1NEWHELP(1) General Commands Manual NEWHELP(1)
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6 newhelp - generate a performance metrics help database
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9 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/newhelp [-V?] [-n pmnsfile] [-o outputfile] [file ...]
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12 newhelp generates the Performance Co-Pilot help text files used by Per‐
13 formance Metric Domain Agents (PMDAs).
14 Normally newhelp operates on the default Performance Metrics Name Space
16 (PMNS), however if the -n option is specified an alternative namespace
17 is loaded from the file pmnsfile.
18 When there is only one input file, the base name of the new database is
20 derived from the name of the input file, otherwise the -o flag must be
21 given to explicitly name the database. If no input files are supplied,
22 newhelp reads from the standard input stream, in which case the -o flag
23 must be given.
24 If the output file name is determined to be foo, newhelp will create
26 foo.dir and foo.pag.
27 The -V flag causes verbose messages to be printed while newhelp is
29 parsing its input.
30 The first line of each entry in a help source file consists of an ``@''
32 character beginning the line followed by a space and then the perfor‐
33 mance metric name and a one line description of the metric. Following
34 lines (up to the next line beginning with ``@'' or end of file) may
35 contain a verbose help description. E.g.
36 #
38 # This is an example of newhelp's input syntax
39 #
40 @ kernel.all.cpu.idle CPU idle time
41 A cumulative count of the number of milliseconds
42 of CPU idle time, summed over all processors.
43 Three-part numeric metric identifiers (PMIDs) may be used in place of
45 metric names, e.g. 60.0.23 rather than kernel.all.cpu.idle in the exam‐
46 ple above. Other than for dynamic metrics (where the existence of a
47 metric is known to a PMDA, but not visible in the PMNS and hence has no
48 name that could be known to newhelp) use of this syntactic variant is
49 not encouraged.
50 Lines beginning with ``#'' are ignored, as are blank lines in the file
52 before the first ``@''. The verbose help text is optional.
53 As a special case, a ``metric'' name of the form NNN.MM (for numeric
55 NNN and MM) is interpreted as an instance domain identification, and
56 the text describes the instance domain.
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59 The available command line options are:
60 -o output, --output=outout
62 Specify base name for output files.
63 -n pmnsfile, --namespace=pmnsfile
65 Load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS(5)) from
66 the file pmnsfile.
67 -V Print verbose output.
69 -?, --help
71 Display usage message and exit.
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74 $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
75 default PMNS specification files
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78 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
79 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
80 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
81 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
82 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
83 For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see pmGetOptions(3).
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87 chkhelp(1), PMAPI(3), pmLookupInDomText(3), pmLookupText(3),
88 pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and PMNS(5).
89Performance Co-Pilot PCP NEWHELP(1)