Mac newbie with many questions...

[stephanie]

Hello everyone. I just bought myself a new Mac Powerbook G4 with Superdrive. I have a few questions though that hopefully someone can answer.

1. Is it possible to boot directly to console mode?

2. Is it possible to have multiple instances of console running that I can switch to, such as tty1, tty2, etc. using a key combination?

3. And is there a way to speed up my computers boot time? It takes a while, like in the 2 minute range. Maybe there is a few hacks I can do?

4. Where can I get the utilities for bin and sbin?

Sorry for these, but I run Linux at home and want to maintain a portable version of my PC with this Mac. To do that requires that I have amny of the some apps and capabilties loaded on both machines.

 

[Thirteenva]

1.) yes, command + S at startup.

2)not that i'm aware of.

3)shouldnt take 2 minutes for a ghz tibook to boot, my 500mhz tibook doesnt take that long. 1 minute at the most.

4)sorry not sure about that one, not my field, but there are plenty of people here that can help you with that.

 

[Fukui]

Hello

1. Is it possible to boot directly to console mode?

To boot directly to Console mode, hold the "Apple Key (Command)" and the V key together durring boot up. For Single User (Command Line) mode Do the same except hold the S key instead of V.

You can also go to System Preferences and select User Accounts and de-select automatic log-in and choose to use a list of users when you log-in. When you log in, you can choose "Other" and at that point, for name you type >console , and press enter. Then you can log-in using the command-line. The benifit of that is, you don't need to reboot into the command line all the time.

3. And is there a way to speed up my computers boot time? It takes a while, like in the 2 minute range. Maybe there is a few hacks I can do?

OK, you probably have 10.2.1 If I am not mistaken. Try and update to 10.2.2 (Software Update in System Preferences) that might help.

If you really want to "Hack" your system to have better performance etc. I would recomend two things: have a separate Swap Partition, and Put your user on a separate partition. You can do the first easily by reformating and paritioning your drive into 3 sections OSX,User,.Swap. Edit /etc/rc and add the mount command before the declaration of the swap location for example:

mount -t HFS /dev/disk0s3 /Volumes/.Swap
swapdir=/Volumes/.Swap .

To move your user location to another partiton, just open the Netinfo Utility in the Utilites folder, authenticate your user, and navigate to the "Users" directory. You should see your name there, click it and change your "home" from /Users/ to /Volumes/(your partition name)/(Username). Then just copy the folders from your old location.

The benefits of this are that your swapfiles are not getting fragmented with the other files that your system updates add and you yourslef add to the same partition. It helps to keep the system files all together nice and neatly so the system boots faster and doesn't need to "plow through" tons of fragmented stuff. Your user is also isolated from the system, so that if you wanted to competely erase your OS, you can do that and not effect your personal user settings and data at all.

2. Is it possible to have multiple instances of console running that I can switch to, such as tty1, tty2, etc. using a key combination?

If you use the Terminal Application, you might be able to do this, but I am not sure.
Check the help section at apple.com/support and check at the user forums there, someone may have asked the same question already...

P.S I was also new to Mac a year ago, so just sharing what I know...

P.P.S OSX partiton should be at least 5Gigs, and installing with minimal languages and fonts can speed up things quite a bit too.

Good Luck

 

[stephanie]

How do I rearrange my partitions without losing my data?


Like what utility would I use?

 

[Fukui]

Here's How

How do I rearrange my partitions without losing my data?


Like what utility would I use?

Ok, in order to rearrange the parition you have to do a full Reformat as far as i know.

What I think you could do, if you haven't moved too much data to your powerbook, is to just copy your Home directory to a CD-R/RW (one came with your PBG4 right?), or a DVD-R if it got so big.

If you still want to proceed, then what you would do, after backing up, is place the system restore DVD in your drive and restart. Hold the C key to boot using a CD when starting up. When the installer comes up, click the menu "Installer" and you should see "Disk Utility" and "Reset Password" options. Click the Disk Utility, and it will show a list of Mounted Partitions on the left, click the Disk itself (not the partion) and click the "partition" tab on the upper right. You can now name your partitions and and choose partition sizes etc. It's pretty straight forward. Just make sure not to use spaces in the names of the partitions (some installers dont like it, I don't know why), and if you don't want to use OS9 (which I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole) don't install OS9 disk drivers (classic can still function), that will further make things run better for OS X, as OS9 Drivers are installed on a ton of hidden paritions and can mess up stability (I know, yuck). Also, dont format UFS, only HFS+ ,UFS means Carbon applications won't function and a few oddities that wouldn't be fun to experience...

It's really pretty easy.

Good Luck.

 

[szark]

Re: Mac newbie with many questions...

1. Is it possible to boot directly to console mode?

Already answered. I know there is also a way to setup the computer to always boot to the text console, but I can't find the instructions anywhere...

2. Is it possible to have multiple instances of console running that I can switch to, such as tty1, tty2, etc. using a key combination?

