Getting help on command-line utilities

As you perform administrative functions using the command-line interface, you can get additional help information for all resources.

Before you begin

Download the command-line interface from the console and install it on your local computer. For more information, see the Related tasks.

About this task

You can get help for any system resources, attributes, and methods on the command-line interface. This task provides basic information about options for invoking the command-line interface help function.

Use the help command to get help for command syntax, available commands, and using interactive mode. Start the command-line interface in interactive mode by initializing with the required -u -p and -h parameters, but do not include the -c or -f parameters. Then enter help, as shown in the following example:

$ deployer -h mydeployer.mycompany.com -u joeadmin -p password
>>> help

The help command shown in this example is a Jython function.

Procedure

Invoke general help.
When used with no parentheses and no parameters, the help command provides general help for using the Cloud Pak System command-line interface.
In interactive mode, you can invoke admin.help without the admin package prefix, as shown in the following example:
```
>>> help
```
Invoke help for the admin package.
```
>>> help(admin)
```
In addition to the standard Jython libraries, the command-line interface provides a rich set of functions and classes in the admin and deployer packages to help you manage your system. When invoked with a parameter, the help function provides detailed information about the specified package, module, function, or property. Information about invoking help for each resource is available in the reference information for that resource.
Invoke detailed help about a specific topic.
Pass a single parameter to the help function to get more detailed help about a specific topic. For example, to see detailed help for how to work with cloud objects in the command-line interface, enter the following command:
```
>>> help(admin.cloud)
```
The admin prefix is used to group all of the Cloud Pak System-specific Jython functions into a single package to reduce the chances of name collisions with functions and variables in your own scripts.

Results

Detailed or general help is displayed.

What to do next

You can continue to use the command-line interface with guidance from the information in the help function.