well i have been reading some articles on how to use Terminal and that i can run the daily, weekly, and monthly cleanings with it. what are other things i can run with it, as far as maintenance? i'm concerned with what all i should do to keep my system optimized and running efficiently.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Questions about Terminal
- Thread starter Zuplar
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The Terminal is probably the most powerful (and potentially dangerous) aspect of Mac OS X. You can pretty much do anything with it (more than you can using the standard interface).
In terms of maintenence you'll want to look at cron and shell scripting. These offer ways to automate certain tasks that you may want to do on a regular basis. Say you want to create a text file at a certain time on a certain day, that would be easy with this combination. Of course the system is much more powerful than that but it gives you an idea.
When thinking about shell scripting imagine Applescript on steroids and you have a pretty good idea about what it can do.
http://www.ss64.com/osx/
This is a great list of commands in the Terminal. But it just isn't that simple. To figure out how to use any of the commands on that link above type 'man' and then the command and a Manual will come up in the terminal that tells what it does and how to use it.
If you are dedicated to learning to use Terminal Commands it will take a while to get your head around it. It is powerful because it there are tons of things to do with it. But it will take time and patience.
You can do a lot with the terminal... Most people with Linux or Unix Experience will feel right at home with it. If you want to learn what you can do with it I would suggest picking up books on how to use Unix. As for system performace improvements there are things you can do with it. But I would warn you not to try to hard with them Apple did a decent job at getting things fairly optimal...
I actually could spend a entire day at work using nothing but the terminal... But for normal usage you normally don't need to go there) It does offer you a lot of information that you normally can't get elsewhere.
Examples.
ps -ef
This will show you all the programs running on your computer.
netstat -i
This will show you all the TCP/IP (Internet) traffic that your computer is managing. (useful for seeing if someone is on your system that shouldn't be)
kill -9 PID (You get the PID from the ps -ef command) this will kill a program (like forcequit) if it hangs.
ls -l give you the list of files in a folder
cd [path name] changes directories or folders
using ls and cd you will find that there are a bunch of files that Mac OS X normally hides on you. I wouldn't suggest messing with them to much because they may break something seriously.
I actually could spend a entire day at work using nothing but the terminal... But for normal usage you normally don't need to go there) It does offer you a lot of information that you normally can't get elsewhere.
Examples.
ps -ef
This will show you all the programs running on your computer.
netstat -i
This will show you all the TCP/IP (Internet) traffic that your computer is managing. (useful for seeing if someone is on your system that shouldn't be)
kill -9 PID (You get the PID from the ps -ef command) this will kill a program (like forcequit) if it hangs.
ls -l give you the list of files in a folder
cd [path name] changes directories or folders
using ls and cd you will find that there are a bunch of files that Mac OS X normally hides on you. I wouldn't suggest messing with them to much because they may break something seriously.