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Asked: 2009-05-13 04:23:10 +0800 CST

What are useful Command-line Commands on Mac OS X?

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Per the Windows and Linux threads, what commands do you find most useful in Mac OS X Server (or Client)?

mac-osx-server mac command-line-interface osx-leopard

30 Answers

  1. say "some text"

    Famously used for getting people back into their apartments, say takes your arguments and reads them aloud through the audio output device.

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  2. pbpaste and pbcopy to interact with the pasteboard (aka clipboard).

    Examples:

    # copies the directory listing
ls -l | pbcopy

# get pasteboard lines containing foo and save them in a_file
pbpaste | grep foo > a_file

    I think they default to using the macroman encoding, so if you want UTF-8 (which you do) you should check out these links:

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  3. fs_usage

    Lets you monitor file system activity. Handy if you want to see what files some app creates. See http://rentzsch.com/macosx/fs_usageIntro for more explanation.

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  4. open .

    Opens a finder window in the current working directory.

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  5. From the command line, I like having the ability to:

    Create and burn a "universal" CD/DVD:

    $ mkisofs -allow-multidot -allow-leading-dots -d -hide-rr-moved \
-l -joliet-long -R -T -v \
-V VOLUME_NAME -o output.iso root-cd-dir/
$ hdiutil burn -noverifyburn output.iso

    Create an ISO image from a CD/DVD:

    $ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2s0
$ dd if=/dev/disk2s0 of=cdname.iso bs=32m

    Being able to forget the otool command when I'm seeking ldd:

    $ alias ldd='printf "Sending command to \'\''otool -L\'\'' --\n" && otool -L'

    Mount a disk image from the command line:

    $ hdid diskimage.dmg (or .iso)

    Use preview to access a man page:

    $ man -t rsync | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app
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  6. The 'airport' CLI utility is my favorite. See http://osxdaily.com/2007/01/18/airport-the-little-known-command-line-wireless-utility/. It will show you details like the signal level, noise level, and the BSSID of the AP you're associated to.

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  7. ipconfig getpacket en0

    Displays network configuration for the primary Ethernet interface (en0).

    If you're used to Windows and think "ipconfig" is broken - it's not ;-) You just need to add a couple arguments

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  8. drutil tray open

    Invaluable (over ssh) when there's no keyboard connected since the eject button on Apple optical drives isn't accessible from outside the case.

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  9. It can't be said enough, "open" is great. You can open documents in their GUI program and you can select the GUI program with -a as well. For example,

    open -a vlc movie.avi

    will open VLC and tell it to load movie.avi in your current dir.

    open movie.avi

    would open it with whatever program is the default. If you just want to open a program, you can do that too:

    open -a system\ preferences

    will run System Preferences. You can open Urls too:

    open vnc://myserver:5900

    will open Screen Sharing and connect to myserver.

    Check out

    man open

    to see all flags you can use.

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  10. softwareupdate

    Update your mac from the CLI.

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