man not finding all manual pages

[Tigerwolf]

Lots of packages put stuff in /usr/share/man/*  and /usr/local/share/man/* directories.

"Man" isn't finding them.   
"Apropos" does find them after doing a makewhatis.  So it seems working as expected.

Both directories are listed in /usr/lib/man.conf, so it's like man's not reading that.   Even forcing with
   -C /usr/lib/man.conf   doesn't help.  Manually exporting a MANPATH=<directory> will work, so it's not an issue with page formatting.

Running 'set' from a shell shows"

MANPATH=:/usr/lib/java/man:/usr/lib/qt/doc/man:/opt/seamonkey/man:/usr/lib/java/man:
/usr/lib/qt/doc/man:/opt/seamonkey/man

None of those 'odd' directories appear in /usr/lib/man.conf.   They do not appear in /etc/profile, user .profile, or .bashrc, or in any of the startup scripts under /etc/rc.d/.    I can't seem to find where those are coming from.

So...
1.  What's actually setting the MANPATH ?
2.  Why is man ignoring the directories specified in /usr/lib/man.conf ?

[silentstone]

I'm having the same problem. 

"man -k <keyword>" doesn't find man pages in /usr/share/man directories, despite /usr/share/man being in /usr/lib/man.conf.  I tried "makewhatis /usr/share/man", and this successfully built a whatis database in that folder.  However, "apropos" "man -k" and "echo $MANPATH" still miss /usr/share/man

/usr/lib/man.conf is the only man.conf file on the system that isn't a manpage for man.conf 

Oddly, the "man -d" command, which is supposed to list the directories searched by man, include /usr/share/man...

Code:

root:$ man -d           
Reading config file /usr/lib/man.conf
found man directory /usr/man
found man directory /usr/local/man
found man directory /usr/local/share/man
found man directory /usr/share/man
found man directory /usr/X11R6/man
found man directory /opt/postgresql/man
found man directory /opt/seamonkey/man
found manpath map /bin --> /usr/share/man
found manpath map /sbin --> /usr/share/man
found manpath map /usr/bin --> /usr/share/man
found manpath map /usr/sbin --> /usr/share/man
found manpath map /usr/local/bin --> /usr/local/share/man
found manpath map /usr/local/sbin --> /usr/local/share/man
found manpath map /usr/X11R6/bin --> /usr/X11R6/man
found manpath map /usr/bin/X11 --> /usr/X11R6/man
found manpath map /usr/bin/mh --> /usr/share/man

using /usr/bin/less -is as pager

using firefox as browser

using /usr/bin/lynx -dump to dump HTML pages as textWhat manual page do you want?

[lagagnon]

Try adding "/usr/share/man" to "export MANPATH line in the file /etc/profile .

[Triarius Fidelis]

IMO, /usr/share/man and /usr/share/info should be symbolic links to their /usr eqvs.