xref: /openbsd-src/usr.bin/mandoc/man.cgi.8 (revision e5157e49389faebcb42b7237d55fbf096d9c2523)
1.\"     $OpenBSD: man.cgi.8,v 1.10 2014/09/14 19:44:20 schwarze Exp $
2.\"
3.\" Copyright (c) 2014 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
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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
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17.Dd $Mdocdate: September 14 2014 $
18.Dt MAN.CGI 8
19.Os
20.Sh NAME
21.Nm man.cgi
22.Nd CGI program to search and display manual pages
23.Sh DESCRIPTION
24The
25.Nm
26CGI program searches for manual pages on a WWW server
27and displays them to HTTP clients,
28providing functionality equivalent to the
29.Xr apropos 1
30and
31.Xr man 1
32utilities.
33It can use multiple manual trees in parallel.
34.Ss HTML search interface
35At the top of each generated HTML page,
36.Nm
37displays a search form containing these elements:
38.Bl -enum
39.It
40An input box for search queries, expecting
41either a name of a manual page or an
42.Ar expression
43using the syntax described in the
44.Xr apropos 1
45manual; filling this in is required for each search.
46.Pp
47The expression is broken into words at whitespace.
48Whitespace characters and backslashes can be escaped
49by prepending a backslash.
50The effect of prepending a backslash to another character is undefined;
51in the current implementation, it has no effect.
52.It
53A
54.Dq Submit
55button to send a search request from the client to the server.
56.It
57A
58.Dq Reset
59button to undo any changes to the input boxes and the dropdown menus
60and reset them to the values contained in the
61.Ev QUERY_STRING .
62.It
63Radio buttons to select pages either by name like in
64.Xr man 1
65or using
66.Xr apropos 1
67queries.
68.It
69A dropdown menu to optionally select a manual section.
70If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
71.Xr man 1
72and
73.Xr apropos 1
74.Fl s
75option.
76Otherwise, pages from all sections are shown.
77.It
78A dropdown menu to optionally select an architecture.
79If one is provided, it has the same effect as the
80.Xr man 1
81and
82.Xr apropos 1
83.Fl S
84option.
85By default, pages for all architectures are shown.
86.It
87A dropdown menu to select a manual tree.
88If the configuration file
89.Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
90contains only one manpath, the dropdown menu is not shown.
91By default, the first manpath given in the file is used.
92.El
93.Ss Program output
94The
95.Nm
96program generates five kinds of output pages:
97.Bl -tag -width Ds
98.It The index page.
99This is returned when calling
100.Nm
101without
102.Ev PATH_INFO
103and without a
104.Ev QUERY_STRING .
105It serves as a starting point for using the program
106and shows the search form only.
107.It A list page.
108Lists are returned when searches match more than one manual page.
109The first column shows the names and section numbers of manuals
110as clickable links.
111The second column shows the one-line descriptions of the manuals.
112.It A manual page.
113This output format is used when a search matches exactly one
114manual page, or when a link on a list page or an
115.Ic \&Xr
116link on another manual page is followed.
117.It A no-result page.
118This is shown when a search request returns no results -
119eiher because it violates the query syntax, or because
120the search does not match any manual pages.
121.It \&An error page.
122This cannot happen by merely clicking the
123.Dq Search
124button, but only by manually entering an invalid URI.
125It does not show the search form, but only an error message
126and a link back to the index page.
127.El
128.Ss Setup
129For each manual tree, create one first-level subdirectory below
130.Pa /var/www/man .
131The name of one of these directories is called a
132.Dq manpath
133in the context of
134.Nm .
135Create a single ASCII text file
136.Pa /var/www/man/manpath.conf
137containing the names of these directories, one per line.
138The directory given first is used as the default manpath.
139.Pp
140Inside each of these directories, use the same directory and file
141structure as found below
142.Pa /usr/share/man ,
143that is, second-level subdirectories
144.Pa /var/www/man/*/man1 , /var/www/man/*/man2
145etc. containing source
146.Xr mdoc 7
147and
148.Xr man 7
149manuals with file name extensions matching the section numbers,
150second-level subdirectories
151.Pa /var/www/man/*/cat1 , /var/www/man/*/cat2
152etc. containing preformatted manuals with the file name extension
153.Sq 0 ,
154and optional third-level subdirectories for architectures.
155Use
156.Xr makewhatis 8
157to create a
158.Xr mandoc.db 5
159database inside each manpath.
160.Pp
161Configure your web server to execute CGI programs located in
162.Pa /cgi-bin .
163.Pp
164To compile
165.Nm ,
166first copy
167.Pa cgi.h.example
168to
169.Pa cgi.h
170and edit it according to your needs.
171It contains the following compile-time definitions:
172.Bl -tag -width Ds
173.It Ev COMPAT_OLDURI
174Only useful for running on www.openbsd.org to deal with old URIs containing
175.Qq "manpath=OpenBSD "
176where the blank character has to be translated to a hyphen.
177When compiling for other sites, this definition can be deleted.
178.It Ev CSS_DIR
179An optional path to the directory containing the CSS files,
180to be specified relative to the server's document root,
181and to be specified without a trailing slash.
182When not specified, the CSS files
183are assumed to be in the document root.
184This is used in generated HTML code.
185.It Ev CUSTOMIZE_BEGIN
186A HTML string to be inserted right after opening the
187.Aq BODY
188element.
189.It Ev CUSTOMIZE_TITLE
190An ASCII string to be used for the HTML
191.Aq TITLE
192element.
193.It Ev HTTP_HOST
194The FQDN of the (possibly virtual) host the HTTP server is running on.
195This is used for
196.Ic Location:
197headers in HTTP 303 responses.