Not yet, but it is being worked on (slowly).

3. And is there a way to speed up my computers boot time? It takes a while, like in the 2 minute range. Maybe there is a few hacks I can do?

Can't help much with this one.

4. Where can I get the utilities for bin and sbin?

OS X comes with quite a lot of bin and sbin utilities -- but they are hidden by default in the Finder. You can see them from the terminal prompt.

If you need other utilities, check out the Fink or GNU-Darwin projects.

Also, the Apple UNIX download section is helpful.

 

[sparkleytone]

if you dont know already, whatever you have on your linux machine that isnt already on your OS X machine will need to be recompiled from source.

also, is there any reason you want to stay in console mode all the time?? i do all my command line stuff from the terminal.app in the gui. using the terminal you can open up as many sessions as your wish. i usually have three terminal windows going at once.

 

[benixau]

yeah, but by going direct to console he can start up X and then say Gnome 2.0 or KDE 3.0. i know he probablywont neeed to as he is new but, it is akways nice to know.

just a question or two for our lil new friend, why do you shutdown your computer and not just sleep it?? and why do you want the console??

 

[mmmdreg]

I always though stephanie was a girls name???
and it seems there's not much reason to have a permanent console thingo happening...also, to run gnome and kde and stuff, can't you just do that from an xterm in xfree86/xdarwin etc?

 

[stephanie]

Like someone already said earlier, I would like the ability to boot into console mode because from there I ould run GNOME or KDE, or my fav, Enlightenment without eating resources for Aqua. But I suppose I could just get to the login screen and type ">console" to do the same thing. And no, you cant run KDE or GNOME from an xterm, as they are linked with X. If you alrady have X running, its resources will be locked out, causing them to fail when initializing.

The reason I shut it down is simply because of habit. I have a high speed network at home and work, and in the interest of network security, I shutdown the machine when I am done for the day. However, when I leaving work going home or elsewhere, I usually will put it to sleep instead.

So I should not use UFS? Well that sucks. That is what I installed with already. I guess though since I need to make multiple partitions I would have to anyway. And after I transferred 10GB of mp3 files over from my main computer.

Oh, before I leave.. yes Stephanie is a girls name.

 

[szark]

Originally posted by stephanie
Like someone already said earlier, I would like the ability to boot into console mode because from there I ould run GNOME or KDE, or my fav, Enlightenment without eating resources for Aqua. But I suppose I could just get to the login screen and type ">console" to do the same thing. And no, you cant run KDE or GNOME from an xterm, as they are linked with X. If you alrady have X running, its resources will be locked out, causing them to fail when initializing.

I still think the best method is to use XDarwin . Since Aqua is not X, you can run XFree86 at the same time as Aqua and simply switch between them with a key combination. Much easier than rebooting, but it would use some resources for Aqua.

Finally found the method for booting to the console! Check it out at Mac OS X Hints...

 

[Fukui]

PleasePleasePlease...

PleasePleasePlease if your going to use UFS, please don't use it for the OS. If you transfered your user files to a UFS partiton, thats fine, OS X doesn't care about that, but the OS, when installed on UFS, certain apps such as those made with the carbon framework don't function, (photoshop, dreamweaver, etc). Well, I gues if your using gnome and KDE, it might not matter...

I only say this cause when I first used OS X (10.0), I wanted it as "UNIX" as possible and so formated in UFS...boy was I in for it! Startup problems, sleep problems, apps crashing left and right, slow disk access etc. Really bad. That was 19 months ago though, maybe apple cleaned up thier UFS support since then.

For me though, I'll change to UFS when all of those applications will work in it. Until then...

If you don't have any problems though. I say I am happy for you. Good luck, and try to ignore some of the other "more juvinile" posts you may encounter in these forums! (I don't mean in this one)

P.S You can reformat partitons in different formats independent of the other using the "erase" tab in diskutility in the Utilities folder.

PPS I am sure if you want to enable file journaling you know how right?
su diskutil enablejournal /

 

[Fukui]

Forgot

I guess though since I need to make multiple partitions I would have to anyway.

Well, if using diskutility, disk partitons and partition format are independent of eachother, so it doesn't matter what format you use initially.

 

[Macette]

Originally posted by stephanie


Oh, before I leave.. yes Stephanie is a girls name.

Hi Stephanie!

 

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by szark


I still think the best method is to use XDarwin . Since Aqua is not X, you can run XFree86 at the same time as Aqua and simply switch between them with a key combination. Much easier than rebooting, but it would use some resources for Aqua.

That was what I was referring to when I said xterm...

 

[stephanie]

Oh, I see. I will check out XDarwin.

Thanks all! Its nice to feel welcome. Only my Linux forum folks are this nice. The people at the Windows forum were nice until they found out I run mac and Linux as well. Then they got so mean. They suck and that makes me cry.

BTW -Macette - Hello to you too!