Preface

This guide (previously titled Perforce Server Administrator Guide: Fundamentals) describes the installation, configuration, and management of the Helix versioning engine (Perforce server). This guide covers tasks typically performed by a system administrator (for instance, installing and configuring the software and ensuring uptime and data integrity), as well as tasks performed by a Perforce administrator, such as setting up Perforce users, configuring Perforce depot access controls, resetting Perforce user passwords, and so on.

This guide focuses on the installation, configuration, and management of a single Perforce server. For information on the installation, configuration, and management of multiple distributed servers as well as of proxies and brokers, see Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Multi-site Deployment

Because Perforce requires no special system permissions, a Perforce administrator does not typically require root-level access. Depending on your site’s needs, your Perforce administrator need not be your system administrator.

Both the UNIX and Windows versions of the Perforce service are administered from the command line. To familiarize yourself with the Perforce Command-Line Client, see the P4 Command Reference.

About this manual

This manual includes the following chapters:

Chapter	Contents
“Overview”	Discusses the basic client-server architecture for connected and disconnected clients. Describes the basic administration workflows for installing, configuring, and managing the Perforce server.
“Installing and Upgrading the Server”	Describes how to install the Perforce service or upgrade an existing installation
“Configuring the Server”	Explains basic configuration options for enabling DVCS, accepting client requests, case sensitivity, logging, and P4V settings.
“Working with Depots”	Explains how you work with each type of depot to organize and archive your work.
“Securing the Server”	Explains how you encrypt client-server communication and how you authenticate and authorize users.
“Backup and Recovery”	Explains how you back up and recover versioned data and Perforce meta data.
“Monitoring the Server”	Describes how you can monitor the Perforce server and its use of system resources: disk space, processes, commands, locked files, user file access, and logging.
“Managing the Server and Its Resources”	Provides information about managing code sharing, distributed development, users, changelists, disk space, processes, and Windows deployments.
“Tuning Perforce for Performance”	Outlines some of the factors that can affect the performance of a Perforce server, provides a few tips on diagnosing network-related difficulties, and offers some suggestions on decreasing server load for larger installations.
“Customizing Perforce: Job Specifications”	Explains how jobs enable users to link changelists to enhancement requests, problem reports, and other user-defined tasks. Describes the template that defines jobs and explores the use of third party defect tracking systems.
“Using triggers to customize behavior”	Explains how you use different kids of scripts to customize the behavior of server processing.
Perforce Server (p4d) Reference	Provides complete reference information for the command used to start and configure the Perforce server.
Moving a Perforce server to a new machine	Explains how you move an existing Perforce server from one machine to another .
License Statements	Provides license information.

What’s new in this guide for the 2016.2 release

This section provides a list of changes to this guide for the Perforce Server 2016.2 release. For a list of all new functionality and major bug fixes in Perforce Server 2016.2, see the Perforce Server 2016.2 Release Notes.

Major changes

Support for delegation of control in protections table: Information has been added to explain how you can use the p4 protect command’s new owner permission to give a user or group the ability to run the p4 protect command for a particular path. See Authorizing access for more information.

Helix documentation

The following table lists and describes key documents for Helix users, developers, and administrators. For complete information see the following:

http://www.perforce.com/documentation

For specific information about…	See this documentation…
Introduction to version control concepts and workflows; Helix architecture, and related products.	Introducing Helix
Using the command-line interface to perform software version management and codeline management; working with Helix streams; jobs, reporting, scripting, and more.	Helix Versioning Engine User Guide
Basic workflows using P4V, the cross-platform Helix desktop client.	P4V User Guide
Working with personal and shared servers and understanding the distributed versioning features of the Helix Versioning engine.	Using Helix for Distributed Versioning
`p4` command line (reference).	P4 Command Reference, `p4 help`
Installing and administering the Helix versioning engine, including user management, security settings.	Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Fundamentals
Installing and configuring Helix servers (proxies, replicas, and edge servers) in a distributed environment.	Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Multi-site Deployment
Helix plug-ins and integrations.	IDEs: Using IDE Plug-ins Defect trackers: Defect Tracking Gateway Guide Others: online help from the Helix menu or web site
Developing custom Helix applications using the Helix C/C++ API.	C/C++ API User Guide
Working with Helix in Ruby, Perl, Python, and PHP.	APIs for Scripting

Syntax conventions

Helix documentation uses the following syntax conventions to describe command line syntax.

Notation	Meaning
`literal`	Monospace font indicates a word or other notation that must be used in the command exactly as shown.
italics	Italics indicate a parameter for which you must supply specific information. For example, for a serverid parameter, you must supply the id of the server.
[`-f`]	Square brackets indicate that the enclosed elements are optional. Omit the brackets when you compose the command. Elements that are not bracketed are required.
…	Ellipses (…) indicate that the preceding element can be repeated as often as needed.
element1 \| element2	A vertical bar ( \| ) indicates that either element1 or element2 is required.

Please give us feedback

We are interested in receiving opinions on this manual from our users. In particular, we’d like to hear from users who have never used Perforce before. Does this guide teach the topic well? Please let us know what you think; we can be reached at manual@perforce.com.

If you need assistance, or wish to provide feedback about any of our products, contact support@perforce.com.

Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Fundamentals (2016.2)