chkhelp(1) — Linux manual page

CHKHELP(1)               General Commands Manual              CHKHELP(1)

NAME

       chkhelp - check performance metrics help text files

SYNOPSIS

       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/chkhelp [-eHiOp?]  [-n pmnsfile] helpfile
       [metricname ...]

DESCRIPTION

       chkhelp checks the consistency of Performance Co-Pilot help text
       files generated by newhelp(1) and used by Performance Metric
       Domain Agents (PMDAs).  The checking involves scanning the files,
       and optionally displaying selected entries.

       The files helpfile.dir and helpfile.pag are created by
       newhelp(1), and are assumed to already exist.

       Without any options or metricname arguments, chkhelp silently
       verifies the structural integrity of the help files.

       If any metricname arguments are specified, then the help entries
       for only the corresponding metrics will be processed.

       If no metricname arguments are specified, then at least one of
       the options -i or -p must be given.  The -i option causes entries
       for all instance domains to be processed (ignoring entries for
       performance metrics).  The -p option causes entries for all
       metrics to be displayed (ignoring entries for instance domains).

       When metric entries are to be processed (via either the
       metricname arguments or the -p option or the -i option), the -O
       and -H options request the display of the one-line and verbose
       help text respectively.  The default is -O.

       Normally chkhelp operates on the default Performance Metrics Name
       Space (PMNS), however if the -n option is specified an
       alternative namespace is loaded from the file pmnsfile.

       The -e option provides an existence check where all of the
       specified metrics from the PMNS (note, not from helpfile) are
       scanned, and only the names of the metrics for which no help text
       exists are reported.  The -e option is mutually exclusive with
       the -i and/or -p options.

OPTIONS

       The available command line options are:

       -e   Report metrics with no help text.

       -H   Display verbose help text and exit.

       -i   Process all the instance domains.

       -n pmnsfile
            Load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS(5))
            from the file pmnsfile.

       -O   Display the one line help summary.

       -p   Process all the metrics (PMIDs).

       -?   Display usage message and exit.

DIAGNOSTICS

       There are all sorts of reasons a help database may be
       inconsistent, the most likely is that a performance metric in the
       database is not defined in the loaded PMNS.

PCP ENVIRONMENT

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

       For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see
       pmGetOptions(3).

SEE ALSO

       newhelp(1), PMAPI(3), pmLookupInDomText(3), pmLookupText(3),
       pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and PMNS(5).

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, send it to pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2024-06-14.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP                        CHKHELP(1)

Pages that refer to this page: newhelp(1), pmlookupindomtext(3), pmlookuptext(3)

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