"I can't" is not a useful problem description. It does not say what you did. It does not say what happened when you did it. Showing actual commands with their actual output is often more helpful than vague descriptions and interpretations.
...which creates the 'whatis' database for keyword searches and merges new, unformatted manpage information into it. In addition, manpage formatting is done. This gives faster access at the expense of a bit more storage (but then disk is cheap).
after you do catman -w you can see like this. else you will get an error like "whatis" not found.
# man -k model tpsshowmodel ("1m") - display X Printer model information CIMUtil(1) - provides a set of CIM (Common Information Model) client operations model(1) - print hardware model information model(4) - HP-UX machine identification psmsgen(1M) - model script configuration utility for psfontpf [rx26-156]/etc
"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity" - Dennis Ritchie
You have to create the whatis database using catman. You can run it one time to create the file so man -k will work. However, many applications and programs provide man pages but do not install them in the usual locations. But most tools will update /etc/MANPATH, so to gather text from all the man pages, and to keep them up to date. put this in root's crontab:
