The LPAR tool offers a very extensive set of functions. All commands and options are documented in detail in the online help and are also shown in the form of some examples. The following shows how to use the online help. Our goal in developing the online help was to enable the user to display all the information they need directly on the command line.

The subcommands of the LPAR tool commands hmc, ms, lpar and vios are assigned categories such as processor, memory, fc, or lpm (and some others). You can display which categories a command knows and supports using the keyword “help“. We have used the lpar command as an example below, but the other three commands support exactly the same type of online help.

Run the command “lpar help”:

$ lpar help
Help is available for the following categories:

   lpar help blueprint eth fc io led lic lpm
   lpar help mem memory npiv pgdev power proc processor
   lpar help prof profile scsi serial sriov vnic vnicbkdev

Specific help is available for each of the supported keywords:

   lpar help <keyword>

For a complete list of all keywords try:

   lpar help usage
$

The available categories are listed in the upper part of the output. Each of these categories can be given as an argument to the “lpar help” command. For example, do you want to perform an action on an LPAR that has something to do with FibreChannel (FC), but have forgotten the corresponding subcommand? Then you can simply display all subcommands in the fc category.

Try it out:

$ lpar help fc
USAGE: lpar [<option> ...] <keyword> [<option> ...] [<argument> ...]

Recognized keywords for topic 'fc' are:
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] addfc [-c] [-d] [-f] [-l <detail_level>] [-w <wait_time>] [-v] <lpar> [<slot>] <remote_lpar_name> [<remote_slot_num>] [<wwpns>] [<fcsX>]
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] chfc [-r] [-R] [-v] <lpar> <slot> [<attributes> ...]
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] lsfc [{-o <format>|-f|-j|-y}] [-F <fields>] [-s <selections>] [-v] [<lpar> ...]
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] lsnpiv [{-o <format>|-f|-j|-y}] [-F <fields>] [-s <selections>] [-v] <lpar>
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] lsvslot [{-o <format>|-f|-j|-y}] [-t <type>] [-F <fields>] [-s <selections>] [-v] <lpar>
   [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] rmfc [-c] [-d] [-f] [-l <detail_level>] [-w <wait_time>] [-v] <lpar> <slot>
$

All subcommands (keywords) that have something to do with the topic of FC are displayed. Let’s assume you wanted to display the virtual FC adapters of an LPAR and you recognized from the output that the subcommand lsfc is the subcommand you were looking for. However, you are not yet sure what the exact command line should look like or which arguments you should enter in which order with which options. In this case, it is recommended that you use the online help once again and this time enter the keyword lsfc as an argument in “lpar help“.

Please do this, start “lpar help lsfc”:

$ lpar help lsfc
USAGE:
   lpar [-h <hmc>] [-m <ms>] [-p <profile>] lsfc [{-o <format>|-f|-j|-y}] [-F <fields>] [-s <selections>] [-v] [<lpar> ...]

DESCRIPTION:

Show virtual FC adapters for the specified LPARs.

   -f : short form for '-o stanza'
   -F : show selected fields only
   -j : short form for '-o json'
   -o : use the specified output format
      json - output in JSON format
      stanza - output in stanza format
      yaml - output in YAML format
   -p : profile name
   -s|-S : select or select not specific records
   -y : short form for '-o yaml'

EXAMPLE:

Show virtual FC adapters for all LPARs:
   lpar lsfc

Show virtual FC adapters in JSON format for all LPARs connected to
HMC hmc02:
   lpar -h hmc02 lsfc -o json
   lpar -h hmc02 lsfc -j

Show virtual FC adapters for LPAR aix02 from profile 'standard':
   lpar -p standard lsfc aix02
$

The exact usage is shown, which was also shown when listing the subcommands of the fc category. A short description is shown that explains what the subcommand does. In addition, all options are now listed, with a short description. At the end of the output, some concrete examples are shown of how the command can be used.

The advantage of this relatively detailed online help is that it is immediately available on the command line. In most cases, you do not have to look in an external document (PDF, website). Once you have used the LPAR tool for a while, you will generally resort to the online help less and less.

But the online help can also be very useful for experts, if they have forgotten an attribute name or can no longer remember the possible permitted values ​​of an attribute. A look at the online help almost always provides the information they are looking for.