diff --git a/pkgs/tools/misc/mandoc/default.nix b/pkgs/tools/misc/mandoc/default.nix
index 8e8d1dd334d6..db0789c11267 100644
--- a/pkgs/tools/misc/mandoc/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/tools/misc/mandoc/default.nix
@@ -38,6 +38,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     LD_OHASH="-lutil"
     # Use symlinks instead of hardlinks (more commonly used in nixpkgs)
     LN="ln -sf"
+    # nixpkgs doesn't have sbin, install makewhatis to bin
+    SBINDIR="$PREFIX/bin"
     CC=${stdenv.cc.targetPrefix}cc
     AR=${stdenv.cc.bintools.targetPrefix}ar
     # Bypass the locale(1)-based check for UTF-8 support since it causes trouble: