local man page

Question

I'm reading a book on administration and I'm wandering whether my answers are correct related to the man command. I'm running Ubuntu.

Qstn1: How would you read sync’s local man page that was kept in /usr/local/share/man?

My answer is

man l sync

but I don't think I'm correct because it gives this output;

No manual entry for sync in section l See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available.

Could someone give me a better explanation of an answer to this?

Answer 1

From the man(1) man page:

   -M path, --manpath=path
          Specify  an alternate manpath to use.  By default, man uses man‐
          path derived code to determine the path to search.  This  option
          overrides the $MANPATH environment variable and causes option -m
          to be ignored.

          A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual  page
          hierarchy  structured  into  sections as described in the man-db
          manual (under "The manual page system").  To view  manual  pages
          outside such hierarchies, see the -l option.

So, man -M /usr/local/share/man sync.