path: root/man/en/sos-help.1

.TH SOS HELP 1 "Fri Nov 05 2021"
.SH NAME
sos help - get detailed help information on sos commands and components
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B sos help TOPIC

.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBsos help\fR is used to retrieve more detailed information on the various SoS
commands and components than is directly available in either other manpages or
--help output.

This information could for example be investigating a specific plugin to learn more
about its purpose, use case, collections, available plugin options, edge cases, and
more.
.LP
Most aspects of SoS' operation can be investigated this way - the top level functions
such as \fB report, clean,\fR and \fBcollect\fR, as well as constructs that allow those
functions to work; e.g. \fBtransports\fR within \fBsos collect\fR that define how that
function connects to remote nodes.

.SH REQUIRED ARGUMENTS
.B TOPIC
.TP
The section or topic to retrieve detailed help information for. TOPIC takes the general
form of \fBcommand.component.entity\fR, with \fBcomponent\fR and \fBentity\fR
being optional.
.LP
Top-level \fBcommand\fR help sections will often direct users to \fBcomponent\fR sections
which in turn may point to further \fBentity\fR subsections.

Some of the more useful or interesting sections are listed below:

    \fBTopic\fR                     \fBDescription\fR

    \fBreport\fR                    The \fBsos report\fR command
    \fBreport.plugins\fR            Information on what report plugins are
    \fBreport.plugins.$plugin\fR    Information on a specific plugin
    \fBclean\fR or \fBmask\fR             The \fBsos clean|mask\fR command
    \fBcollect\fR                   The \fBsos collect\fR command
    \fBcollect.clusters\fR          How \fBcollect\fR enumerates nodes in a cluster
    \fBpolicies\fR                  How SoS behaves on different distributions