Documentation

[lewtwo]

First let me say Good Job!

About every six months I make the rounds a various VM incarnations to see what progress has been made. I have been doing this since Vm workstation 4.somehitng. This time around I looked at HyperV, ESXi, KVM on Ubuntu Server, Virtual Box on Ubuntu Server and ProxMox. I have to say that I am impressed with ProxMox. I hpoe that future revison exspose more of the capabilties of the underlying KVM/QEMU capabilites in the web interface.

Question that I do have is that the documentation seems to be a bit sparce ... or I have yet to locate it. In reading many of the posts on this forum I note reference to internal command such as "pveperf", "pveversion", etc. are these command documented anywhere ?

Very Best Regards,

Lewis Balentine

 

[dietmar]

Question that I do have is that the documentation seems to be a bit sparce ... or I have yet to locate it. In reading many of the posts on this forum I note reference to internal command such as "pveperf", "pveversion", etc. are these command documented anywhere ?

Al command have a manual page:

# man pveperf
# man pveversion

But any help in writing better documentation is appreciated.

- Dietmar

 

[alphadog]

Please don't take this post as hostility. I really enjoy PVE, but I second the confusion.

You can't point users to the "man xyz" page if one doesn't know that the command "xyz" even exists! The wiki has nothing on "pveperf", for example.

One thing that might be nice is a doc on all the various PVE commands (vzdump, etc...) with brief descriptions, and one on the overall architecture. (Where the conf files are, etc.)

And, while I'd love to help, I certainly know I won't get such a doc right for the same reasons I didn't know to "man pveperf". The tacit knowledge you guys have needs to be put somewhere for us to expand upon...

I can get help on a per-onstance basis from the forums, so hurray for that, and you guys are tremendously helpful and responsive, but there's a delay in waiting for Proxmox staff to answer...

 

[tom]

Please don't take this post as hostility. I really enjoy PVE, but I second the confusion.

You can't point users to the "man xyz" page if one doesn't know that the command "xyz" even exists! The wiki has nothing on "pveperf", for example.

One thing that might be nice is a doc on all the various PVE commands (vzdump, etc...) with brief descriptions, and one on the overall architecture. (Where the conf files are, etc.)

And, while I'd love to help, I certainly know I won't get such a doc right for the same reasons I didn't know to "man pveperf". The tacit knowledge you guys have needs to be put somewhere for us to expand upon...

I can get help on a per-onstance basis from the forums, so hurray for that, and you guys are tremendously helpful and responsive, but there's a delay in waiting for Proxmox staff to answer...

everyone can help in docu - e.g. just start a wikipage or add it to existing ones - you also send your input directly via email and we add it to the wiki if you are not familar with mediawiki pages.

maybe you can add something here about the command you mentioned (vzdump is already in the wiki)?
http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/FAQ

we are monitoring wiki pages and will move/correct/comment content created by others.

 

[lewtwo]

I should have been more specific:
Is there a list of available commands specific to ProxMax anywhere.
At that point then man pages will be more useful (oh my go that means I have to use vi ... aka most user hostile text editor ever written).

Otherwise I guess it requires digging into the source code. Kind of defeats the purpose of a prebuilt system.

 

[tom]

I should have been more specific:
Is there a list of available commands specific to ProxMax anywhere.
At that point then man pages will be more useful (oh my go that means I have to use vi ... aka most user hostile text editor ever written).

Otherwise I guess it requires digging into the source code. Kind of defeats the purpose of a prebuilt system.

the purpose of the system is not to point users to the console, if yes we document it (like vzdump). the command you are talking about are only necessary in case of support issues or debugging, but here is the list. we do not think its necessary to copy all these man pages (the existing documentation here) to the wiki, but feel free to add the list to http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/FAQ

• vzdump (see wiki)
• pveperf (simple performance/benchmark tool, not needed for operation)
• qm (for managing KVM machines on the console)
• proxversion (for displaying detailed version - also displayed on the web interface - only needed for debugging).
• pveca
• pveam update (force the update of the list of virtual appliances via http)

 

[alphadog]

My point is that we cannot add to the wiki on some command we don't know about until we need it.

What I think you should do is list a full "API". Then, users will find creative ways to use such functionality and, hopefully, many will come back and document it. This give you guys a good "pulse" on what people are doing and you can also "webify" it for novices making your product more useful!

For example, if I had not asked a question on the forum a while back, I would never have known about the conf files. Recently, when I wanted to fire up the Fedora AOS raw disk, it was pretty easy for me to get that going manually and bypass the upload issue. In fact, I am writing a blog piece to be posted soon (good "press" for PVE!), and will likely submit it to the wiki when done.

Also, I think you may underestimate the value of a well-documented system. I understand you want emphasis on the web interface for ease of use. But, GNU/Linux people all go to the command line at varying degrees...

 

[tom]

My point is that we cannot add to the wiki on some command we don't know about until we need it.

see the post before.

What I think you should do is list a full "API". Then, users will find creative ways to use such functionality and, hopefully, many will come back and document it. This give you guys a good "pulse" on what people are doing and you can also "webify" it for novices making your product more useful!

I would like to have a kind of case studie, white paper - how people successfully work with Proxmox VE.

For example, if I had not asked a question on the forum a while back, I would never have known about the conf files. Recently, when I wanted to fire up the Fedora AOS raw disk, it was pretty easy for me to get that going manually and bypass the upload issue. In fact, I am writing a blog piece to be posted soon (good "press" for PVE!), and will likely submit it to the wiki when done.

perfect!

Also, I think you may underestimate the value of a well-documented system. I understand you want emphasis on the web interface for ease of use. But, GNU/Linux people all go to the command line at varying degrees...

I just have to point that there is no other system with better documentation - Linux, the Debian community - down to the source code.

All Proxmox VE commands (its just a short list) are well documented (man pages). As Proxmox VE is a community project and its free I just ask the user to give something back - help in docu, help in forums. So instead of complaining I will try to push people to make everything better and adding documentation is a good way to start.

And finally, do not forget that the whole team is working on the 2.0 features which will change a lot. So I assume after this milestone a lot of new docs will follow.

 

[lewtwo]

thank you.