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Proxmox VE Documentation

We try to generate high quality documentation for {website}[{pve}], and choose to use AsciiDoc as base format.

The basic idea is to generate high quality manual pages, and assemble them into a complete book, called Proxmox VE Administration Guide. So we have one source, and generate several documents from that. It is also possible to generate printable PDF files, or ebook formats (.epub).

When possible, we provide scripts to extract API definitions, configuration or command line options from the source code.

To simplify the documentation task, we keep all Documentation within this repository. It is possible to generate the docs without installing any additional Proxmox packages with:

make pve-doc-generator.mk
make index

To update the auto-generate API definitions use:

make update
Note
 you need a fully installed development environment for that.

Debian Packages

We generate a development package called pve-doc-generator, which is used by other Proxmox VE package to generate manual pages at package build time.

Another package called pve-docs is used to publish generated .html and .pdf files on our web servers. You can generate those Debian packages using:

make deb

Common Macro definition in asciidoc/asciidoc-pve.conf

asciidoc allows us to define common macros, which can then be referred to using {macro}. We try to use this mechanism to improve consistency. For example, we defined a macro called pve, which expands to "Proxmox VE".

For URLs which are used more than once, two macros should be defined:

  • {name-url}, which just contains the http(s) URL

  • {name}, which contains the complete link including the canonical description

For example, the macro {forum-url} expands to {forum-url}, and the macro {forum} expands to {forum}.

The plan is to add more such definitions for terms which are used more than once.

Warning
 When asciidoc encounters a misspelled macro name, it will silently drop the containing line!

Autogenerated CLI Command Synopsis

We generate the command line synopsis for all manual pages automatically. We can do that, because we have a full declarative definition of the {pve} API. I added those generated files (*-synopsis.adoc) to the git repository, so that it is possible to build the documentation without having a fully installed {pve} development environment.

Style Guide

asciidoc uses a fairly simple markup syntax for formatting content. The following basic principles should be followed throughout our documentation.

Sections

Sections are formatted using ‘two-line titles’, by adding a line of the appropriate characters and of the same length as the section title below the title text:

Level 0 (top level):     ======================
Level 1:                 ----------------------
Level 2:                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Level 3:                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Level 4 (bottom level):  ++++++++++++++++++++++
Note
 Level 4 headings are currently not working for manpage outputs, you may want to use ‘.SECTION’ instead, which results in the same rendering, and this level of Heading isn’t displayed in any Index/TOC anyway.

Section titles should always be preceded by two empty lines. Each word in a title should be capitalized except for “articles, coordinating conjunctions, prepositions, and the word to in infinitives unless they appear as the first or last word of a title” (see Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing).

Lists

Numbered Lists

Numbered lists should be created using the implicit numbering format:

. First level
.. Second level
. First level again

  1. First level

    1. Second level

  2. First level again

Bulleted Lists

Bulleted lists should be created using the * symbol:

* First level
** Second level
* First level again

  • First level

    • Second level

  • First level again

If you need to have other elements on the same level as a list element you can do this with the + symbol:

. First level
.. Second level
+
Another Sentence (or Block) on the continued second level.
. First level again

  1. First level

    1. Second level

      Another Sentence (or Block) on the continued second level.

  2. First level again

Labeled Lists

Labeled lists should be used to make lists of key-value style text more readable, such as command line parameters or configuration options:

Regular labeled lists
First Label Text::

Element text paragraph

Second Label Text::

Another element text paragraph.
First Label Text

Element text paragraph

Second Label Text

Another element text paragraph.

Horizontal labeled lists
[horizontal]
First Label Text:: Element text paragraph

Second Label Text:: Another element text paragraph.

creates

First Label Text

Element text paragraph
Second Label Text

Another element text paragraph.

The FAQ section uses a special questions and answers style for labeled lists.

Text and Block Styles

asciidoc offers a wide range of default text styles:

  • Emphasized text: created using 'text', used for emphasizing words and phrases

  • Monospaced text: created using `text`, used for command / program names, file paths, in-line commands, option names and values

  • Strong text: created using *text*, used for emphasizing concepts or names when first introduced in a section.

There are also different built-in block styles that are used in our documentation:

Complete paragraphs can be included literally by prepending each of their lines with whitespace. Use this for formatting complete commands on their own line, such as:

pct set ID -option value
By surrounding a paragraph with lines containing at least four '-'
characters, its content is formatted as listing.

Use this for formatting file contents or command output.

Specially highlighted tips, notes, warnings and important information can be created by starting a paragraph with TIP, NOTE:, WARNING: or IMPORTANT::

Tip
 this is a tip
Note
 this is a note
Warning
 this is warning
Important
 this is important information

For each of these blocks (including lists and paragraphs), a block header can be defined by prepending the block with a ‘.’ character and the header text:

.Title of List
* First element
* Second element
* Third element
Title of List

  • First element

  • Second element

  • Third element

For example, block headers can be used to add file names/paths to file content listings.

Online Help

Each {pve} installation contains the full documentation in HTML format, which is then used as the target of various help buttons in the GUI.

If after adding a specific entry in the documentation you want to create a help button pointing to that, you need to do the following:

  • add a string id in double square brackets before your documentation entry, like [[qm_general_settings]]

  • rebuild the asciidoc-pve script and the HTML chapter file containing your entry

  • add a property onlineHelp in the ExtJS panel you want to document, using the above string, like onlineHelp: qm_general_settings This panel has to be a child class of PVE.panel.InputPanel

On calling make install the asciidoc-pve script will populate a JS object associating the string id and a link to the local HTML documentation, and the help button of your input panel will point to this link.

Screenshots

First, it should be noted that we can display screenshots on html and wiki pages, and we can include them in printed documentation. But it is not possible to render them inside manual pages. So screenshot inside manual pages should be optional, i.e. the text should not depend on the visibility of the screenshot. You can include a screenshot by setting the thumbnail attribute on a paragraph:

[thumbnail="screenshot/gui-datacenter-search.png"]
First, it should be noted ...

The corresponding file need to reside inside folder images/screenshot, and should be in .png image format. We include the screenshots in printed documentation, and pdftex uses the density (DPI) specified inside the file. So all screenshots should use the same density. We currently require the density set to 146 DPI, so that we can display a 1024 pixels wide image. You should not include larger screenshots (although it is possible).

You can use the ./png-cleanup.pl script to set the correct density. Simply use the following command to import a screenshot image:

# ./png-cleanup.pl screenshot.png images/screenshot/screenshot.png
Tip
 You can use identify -verbose screenshot.png command to show all image attributes (from debian package imagemagick)
Default Screenshot Layout

We normally display screenshots as small thumbnail on the right side of a paragraph. On printed documentation, we render the full sized graphic just before the paragraph, or between the title and the text if the paragraph has a title. It is usually a good idea to add a title to paragraph with screenshots.

If you need to render many screenshots, it is possible to place them on the left side, so you can alternate the thumbnail position using the float attribute:

[thumbnail="screenshot/gui-datacenter-search.png", float="left"]
If you need to render many screenshots ...

Please avoid to many consecutive screenshots to avoid rendering problems. Also verify the printed documentation to see if large screenshots create layout problems.

Copyright

Copyright © 2016-2021 Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the LICENSE file.