be augmented in the future as the number of clients increases 
with the profusion of workstations, due to the possibility of one
host being bombarded with many requests at the same time. Currently,
the only protection that a host has against this is a load cutoff that
may be set. Another possible addition is to send the name
of the page desired when `pinging', so that a server may indicate whether
it has the page in formatted form when responding. Unfortunately, no
suitable method for doing this has been established without entailing
considerable overhead.
.PP
The protocol used by the \fImand\fP is similar to that used by the smtp
server (\fIsendmail\fP), using a set of requests and three-digit response
codes.  For further information, consult the manual entry for \fImand\fP(8).
.SH FILES
.nf
.ta \w'/usr/man/man?/*   'u
/usr/man	standard manual area  (on remote host)
/usr/man/man?/*	directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/cat?/*	directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/whatis	keyword database
/tmp/rman.$$	temporary man file
.fi
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
"cannot connect to server" - the network is down, the selected host went down,
or the host is not running a server process.
.br
"lost connection to remote host" - the server died, or the host went down.
.SH BUGS
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on the phototypesetter
or on a typewriter.
However, on a typewriter some information is necessarily lost.
.br
When using \fImore\fP, the percentage values at the bottom of the screen 
are usually off due to \fImore\fP being invoked while the file is still 
being transferred.
.SH AUTHOR
Jonathan C. Broome (broome@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu)
.SH SEE\ ALSO
apropos(1), more(1), whereis(1), catman(8), mand(8)