1NEWHELP(1)                  General Commands Manual                 NEWHELP(1)
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NAME

6       newhelp - generate a performance metrics help database
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SYNOPSIS

9       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/newhelp [-V] [-n pmnsfile] [-o outputfile] [-v version]
10       [file ...]
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DESCRIPTION

13       newhelp generates the Performance Co-Pilot help text files used by Per‐
14       formance Metric Domain Agents (PMDAs).
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16       Normally newhelp operates on the default Performance Metrics Name Space
17       (PMNS), however if the -n option is specified an alternative  namespace
18       is loaded from the file pmnsfile.
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20       When there is only one input file, the base name of the new database is
21       derived from the name of the input file, otherwise the -o flag must  be
22       given to explicitly name the database.  If no input files are supplied,
23       newhelp reads from the standard input stream, in which case the -o flag
24       must be given.
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26       If  the  output  file name is determined to be foo, newhelp will create
27       foo.dir and foo.pag.
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29       Although historically there have been multiple help text file  formats,
30       the  only  format currently supported using the -v option is version 2,
31       and this is the default if no -v flag is provided.
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33       The -V flag causes verbose messages to  be  printed  while  newhelp  is
34       parsing its input.
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36       The first line of each entry in a help source file consists of an ``@''
37       character beginning the line followed by a space and then  the  perfor‐
38       mance  metric name and a one line description of the metric.  Following
39       lines (up to the next line beginning with ``@'' or  end  of  file)  may
40       contain a verbose help description.  E.g.
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42            #
43            # This is an example of newhelp's input syntax
44            #
45            @ kernel.all.cpu.idle CPU idle time
46            A cumulative count of the number of milliseconds
47            of CPU idle time, summed over all processors.
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49       Three-part  numeric  metric identifiers (PMIDs) may be used in place of
50       metric names, e.g. 60.0.23 rather than kernel.all.cpu.idle in the exam‐
51       ple  above.   Other  than for dynamic metrics (where the existence of a
52       metric is known to a PMDA, but not visible in the PMNS and hence has no
53       name  that  could be known to newhelp) use of this syntactic variant is
54       not encouraged.
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56       Lines beginning with ``#'' are ignored, as are blank lines in the  file
57       before the first ``@''.  The verbose help text is optional.
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59       As  a  special  case, a ``metric'' name of the form NNN.MM (for numeric
60       NNN and MM) is interpreted as an instance  domain  identification,  and
61       the text describes the instance domain.
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FILES

64       $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
65                 default PMNS specification files
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PCP ENVIRONMENT

68       Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
69       file and directory names used by PCP.  On each installation,  the  file
70       /etc/pcp.conf  contains  the  local  values  for  these variables.  The
71       $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative  configuration
72       file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
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SEE ALSO

75       chkhelp(1),     PMAPI(3),     pmLookupInDomText(3),    pmLookupText(3),
76       pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).
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80Performance Co-Pilot                  PCP                           NEWHELP(1)
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