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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks 560

Posted by michael from the um,-install-debian-instead? dept.
Lisa writes "There are big differences between Mac OS X and Unix machines. In this MacDevCenter article, Brian Jepson has assembled ten tips to help achieve a smooth transition from Unix to OS X."
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Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks More

Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks

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  • uh, no michael (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:15PM (#4533244)
    from the um,-install-debian-instead? dept

    Wouldnt that defeat the purpose of using OSX?

    • Re:uh, no michael (Score:3, Insightful)

      by GavK ( 58709 )
      Absolutely!

      Those of us who got sick of waiting for the Gnome / KDE war to stop long enough to get a *usable* linux desktop finally caved in and bought a nice shiny Powerbook because it ran OSX...

      I'm sorry but gnome and KDE SUCK compared to aqua. Not to mention all the things that just work in aqua out the box (Hmmm, iTunes, DVDPlayer, CD Writing)

  • Good! They need the extra skills... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wee ( 17189 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:16PM (#4533250)
    ...so they can get a better second job to pay for Apple hardware.

    I'm kidding, I'm kidding... jeez...

    -B

  • Remember.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:18PM (#4533272)
    It's Command/Control/Restart, not Control/Alt/Delete

  • The Screen Savers... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tha_Big_Guy23 ( 603419 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:19PM (#4533286)
    had a brief segment last night showing the top 10 Mac OS X killer tips.. the link is here [techtv.com] with some nifty tricks for your Mac..

    • Re:The Screen Savers... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And, oddly, 8 of the 10 "tricks" they suggest are in fact actually _harder_ than the normal way of doing things. I don't get techTV on my cable package, are they usually this dumb?

      (in windows it'd be like: Did you know that to turn your screensaver on you can browser My Computer/Windows/something.scr and double click on it? Instead of using a hotcorner or anything, you know, sane.)

  • Where's my...Unix? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:20PM (#4533289) Journal
    I did not (and still don't?) now have anything against MacOS X but that articles makes it sounds like everything is turned up side down. Really, I had the belief that Mac OS X is just about same as everything else *nix. However, this article did good work in convincing something else.

    • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Informative)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:29PM (#4533367)
      I think you'll find that the variations aren't so much variations from Unix, but from Linux. Many of the differences the article outlines are simply "hiding" the Unix from newbies (i.e. dangerous directories) and can easily be over ridden.

      The article's comments about NetInfo are a little off as well. OSX has been moving to using NetInfo less and less. 10.2 tends to utilize many more traditional ways of doing things.

      I should add that most of those elements are hold overs from NeXT and the Darwin team appears to be making it more like a traditional BSD.

      BTW - if you want a good Finder replacement with more Unix tools try Path Finder. It has lots of nice things such as creating SymLinks rather than Aliases etc. (Although Aliases are more powerful, but most Unix tools don't recognize them)

      • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NotoriousG.N.U. ( 620295 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:42PM (#4533494)
        I think you'll find that the variations aren't so much variations from Unix, but from Linux.

        Excellent point.

        One unfortunately probably lost on a large portion of the Slashdot crowd that believes Linux == Unix (or GNU/Linux == Unix)...

        --

        I love it when you call me longhair bath-needin' poppa!

      • The article's comments about NetInfo are a little off as well. OSX has been moving to using NetInfo less and less. 10.2 tends to utilize many more traditional ways of doing things.

        You will not convince me of that. They are simply trying to ease the porting of applications. Flat files *are* inherently less organized and archaic and the fact that they are supporting it is just so they can woo unix users and developers more easily.

        Try to create a user using /etc/passwd, better yet try to create a *group* without using netinfo. I don't really care one way or the other, flat files are more familiar and netinfo is more elegant, but using both in conjunction is a hack.

      • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by stripes ( 3681 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @07:59PM (#4534424) Homepage Journal
        I think you'll find that the variations aren't so much variations from Unix, but from Linux. Many of the differences the article outlines are simply "hiding" the Unix from newbies (i.e. dangerous directories) and can easily be over ridden.

        That's more or less true. If you ignore the fact that pretty much every Unix system that has a GUI except Apple's uses X11 the differences from "Apple's Unix" to anyone else's isn't really any bigger then the differences between any two other Unix-like systems. Sure Apple uses NetInfo, but it really isn't any different from Sun's YP or NIS. Yes, Apple has a ton of GUI admin tools that whizz all over /etc, but what is IBM's SMIT? Or HP's...er...what does HP call their admin tools again?

