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What can I do with Terminal?

S

sethypoo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 8, 2003
1,583
5
Sacramento, CA, USA
Hey everyone.....

Long, long ago, I knew how to use DOS. I assume Terminal is similar, in that both are command line programs.

So what neat things can I do with Terminal? Tricks? Tips? Thanks.
Seth
 
Terminal is similar to DOS command prompt in that it is a command line and is used for similar tasks. but, just as most Windows users rarely need the command prompt, most Mac users won't need Terminal. no offense, but if you don't know what Terminal is used for, you probably don't need it. however, i am not saying don't learn it! it can be fun to learn new things, and you might find yourself doing different things with your computer.

knowing DOS commands will not help much in Terminal, though. go to a unix/linux site for a listing of the different commands and their usage.
 
With Terminal you have the power to push the button that blows up the world if your feeling evil (In other words... completely delete your harddrive) :p

alternatively, check out these 2 sites for more detailed helpful information:

Mac OS X Hints

OS X Faq
 
Re: What can I do with Terminal?

Originally posted by sethypoo
Hey everyone.....

Long, long ago, I knew how to use DOS. I assume Terminal is similar, in that both are command line programs.

So what neat things can I do with Terminal? Tricks? Tips? Thanks.
Seth
Click to expand...

The question shouldn't be "what can you do?"

It should be "what can't you do?"

With Terminal you have access to one of the most powerful Operating systems in the world ... FreeBSD-UNIX.

Those who control Unix control the world.

Learn it, Love it
 
Originally posted by gwuMACaddict
my personal favorite command...

ssh

esp. when you know a friends IP and password... good time, good times...

;) :D
Click to expand...

LOL ... i didn't wanna come out and say it... but basically.. .YA
 
Originally posted by sethypoo
Huh? What do you mean?
Click to expand...

don't worry about it man ... if you don't know what he means ... then your probably not going to be missing anything from not using the terminal ...

your actually better off leaving the terminal alone until you read up on using Unix commands ... doing things from the terminal is not as forgiving as running things in the GUI, you could make a mess that you can't clean up ... .LOL

any decent UNIX BIBLE will explain everything you might want to know, in detail

then again - you probably havn't set up the root user yet, so other then deleting your own files, you probably won't be able to make any real trouble for yourself
 
i am in the process of learning unix, and i love it. in a gui, like panther, you can only do what some programmer decided you could do.

On the other hand, in unix (terminal), you are only limited by your own imagination. So, to answer the question 'what's terminal for?'...... anything you can dream of a computer doing, there is a way to do it in terminal.
 
Re: What can I do with Terminal?

Originally posted by sethypoo
So what neat things can I do with Terminal? Tricks? Tips? Thanks.
Click to expand...

From anything to everything.

Heck, if the command doesn't already exist to do the task you want, you can whip up a binary (a program) to do just that task.

The greate thing about Terminal (as in all UNIX) is each command only does one thing (copy, move, list, find, etc.). This may sound a limiting factor, but au contraire it's what makes it so damn good: it does that one thing really well and you have an infinite number of combinations to get the exact result you want.

As kuyu said, your dreams are the limits!

Go learn some UNIX :cool:
 
The command line lets you get into the guts of the computer. Some things are faster from the command line, in my opinion - bulk file transfers for example (especially when combined with SSH keys or Kerberos authentication). If you learn bash (the language of the command line shell you use in terminal) you can whip up scripts to accomplish repetitive tasks quickly and painlessly. If you're a systems admin you can log into remote servers and work on them from the comfort of your own desk.

For that matter, knowing the command line may occasionally help if your OS X box locks up (not that they ever do...) - you can get on another computer and ssh into your box to troubleshoot it. I found this really handy with Linux, and imagine it'll be the same for OS X. Usually when a machine like that freezes the underlying system is still running just fine, if you can just get to it!
 
to learn some ropes..

try taking a look at all the possible commands you have installed - you can do this by holding the 'escape' key for three seconds, and say Yes to Display All Possibilitles.

then pick one that looks interesting, like ssh, and type 'man ssh', which will bring up a manual page for that command. the manpages are a little techy, but you'll get an idea what they're for.

some fun ones to start with:

top - displays all current processes
ps aux - same thing but a snapshot
netstat - shows all network activity

there's also some really helpful ones in there, like grep, which searches through a specific input and looks for a certain set of characters, but it's really flexible and has a lot of customizable options. it can also take input from other commands by using the pipe command or |. so you could do:

netstat | grep udp4

which will show you all the udp4 connections currently active on your computer.

hope this helps for starters!

np
 
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