BACKUP_APROPOS(8)

💅 BACKUP_APROPOS — the AFS Command Reference girlies know

ok so bestie, this is backup_apropos from the AFS Command Reference, and it's genuinely one of the most underrated little tools in the whole backup suite. It's the search bar of the backup help system. That's it. That's the vibe. ✨

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🎀 NAME 🎀

backup_apropos — displays each help entry containing a keyword string

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

backup apropos -topic <help string> [-help]

backup ap -t <help string> [-h]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea ☕ — backup apropos goes through all the online help entries and shows you the first line of every backup command whose name or short description contains the string you passed to the -topic argument.

It's literally a search engine for your manpages, no cap. Type a word, get every command that word appears in.

And if what you actually want is the syntax for a specific command (not just the first line, the whole usage situation), you don't want this — you want the backup help command instead. different tool, different job. 🫶

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -topic <help string> — the keyword string you want to match. lowercase letters only, bestie, it's not going to hold your hand on casing. And if your string is more than one single word, wrap it in double quotes (" ") or some other delimiters so it doesn't get split up on you. 💀
• -help — prints the online help for this command. And listen — every other valid option gets ignored when you use this. All of them. It's giving main character energy, it does not share the spotlight. 👑

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💖 OUTPUT 💖

Okay so, the first line of any command's online help entry does two things: it names the command, and it gives a lil brief description of what that command does.

This command displays that first line for any backup command where the string you gave to -topic is part of either the command name or that first line. So you get a cute lil list of matches, name + description, no scrolling required. 🌈

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Look at this one — it lists every backup command that has the word "tape" in its name or in its short description:

% backup apropos tape
labeltape: label a tape
readlabel: read the label on tape
scantape: dump information recovery from tape
status: get tape coordinator status

see how clean that is?? four commands, four lil summaries, done. ate. 💅

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👑 PRIVILEGE REQUIRED 👑

None 💜 — you need zero special permissions for this one, go off.

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• backup(8)
• backup_help(8)

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📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

IBM Corporation 2000. <http://www.ibm.com/> All Rights Reserved.

This documentation is covered by the IBM Public License Version 1.0. It was converted from HTML to POD by software written by Chas Williams and Russ Allbery, based on work by Alf Wachsmann and Elizabeth Cassell. shoutout to the conversion girlies fr fr 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was OpenAFS, page dated 2026-07-27, and honestly? iconic. go search some commands. mwah 💋✨