198.It Ev MAN_DIR
199A path to the
200.Nm
201data directory to be used instead of
202.Pa /var/www/man ,
203relative to the web server
204.Xr chroot 2
205directory, to be specified without a trailing slash.
206This is prepended to the manpath when opening
207.Xr mandoc.db 5
208and manual page files.
209.El
210.Pp
211After editing
212.Pa cgi.h ,
213run
214.Pp
215.Dl make man.cgi
216.Pp
217and copy the files to the proper locations.
218Reading the
219.Cm installcgi
220target in the
221.Pa Makefile
222can help with that, but do not run it without carefully checking it
223because the directory layouts of web servers vary greatly.
224.Ss URI interface
225.Nm
226uniform resource identifiers are not needed for interactive use,
227but can be useful for deep linking.
228They consist of:
229.Bl -enum
230.It
231The
232.Cm http://
233protocol specifier.
234.It
235The host name and a following slash.
236.It
237The path to the program, normally
238.Pa cgi-bin/man.cgi/ .
239.It
240To show a single page, a slash, the manpath, another slash,
241and the name of the requested file, for example
242.Pa /OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1 .
243.It
244For searches, a query string starting with a question mark
245and consisting of
246.Ar key Ns = Ns Ar value
247pairs, separated by ampersands, for example
248.Pa ?manpath=OpenBSD-current&query=mandoc .
249Supported keys are
250.Cm manpath ,
251.Cm query ,
252.Cm sec ,
253.Cm arch ,
254corresponding to
255.Xr apropos 1
256.Fl M ,
257.Ar expression ,
258.Fl s ,
259.Fl S ,
260respectively, and
261.Cm apropos ,
262which is a boolean parameter to select or deselect the
263.Xr apropos 1
264query mode.
265For backward compatibility with the traditional
266.Nm ,
267.Cm sektion
268is supported as an alias for
269.Cm sec .
270.El
271.Ss Restricted character set
272For security reasons, in particular to prevent cross site scripting
273attacks, some strings used by
274.Nm
275can only contain the following characters:
276.Pp
277.Bl -dash -compact -offset indent
278.It
279lower case and upper case ASCII letters
280.It
281the ten decimal digits
282.It
283the dash
284.Pq Sq -
285.It
286the dot
287.Pq Sq \&.
288.It
289the slash
290.Pq Sq /
291.It
292the underscore
293.Pq Sq _
294.El
295.Pp
296In particular, this applies to the
297.Ev SCRIPT_NAME ,
298to all manpaths, and to all architecture names.
299.Sh ENVIRONMENT
300The web server may pass the following CGI variables to
301.Nm :
302.Bl -tag -width Ds
303.It Ev PATH_INFO
304The final part of the URI path passed from the client to the server,
305starting after the
306.Ev SCRIPT_NAME
307and ending before the
308.Ev QUERY_STRING .
309It is used by the
310.Cm show
311page to acquire the manpath and filename it needs.
312.It Ev QUERY_STRING
313The HTTP query string passed from the client to the server.
314It is the final part of the URI, after the question mark.
315It is used by the
316.Cm search
317page to acquire the named parameters it needs.
318.It Ev SCRIPT_NAME
319The path to the
320.Nm
321binary relative to the server root, usually
322.Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi .
323This is used for generating URIs to be embedded
324in generated HTML code and HTTP headers.
325If this contains any character not contained in the
326.Sx Restricted character set ,
327.Nm
328reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
329.El
330.Sh FILES
331.Bl -tag -width Ds
332.It Pa /var/www
333Default web server
334.Xr chroot 2
335directory.
336All the following paths are specified relative to this directory.
337.It Pa /cgi-bin/man.cgi
338The path to the
339.Nm
340program relative to the server root.
341Can be overridden by
342.Ev SCRIPT_NAME .
343.It Pa /htdocs
344The path to the server document root relative to the server root.
345This is part of the web server configuration and not specific to
346.Nm .
347.It Pa /htdocs/man-cgi.css
348A style sheet for general
349.Nm
350styling, referenced from each generated HTML page.
351.It Pa /htdocs/man.css
352A style sheet for
353.Xr mandoc 1
354HTML styling, referenced from each generated HTML page after
355.Pa man-cgi.css .
356.It Pa /man
357Default
358.Nm
359data directory containing all the manual trees.
360Can be overridden by
361.Ev MAN_DIR .
362.It Pa /man/mandoc/man1/apropos.1 , /man/mandoc/man8/man.cgi.8
363Manual pages documenting
364.Nm
365itself, linked from the index page.
366.It Pa /man/manpath.conf
367The list of available manpaths, one per line.
368If any of the lines in this file contains a slash
369.Pq Sq /
370or any character not contained in the
371.Sx Restricted character set ,
372.Nm
373reports an internal server error and exits without doing anything.
374.It Pa /man/OpenBSD-current/man1/mandoc.1
375An example
376.Xr mdoc 7
377source file located below the
378.Dq OpenBSD-current
379manpath.
380.El
381.Sh COMPATIBILITY
382The
383.Nm
384CGI program is call-compatible with queries from the traditional
385.Pa man.cgi
386script by Wolfram Schneider.
387However, the output may not be quite the same.
388.Sh SEE ALSO
389.Xr apropos 1 ,
390.Xr mandoc.db 5 ,
391.Xr makewhatis 8 ,
392.Xr slowcgi 8
393.Sh HISTORY
394A version of
395.Nm
396based on
397.Xr mandoc 1
398first appeared in mdocml-1.12.1 (March 2012).
399The current SQLite3-based version first appeared in
400.Ox 5.6 .
401.Sh AUTHORS
402.An -nosplit
403The
404.Nm
405program was written by
406.An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
407and ported to the SQLite3-based
408.Xr mandoc.db 5
409backend by
410.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
411