Appendix A
Perforce Server (p4d) Reference

Synopsis

Syntax

Description

On UNIX and MacOS X, the executable is p4d.

On Windows, the executable is p4d.exe (running as a server) or p4s.exe (running as a service).

Exit Status

Perforce server starting...

On failed startup, p4d returns a nonzero error code.

Also, if invoked with any of the -j checkpointing and/or journaling flags, p4d exits with a nonzero error code if any error occurs.

Options

Flag	Meaning
-c command	Lock database tables, run command, unlock the tables, and exit.
-d	Run as a daemon (in the background)
-f	Run as a single-threaded (non-forking) process
-i	Run from inetd on UNIX
-q	Run quietly (no startup messages)
-s	Run p4d.exe as an NT service (equivalent to running p4s.exe)
-xu	Run database upgrades and exit.
-xi	Irreversibly reconfigure the Perforce server (and its metadata) to operate in unicode mode. Do not use this flag unless you know you require unicode mode. See the Release Notes for details.
-jc [ prefix ]	Journal-create; checkpoint and save/truncate journal.
-jd [ file ]	Journal-checkpoint; create checkpoint without saving/truncating journal.
-jj [ prefix ]	Journal-only; save and truncate journal without checkpointing.
-jr file	Journal-restore; restore metadata from a checkpoint and/or journal file.
-z	Compress (in gzip format) checkpoints and journals.
-h, -?	Print help message.
-V	Print server version.
-J journal	Specify a journal file. Overrides P4JOURNAL setting. Default is journal.
-L log	Specify a log file. Overrides P4LOG setting. Default is stderr.
-p port	Specify a port to listen to. Overrides P4PORT. Default 1666.
-r root	Specify the server root directory. Overrides P4ROOT. Default is current working directory.
-v debuglevel	Set server trace flags. Overrides value P4DEBUG setting. Default is null.

Usage Notes

• On all systems, journaling is enabled by default. If P4JOURNAL is unset when a server starts, the default location for the journal is $P4ROOT/journal. If you wish to manually disable journaling, you must explicitly set P4JOURNAL to off.

• Take checkpoints and truncate the journal often, preferably as part of your nightly backup process.

• Checkpointing and journaling preserve only your Perforce metadata (data about your stored files). The stored files themselves (the files containing your source code) reside under P4ROOT and must be also be backed up as part of your regular backup procedure.

• If your users are using triggers, don't use the -f (non-forking mode) flag; the Perforce server needs to be able to spawn copies of itself ("fork") in order to run trigger scripts.

• After a hardware failure, the flags required for restoring your metadata from your checkpoint and journal files may vary, depending on whether or not data was corrupted.

• Because restorations from backups involving loss of files under P4ROOT often require the journal file, we strongly recommend that the journal file reside on a separate filesystem from P4ROOT. This way, in the event of corruption the filesystem containing P4ROOT, the journal is likely to remain accessible.

• The database upgrade flag (-xu) is may require considerable disk space. See the Release Notes and the section "Important Notes for 2001.1 and later" on page 16 if upgrading to 2001.1 or later from a 2000.2 or earlier server.

Related Commands

To start the server, listening to port 1999, with journaling enabled and written to journalfile.	p4d -d -p 1999 -J /opt/p4d/journalfile
To checkpoint a server with a non-default journal file, the -J argument (or the environment variable P4JOURNAL) must match the journal file specified when the server was started.	Checkpoint with: p4d -J /p4d/jfile -jc or P4JOURNAL=/p4d/jfile ; export P4JOURNAL p4d -jc
To create a compressed checkpoint from a server with files in directory P4ROOT	p4d -r $P4ROOT -z -jc
To create a compressed checkpoint with a user-specified prefix of "ckp" from a server with files in directory P4ROOT	p4d -r $P4ROOT -z -jc ckp
To restore metadata from a checkpoint named checkpoint.3 for a server with root directory P4ROOT	p4d -r $P4ROOT -jr checkpoint.3
To restore metadata from a compressed checkpoint named checkpoint.3.gz for a server with root directory P4ROOT	p4d -r $P4ROOT -z -jr checkpoint.3.gz