Always remember that PEAR has a help command:

$ pear help

.. list of commands follows .. 

Note: Command examples will have a dollar sign $ before each line that is typed. This helps to distinguish input from the output of the PEAR installer.

Note: $ is just an example for a command prompt. Depending on your distribution or personal preferences, your shell might display a username, often combined with the current path: joe:~/some/path>

Help for a command is just as easy to get:

$ pear help <command>

$ pear help install

.. help for install follows ..