BOS_HELP(8)

✨ BOS_HELP(8) — bestie edition ✨

okay so this is a page from the AFS Command Reference manual, section 8, and it's literally just about one little command that hands you the answers. no cap, it's giving "study guide energy" and honestly? iconic. 💖

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💅 NAME 💅

bos_help — displays help for bos commands

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

bos help [-topic <help string>+] [-help]

bos h [-t <help string>+] [-h]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The bos help command shows you the complete online help entry — that's the short description plus the syntax statement — for every command operation code you name in the -topic argument. 🫶

But bestie, if you just leave -topic out? Then the output gives you the first line (name + short description) of the online help entry for every single bos command. like, the whole squad. no filter. ✨

heads up! if what you actually want is to search — to list every bos command whose name or short description has a specific keyword in it — you want the bos apropos command instead, not this one. don't get it twisted. 😭

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -topic <help string>+ — tells it which command(s) you want the full online help entry for. important: drop the bos part of the name and give it only the operation code (so like, type status, not bos status). and if you just don't pass this argument at all, the output will briefly describe every bos command. 💀
• -help — prints the online help for this command. all the other valid options get ignored, periodt. 🙈

💖 OUTPUT 💖

The online help entry for each bos command is made up of two or three lines, and they're each doing their own lil thing:

• The first line names the command and briefly describes what its function is. ✨
• The second line lists the aliases for the command, if there even are any.
• And the final line — which starts with the string "Usage" — lists the command's options in the prescribed order. these online help entries use the same symbols (brackets and all that) as the reference pages in this document, so you already know the vibe. 🎀

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

this command right here displays the online help entry for the bos status command, and honestly? it ate. 🔥

% bos help status
bos status: show server instance status
Usage: bos status -server <machine name> [-instance <server
process name>+] [-long] [-cell <cell name>] [-noauth]
[-localauth] [-help]

🌈 PRIVILEGE REQUIRED 🌈

None. zero. nada. you need literally no special access, queen. 👑

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

bos(8), bos_apropos(8)

💜 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.

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and that's the whole thing! this OpenAFS page is dated 2026-07-27 and it lives in BOS_HELP(8). mwah, go read your help entries bestie 💋✨🦋