Extending the man page search path
When you add packages, sometimes their man pages are not
properly added to the $MANPATH used to find them using the
man path.
If $MANPATH is prefixed by a : then its value will be added to the default path. So the issue here is that when $MANPATH is null, no leading colon is used, which it why the man_db config is being ignored. So replacing
MANPATH="${MANPATH:+$MANPATH:}/opt/symas/share/man"
by a simpler
MANPATH="${MANPATH-}:/opt/symas/share/man"
would be enough to solve the issue.