1 .\" $Id: man.cgi.8,v 1.15 2016/03/18 13:22:27 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2014, 2015, 2016 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
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17 .Dd $Mdocdate: March 18 2016 $
22 .Nd CGI program to search and display manual pages
26 CGI program searches for manual pages on a WWW server
27 and displays them to HTTP clients,
28 providing functionality equivalent to the
33 It can use multiple manual trees in parallel.
34 .Ss HTML search interface
35 At the top of each generated HTML page,
37 displays a search form containing these elements:
40 An input box for search queries, expecting
41 either a name of a manual page or an
43 using the syntax described in the
45 manual; filling this in is required for each search.
47 The expression is broken into words at whitespace.
48 Whitespace characters and backslashes can be escaped
49 by prepending a backslash.
50 The effect of prepending a backslash to another character is undefined;
51 in the current implementation, it has no effect.
55 button to send a search request from the client to the server.
59 button to undo any changes to the input boxes and the dropdown menus
60 and reset them to the values contained in the
63 Radio buttons to select pages either by name like in
69 A dropdown menu to optionally select a manual section.
70 If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
76 Otherwise, pages from all sections are shown.
78 A dropdown menu to optionally select an architecture.
79 If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
85 By default, pages for all architectures are shown.
87 A dropdown menu to select a manual tree.
88 If the configuration file
89 .Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
90 contains only one manpath, the dropdown menu is not shown.
91 By default, the first manpath given in the file is used.
96 program generates five kinds of output pages:
99 This is returned when calling
105 It serves as a starting point for using the program
106 and shows the search form only.
108 Lists are returned when searches match more than one manual page.
109 The first column shows the names and section numbers of manuals
111 The second column shows the one-line descriptions of the manuals.
113 This output format is used when a search matches exactly one
114 manual page, or when a link on a list page or an
116 link on another manual page is followed.
117 .It A no-result page.
118 This is shown when a search request returns no results -
119 eiher because it violates the query syntax, or because
120 the search does not match any manual pages.
122 This cannot happen by merely clicking the
124 button, but only by manually entering an invalid URI.
125 It does not show the search form, but only an error message
126 and a link back to the index page.
129 For each manual tree, create one first-level subdirectory below
131 The name of one of these directories is called a
135 Create a single ASCII text file
136 .Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
137 containing the names of these directories, one per line.
138 The directory given first is used as the default manpath.
140 Inside each of these directories, use the same directory and file
141 structure as found below
143 that is, second-level subdirectories
144 .Pa /var/www/man/*/man1 , /var/www/man/*/man2
145 etc. containing source
149 manuals with file name extensions matching the section numbers,
150 second-level subdirectories
151 .Pa /var/www/man/*/cat1 , /var/www/man/*/cat2
152 etc. containing preformatted manuals with the file name extension
154 and optional third-level subdirectories for architectures.
159 database inside each manpath.
161 Configure your web server to execute CGI programs located in
170 proxy daemon is needed to translate FastCGI requests to plain old CGI.
178 and edit it according to your needs.
179 It contains the following compile-time definitions:
182 Only useful for running on www.openbsd.org to deal with old URIs containing
183 .Qq "manpath=OpenBSD "
184 where the blank character has to be translated to a hyphen.
185 When compiling for other sites, this definition can be deleted.
187 An optional file system path to the directory containing the file
189 to be specified relative to the server's document root,
190 and to be specified without a trailing slash.
191 When empty, the CSS file is assumed to be in the document root.
192 Otherwise, a leading slash is needed.
193 This is used in generated HTML code.
194 .It Dv CUSTOMIZE_TITLE
195 An ASCII string to be used for the HTML <TITLE> element.
197 The FQDN of the (possibly virtual) host the HTTP server is running on.
200 headers in HTTP 303 responses.
202 A file system path to the
204 data directory relative to the web server
206 directory, to be specified with a leading slash and without a trailing slash.
207 It needs to have at least one component; the root directory cannot be used
214 are looked up in this directory.
215 It is also prepended to the manpath when opening
217 and manual page files.
219 The initial component of URIs, to be specified without leading
220 and trailing slashes.
230 and copy the files to the proper locations.
235 can help with that, but do not run it without carefully checking it
236 because the directory layouts of web servers vary greatly.
239 uniform resource identifiers are not needed for interactive use,
240 but can be useful for deep linking.
252 preceded by a slash unless empty.
254 To show a single page, a slash, the manpath, another slash,
255 and the name of the requested file, for example
256 .Pa /OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1 .
257 This can be abbreviated according to the following syntax:
259 .Op / Ar manpath Oo / Cm man Ar sec Oc Op / Ar arch
260 .Pf / Ar name Op \&. Ar sec
263 For searches, a query string starting with a question mark
265 .Ar key Ns = Ns Ar value
266 pairs, separated by ampersands, for example
267 .Pa ?manpath=OpenBSD-current&query=mandoc .
281 which is a boolean parameter to select or deselect the
284 For backward compatibility with the traditional
287 is supported as an alias for
290 .Ss Restricted character set
291 For security reasons, in particular to prevent cross site scripting
292 attacks, some strings used by
294 can only contain the following characters:
296 .Bl -dash -compact -offset indent
298 lower case and upper case ASCII letters
300 the ten decimal digits
315 In particular, this applies to all manpaths and architecture names.
317 The web server may pass the following CGI variables to
321 The initial part of the the URI passed from the client to the server,
322 starting after the server's host name and ending before
326 When constructing URIs for links and redirections, the
328 preprocessor constant is used instead.
330 The final part of the URI path passed from the client to the server,
333 and ending before the
337 page to acquire the manpath and filename it needs.
339 The HTTP query string passed from the client to the server.
340 It is the final part of the URI, after the question mark.
343 page to acquire the named parameters it needs.
351 All the following paths are specified relative to this directory.
352 .It Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi
353 The usual file system path to the
355 program inside the web server
358 A different name can be chosen, but in any case, it needs to be configured in
361 The file system path to the server document root directory
362 relative to the server
365 This is part of the web server configuration and not specific to
367 .It Pa /htdocs/mandoc.css
370 HTML styling, referenced from each generated HTML page.
374 data directory containing all the manual trees.
377 .It Pa /man/mandoc/man1/apropos.1 , /man/mandoc/man8/man.cgi.8
378 Manual pages documenting
380 itself, linked from the index page.
381 .It Pa /man/manpath.conf
382 The list of available manpaths, one per line.
383 If any of the lines in this file contains a slash
385 or any character not contained in the
386 .Sx Restricted character set ,
388 reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
389 .It Pa /man/header.html
390 An optional file containing static HTML code to be inserted right
391 after opening the <BODY> element.
392 .It Pa /man/footer.html
393 An optional file containing static HTML code to be inserted right
394 before closing the <BODY> element.
395 .It Pa /man/OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1
398 source file located below the
405 CGI program is call-compatible with queries from the traditional
407 script by Wolfram Schneider.
408 However, the output may not be quite the same.
419 first appeared in mdocml-1.12.1 (March 2012).
420 The current SQLite3-based version first appeared in
426 program was written by
427 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
428 and ported to the SQLite3-based
431 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .