1NEWHELP(1) General Commands Manual NEWHELP(1)
2
6 newhelp - generate a performance metrics help database
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9 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/newhelp [-vV?] [-n pmnsfile] [-o outputfile] [file
10 ...]
11
13 newhelp generates the Performance Co-Pilot help text files used by Per‐
14 formance Metric Domain Agents (PMDAs).
15 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.
19 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.
25 If the output file name is determined to be foo, newhelp will create
27 foo.dir and foo.pag.
28 The -V flag causes verbose messages to be printed while newhelp is
30 parsing its input.
31 The first line of each entry in a help source file consists of an ``@''
33 character beginning the line followed by a space and then the perfor‐
34 mance metric name and a one line description of the metric. Following
35 lines (up to the next line beginning with ``@'' or end of file) may
36 contain a verbose help description. E.g.
37 #
39 # This is an example of newhelp's input syntax
40 #
41 @ kernel.all.cpu.idle CPU idle time
42 A cumulative count of the number of milliseconds
43 of CPU idle time, summed over all processors.
44 Three-part numeric metric identifiers (PMIDs) may be used in place of
46 metric names, e.g. 60.0.23 rather than kernel.all.cpu.idle in the exam‐
47 ple above. Other than for dynamic metrics (where the existence of a
48 metric is known to a PMDA, but not visible in the PMNS and hence has no
49 name that could be known to newhelp) use of this syntactic variant is
50 not encouraged.
51 Lines beginning with ``#'' are ignored, as are blank lines in the file
53 before the first ``@''. The verbose help text is optional.
54 As a special case, a ``metric'' name of the form NNN.MM (for numeric
56 NNN and MM) is interpreted as an instance domain identification, and
57 the text describes the instance domain.
58
60 The available command line options are:
61 -o output, --output=outout
63 Specify base name for output files.
64 -n pmnsfile, --namespace=pmnsfile
66 Load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS(5)) from
67 the file pmnsfile.
68 -v version, --version=version
70 Set output version. This options is deprecated, the only sup‐
71 ported value is 2.
72 -V, --verbose
74 Print verbose output.
75 -?, --help
77 Display usage message and exit.
78
80 $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
81 default PMNS specification files
82
84 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
85 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
86 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
87 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
88 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
89 For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see pmGetOptions(3).
91
93 chkhelp(1), PMAPI(3), pmLookupInDomText(3), pmLookupText(3),
94 pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and PMNS(5).
95Performance Co-Pilot PCP NEWHELP(1)