1 .\" $Id: man.cgi.8,v 1.9 2014/07/22 18:14:13 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2014 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
5 .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
6 .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
7 .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
9 .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
10 .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
11 .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
12 .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
13 .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
14 .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
15 .\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
17 .Dd $Mdocdate: July 22 2014 $
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.
49 button to send a search request from the client to the server.
53 button to undo any changes to the input boxes and the dropdown menus
54 and reset them to the values contained in the
57 Radio buttons to select pages either by name like in
63 A dropdown menu to optionally select a manual section.
64 If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
70 Otherwise, pages from all sections are shown.
72 A dropdown menu to optionally select an architecture.
73 If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
79 By default, pages for all architectures are shown.
81 A dropdown menu to select a manual tree.
82 If the configuration file
83 .Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
84 contains only one manpath, the dropdown menu is not shown.
85 By default, the first manpath given in the file is used.
90 program generates five kinds of output pages:
93 This is returned when calling
99 It serves as a starting point for using the program
100 and shows the search form only.
102 Lists are returned when searches match more than one manual page.
103 The first column shows the names and section numbers of manuals
105 The second column shows the one-line descriptions of the manuals.
107 This output format is used when a search matches exactly one
108 manual page, or when a link on a list page or an
110 link on another manual page is followed.
111 .It A no-result page.
112 This is shown when a search request returns no results -
113 eiher because it violates the query syntax, or because
114 the search does not match any manual pages.
116 This cannot happen by merely clicking the
118 button, but only by manually entering an invalid URI.
119 It does not show the search form, but only an error message
120 and a link back to the index page.
123 For each manual tree, create one first-level subdirectory below
125 The name of one of these directories is called a
129 Create a single ASCII text file
130 .Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
131 containing the names of these directories, one per line.
132 The directory given first is used as the default manpath.
134 Inside each of these directories, use the same directory and file
135 structure as found below
137 that is, second-level subdirectories
138 .Pa /var/www/man/*/man1 , /var/www/man/*/man2
139 etc. containing source
143 manuals with file name extensions matching the section numbers,
144 second-level subdirectories
145 .Pa /var/www/man/*/cat1 , /var/www/man/*/cat2
146 etc. containing preformatted manuals with the file name extension
148 and optional third-level subdirectories for architectures.
153 database inside each manpath.
155 Configure your web server to execute CGI programs located in
161 proxy daemon is needed to translate FastCGI requests to plain old CGI.
169 and edit it according to your needs.
170 It contains the following compile-time definitions:
173 Only useful for running on www.openbsd.org to deal with old URIs containing
174 .Qq "manpath=OpenBSD "
175 where the blank character has to be translated to a hyphen.
176 When compiling for other sites, this definition can be deleted.
178 An optional path to the directory containing the CSS files,
179 to be specified relative to the server's document root,
180 and to be specified without a trailing slash.
181 When not specified, the CSS files
182 are assumed to be in the document root.
183 This is used in generated HTML code.
184 .It Ev CUSTOMIZE_BEGIN
185 A HTML string to be inserted right after opening the
188 .It Ev CUSTOMIZE_TITLE
189 An ASCII string to be used for the HTML
193 The FQDN of the (possibly virtual) host the HTTP server is running on.
196 headers in HTTP 303 responses.
200 data directory to be used instead of
202 relative to the web server
204 directory, to be specified without a trailing slash.
205 This is prepended to the manpath when opening
207 and manual page files.
216 and copy the files to the proper locations.
221 can help with that, but do not run it without carefully checking it
222 because the directory layouts of web servers vary greatly.
225 uniform resource identifiers are not needed for interactive use,
226 but can be useful for deep linking.
234 The host name and a following slash.
236 The path to the program, normally
237 .Pa cgi-bin/man.cgi/ .
239 To show a single page, a slash, the manpath, another slash,
240 and the name of the requested file, for example
241 .Pa /OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1 .
243 For searches, a query string starting with a question mark
245 .Ar key Ns = Ns Ar value
246 pairs, separated by ampersands, for example
247 .Pa ?manpath=OpenBSD-current&query=mandoc .
261 which is a boolean parameter to select or deselect the
264 For backward compatibility with the traditional
267 is supported as an alias for
270 .Ss Restricted character set
271 For security reasons, in particular to prevent cross site scripting
272 attacks, some strings used by
274 can only contain the following characters:
276 .Bl -dash -compact -offset indent
278 lower case and upper case ASCII letters
280 the ten decimal digits
295 In particular, this applies to the
297 to all manpaths, and to all architecture names.
299 The web server may pass the following CGI variables to
303 The final part of the URI path passed from the client to the server,
306 and ending before the
310 page to aquire the manpath and filename it needs.
312 The HTTP query string passed from the client to the server.
313 It is the final part of the URI, after the question mark.
316 page to acquire the named parameters it needs.
320 binary relative to the server root, usually
321 .Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi .
322 This is used for generating URIs to be embedded
323 in generated HTML code and HTTP headers.
324 If this contains any character not contained in the
325 .Sx Restricted character set ,
327 reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
335 All the following paths are specified relative to this directory.
336 .It Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi
339 program relative to the server root.
343 The path to the server document root relative to the server root.
344 This is part of the web server configuration and not specific to
346 .It Pa /htdocs/man-cgi.css
347 A style sheet for general
349 styling, referenced from each generated HTML page.
350 .It Pa /htdocs/man.css
353 HTML styling, referenced from each generated HTML page after
358 data directory containing all the manual trees.
361 .It Pa /man/mandoc/man1/apropos.1 , /man/mandoc/man8/man.cgi.8
362 Manual pages documenting
364 itself, linked from the index page.
365 .It Pa /man/manpath.conf
366 The list of available manpaths, one per line.
367 If any of the lines in this file contains a slash
369 or any character not contained in the
370 .Sx Restricted character set ,
372 reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
373 .It Pa /man/OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1
376 source file located below the
383 CGI program is call-compatible with queries from the traditional
385 script by Wolfram Schneider.
386 However, the output may not be quite the same.
397 first appeared in mdocml-1.12.1 (March 2012).
398 The current SQLite3-based version first appeared in
404 program was written by
405 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
406 and ported to the SQLite3-based
409 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .