openafs/doc/man-pages

                            OpenAFS Man Pages

Overview

  This directory contains the POD source and (in releases) the generated
  man pages for OpenAFS commands and files.  The man pages are based on
  the original IBM AFS Administration Reference manual, released with the
  rest of AFS under the IBM Public License 1.0.  They were converted from
  HTML to POD, editing, and are currently maintained in POD.

  The man pages are very much a work in progress.  The original source
  material dated from IBM's public release of AFS, and many changes since
  made in OpenAFS are not reflected in the man pages.  Help and
  contributions are actively solicited.  Please see "How You Can Help"
  below for more information.

  The long-term goal is for every command shipped with OpenAFS and every
  configuration or data file written or read by OpenAFS to have its own
  man page.  Section one is used for commands that don't require special
  privileges, section eight for commands for AFS administrators and local
  system administrators, and section five for file formats and
  configuration files, with the exception that command suites are kept
  together (so, for instance, all fs commands are documented in section
  one even though some of them are only usable by a local system
  administrator).

  The OpenAFS man pages are discussed on the openafs-doc mailing list at
  openafs.org.  If you plan on contributing to the man page project,
  please join that mailing list and send suggestions, patches*, and
  contributions there.  The coordinator of the OpenAFS man page project is
  Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>; feel free to contact me directly with
  questions (although using the mailing list is generally better and will
  probably result in a faster response).

  * Although we still accept patch submissions to the list, it is
    greatly preferred that you make your submission through Git to
    the OpenAFS Gerrit instance (code review system).  Information
    can be found at <http://wiki.openafs.org/GitDevelopers/>

POD and Man Page Generation

  The OpenAFS man pages are maintained in POD (Plain Old Documentation),
  the documentation system originally developed for Perl.  This is not an
  uncontroversial choice, since POD isn't as rich and full-featured as
  other possible alternatives such as Docbook RefEntry.  On the other
  hand, POD is very close to plain text, can be easier to edit and
  maintain for those not familiar with the documentation format, and has
  more mature tools for conversion to formatted man pages, an output
  format that is particularly important on Unix/Linux.  There are many
  good arguments either way, and fundamentally the decision was made to
  use POD because I prefer it and I'm volunteering to write and edit the
  pages and maintain them going forward.

  To convert the POD source to formatted man pages, you need the pod2man
  utility.  This utility has come with Perl for many years, so if you have
  Perl installed, you almost certainly have some version of it available.
  For the best results, install Pod::Simple 3.03 or later and podlators
  2.00 or later from CPAN and use that pod2man, but the results from the
  pod2man that comes with Perl 5.8 or later will be very good.  If you are
  using earlier versions of Perl, the output should be adequate and
  readable but may contain some formatting glitches.

  Preformatted man pages will be included in distribution tarballs, but
  those man pages may be generated with older versions of the conversion
  utilities.  To regenerate the man pages, run regen.sh at the top of the
  OpenAFS source tree (this will also regenerate the Autoconf scripts).

  Conversion to HTML can be done via any of the POD to HTML converters
  available (there are many of them), but for best results (particularly
  for crosslinks), use the generate-html script in this directory.  You
  will need to have the Pod::Simple Perl module installed.  If your Perl
  is not in /usr/bin, run generate-html explicitly with:

      perl generate-html

  It will generate HTML pages in the html subdirectory of this directory.

Formatting Standards

  Each command or configuration file should have a separate man page in a
  separate POD file.  Command suites (fs, pts, vos, etc.) should have an
  overview man page that lists the available subcommands by category,
  documents common options, and discusses the general use of the suite.
  Then, each operation code in the suite should have a separate man page,
  named after the command with the space between the command suite and the
  operation code replaced with an underscore.  The NAME section of the
  operation man page must also use an underscore (fs_listacl, not fs
  listacl) for compatibility with some man programs.  The SYNOPSIS section
  should, of course, use a space, since that's what the user must type.

  All man pages must follow the standard layout for man page sections and
  formatting.  The best general reference is the pod2man man page,
  although the sections used for OpenAFS man pages aren't quite the same
  (see below).  In particular, please use the following markup:

   * B<> for all commands, command/operation code pairs, and options.
   * F<> for file names, directory names, partition names, or paths.
   * <I<>> for user-provided arguments (note the surrounding <>).
   * I<> for terms being defined or titles of works.
   * C<> for command examples, ACL characters, and example arguments.
   * S<<<>>> for text with non-breaking spaces (usually in synopsis).

  Also see the afs(1) man page for general rules about how OpenAFS man
  pages are formatted and for standard terminology to use when talking
  about OpenAFS commands.

  Each man page should have the following sections:  NAME, SYNOPSIS (for
  commands only), DESCRIPTION, CAUTIONS, OPTIONS (for commands only),
  OUTPUT (where appropriate), EXAMPLES, PRIVILEGE REQUIRED (for commands
  only), SEE ALSO, and COPYRIGHT, generally in that order.  Be sure to
  include the IBM copyright in all man pages derived from the original IBM
  documentation.  If you wrote the man page yourself, please include your
  own copyright and a statement that the man page is released under the
  IBM Public License Version 1.0, or under some other license that is
  sufficiently compatible that we can use your work.  If you use another
  license and that license isn't "public domain" or one of the ones
  already listed in our LICENSE file, you have to give the full license
  text in the man page; please don't use a license so long that this is
  annoying.

  The SYNOPSIS section should start with the full command name and the
  full names of all options, and then have a second section showing the
  most abbreviated form of the command name and its options.  If the
  command has aliases, it should have additional sections showing those.
  Please be sure to follow all of the formatting requirements for
  commands, flags, and options.  Enclose optional arguments in [] and
  choices in () separated by |.  Command names and options are marked up
  with B<> as mentioned above; all other literal text that should be
  entered on the command line gets no markup.

  References to other OpenAFS man pages should be given as L<afs(1)>.
  Other man pages should be noted like df(1), without the L<> markup.
  References to functions should be noted like function() with the
  trailing parens.  The POD converters know how to format these sorts of
  references appropriately.  References to other sections in the same page
  should be given as L<SECTION>.  Man pages for all other AFS commands or
  file formats referenced in the page should be listed in the SYNOPSIS.
  List each reference on its own line for easier addition of other
  references later, but don't put blank lines between them.  Don't forget
  the commas at the end of each line but the last.

  Command and output examples should be indented three spaces.  Commands
  entered by the user should be given on a line beginning with %.  If the
  command doesn't fit in 80 columns, put in a backslash at a logical break
  point and continue the line with an additional four spaces of
  indentation.  Output examples may be wrapped with an additional four
  spaces of indentation but probably shouldn't be; not wrapping makes the
  man page look somewhat less readable, but is less confusing when
  converted to other formats such as HTML.

  POD does not allow markup in verbatim paragraphs (which are indicated by
  indenting the first line of the paragraph), so metasyntactic variables
  in examples should be shown like <this> with simple angle brackets
  surrounding the variable.  For consistency in formatting, references to
  those variables should be formatted the same in following text.

Man Page Sections

  The section of a man page is determined by which directory it's in.
  pod1 will be section 1 man pages, pod3 will be section 3, pod5 will be
  section 5, and pod8 will be section 8.

  The breakdown between section 1 and section 8 is fuzzy and it's hard to
  get right.  The current layout balances the following goals:

  * In general, section 1 is used for commands that can be executed by any
    user and section 8 is used for commands that can only be meaningfully
    issued as root.  If a command can be run with AFS privileged
    credentials but still as a regular user on the local system, the
    preference is for it to be in section 1, although some pages of that
    type are in section 8.

  * All the commands for a given suite should be kept together.  So, for
    example, there are fs commands that can only be issued as root, but
    since most of the suite is available to any user, all of the fs
    commands are in section 1.

  * The sections of the man pages should roughly correspond to the
    installation paths of the binaries.  Binaries installed in bin should
    have man pages in section 1 and binaries installed in sbin should have
    man pages in section 8.

  Section 5 should be used for all documentation of configuration files
  and file formats.

How You Can Help

  A lot of work remains to be done on the OpenAFS man page project.  Any
  and all contributions are greatly appreciated.  What follows is a list
  of the ways that you can help in order of increasing helpfulness.  If
  you only have time to do something near the top of the list, please do;
  every little bit helps.  If you have more time and can do something
  closer to the bottom of the list, that's even better and your
  contribution can be included more rapidly.

   * Point out places OpenAFS behavior has changed since the documentation
     was written, or point out missing documentation.  Please check the
     "Known Problems" list below to make sure that the item is not already
     noted.

   * Point out formatting problems, typos, formatting inconsistency, and
     other markup or language problems in the man pages.

   * Provide missing documentation in some form (text, HTML, whatever)
     that can be incorporated into the man pages, or detailed explanations
     of how the existing documentation needs to be changed to match what
     the tools actually do.

   * Provide missing man pages in POD format suitable for immediate
     inclusion in the documentation.  Please try to follow the formatting
     standards documented in the "Formatting Standards" section above, and
     look at the existing man pages for examples.

   * Provide patches against the POD source that correct formatting
     problems, typos, formatting inconsistencies, or other markup or
     language problems with the man pages.

   * Provide patches against the POD source that add or correct the
     documentation of commands or file formats for changes in OpenAFS.

  Please submit contributions to Gerrit or send them either to the
  openafs-doc list or as bugs filed via the bug reporting instructions at
  <http://www.openafs.org/>.  If you do submit a bug, please send me a
  note at rra@stanford.edu with the bug number so that I'm aware of it, as
  I don't always notice new bugs.

  You can test your new POD documentation by running the check-pod script
  in this directory with "prove check-pod".  (And check other people's
  documentation and find any problems that have crept in.)  You will need
  to have Test::Pod installed.

Known Problems

  The current man pages have the following known deficiencies.  Please
  don't just report the deficiency again, but any contributions towards
  fixing it are greatly appreciated.

   * We need a way to add links to other man pages (kinit most notably)
     without creating dangling links in the HTML output.  This probably
     means that the HTML conversion script needs to generate at startup
     a list of all valid man page link targets and not linkify the ones
     that don't match a valid target.

   * Provide a way to substitute the correct paths into the HTML output
     from Autoconf results.

   * Review the sections used for all man pages against what directories
     the commands are installed into.  (In some cases, it may be better to
     change the directory than the section of the man page.)

   * Consider using M4 or similar to operate on POD text before output.
     This would allow common options like vos -c,-noa,-l,-v,-e,-nor to be
     documented once and automatically included in all vos_ reference
     pages, much like the vos.c source includes those arguments as
     COMMONPARMS.

   * Check that suite intro pages mention all subcommands

   Changes needed to have vos suite commands completely up to date,
   including the 1.5 branch:

   * Document vos create -minquota which is available since 1.5.61

   * Document vos restore -creation/-lastupdate and -nodelete

   Man section 8 suite commands:

   * Mention bos (un)blockscanner in bos.pod text, not just in See Also
     at the end

   * Update backup source to include option descriptions (for content,
     use existing manpage information "condensed" to half line of text)

   * Document backup deletedump -port/-groupid/-dbonly/-force/-noexecute

   * Document backup help -admin

   * Document backup volrestore -usedump.

  If you notice other problems, please send them to the openafs-doc list
  even if you don't have time to fix them.  Someone else might, and we
  want to track all of the issues.