        If you are talking about command line tools, Mac OS X is "just another Unix", period. One of the less common ones, so you may not find as many things compiling out of the box, but that isn't because OSX is more different from whatever Unixish system the author used (most likely Linux these days) then, say NetBSD or SunOS is, but just that whatever 3 random things that always seem to trip people up when going to a new platform weren't already spotted and fixed.

        I remember when SunOS was king, and it was a slight pain to port stuff to Ultrix (DEC's Unix). This is no harder. Straight down to programs sometimes forgetting a htonl or the like.

        Once you get to GUI's then it's a whole different thing (unless you remember when Suns came with Sun Tools, DEC had X11, AT&T had the BLiT, and everyone else had their own thing too). OSX is way different from other Unix-like systems. You could install X11 on it, but X apps will never feel like native apps, and most apps that are written for OSX that you might want to modify won't be using X. Then again, it's nice to learn a new thing once in a while, isn't it?

        Although Aliases are more powerful, but most Unix tools don't recognize them

        In what ways are aliases more powerful?

        • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @08:25PM (#4534595)
          Aliases are sort of a hybrid between a symlink and a hard link. They keep track of the HFS file id of the target file.

          Prior to 10.2 the default behavior was to first check the file id, and if that file isn't there any more then check the file location. In 10.2 this behavior changed to be more like a symlink. First it checks the file location, then it checks for a file of the given file id.

          To sum up: aliases are more powerful than symlinks because they do everything that a symlink does (when accessed through the mac file apis, not the BSD ones), but can also still find the target file if it's been moved to a different directory.

        • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Kiwi ( 5214 )
          One of the less common ones, so you may not find as many things compiling out of the box

          My experience porting my application [maradns.org] to various unices is that porting from Linux to Mac OS X is a no-briner; the toolchain to build programs on the both unices is the GNU toolchain, and is almost identical.

          The only Unix I have had a hard time porting to is Solaris; then again, I have not tried porting my application to other prorpietary unices like HPUX, Ultrix/OSF-1/whatever they call it these days, AIX, etc.

          - Sam

    • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mosch ( 204 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:46PM (#4533529) Homepage
      everything is turned upside down? Did you follow the same link I did? The startup procedure is different though it still just runs shell scripts. The filesystem is laid out differently, and it uses NetInfo instead of /etc/hosts, /etc/group and /etc/passwd.

      Is it a big change? yes. Is the whole world upside down? ummm.... no. You still have a shell, all the standard unix utilities and most everything is done the Unix way, even when it's done through the GUI. Personal Web Sharing is Apache. Windows File Sharing is Samba. Printer Sharing is cups. The firewall is a default deny ipfw setup.

      Sounds like Unix to me. Though admittedly I'm biased, since I really like the fact that I'm posting this message from a unix box (OS X 10.2.1) that's currently running Illustrator, Photoshop and Quicken, while charging up my iPod.

      • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jukal ( 523582 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:53PM (#4533594) Journal
        Sounds like Unix to me

        Yes, OS X sounds like Unix. I was not flaming OSX, I was flaming the article, which gave a hysterical view to the situation.

      • Re:Where's my...Unix? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:59PM (#4533648)
        it uses NetInfo instead of /etc/hosts, /etc/group and /etc/passwd.

        I do feel compelled to point out that OS X actually uses lookupd for host name resolution, and lookupd can be configured to use any number of sources for name-to-address mappings. Under 10.2 and later, lookupd is configured to look in /etc/hosts first by default. So unless you're using 10.0 or 10.1, /etc/hosts will work just the way you think it should.

        More info can be found in the lookupd man page.

  • Virtual window management? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by piyamaradus ( 447473 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:25PM (#4533332)
    I run entirely Solaris and Linux as my desktop environments. My wife has an iBook with OS X (not Jaguar yet). I do most of the administration on it for her, which has been fun since I hadn't used a Mac since 1989...and OS X is the most usable (for me) that I've found. I could almost use it as a workstation...except for screen real estate issues. I'm amazed that there seems to be no default way of running virtual screens in OS X -- which keeps me from being able to work effectively when I have to wade through dozens of terminal sessions on one box (and 'screen' isn't sufficient).

    Short of running one of the X11 WMs described, does anyone have a native Aqua virtual window tool?

  • Talk about bad design... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Q2Serpent ( 216415 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:27PM (#4533354)
    The first is to select the file in the Finder, and drag it to a new location while holding down the Option and Command keys (or select Make Alias from the File menu). This creates a Mac OS alias that Cocoa, Carbon, and Classic applications can follow. However, Unix applications will ignore those links, seeing them as zero-byte files.

    You can also create a link with ln or ln -s. If you use this kind of link, Unix, Cocoa, Carbon, and Classic applications will happily follow it.

    I have no knowledge of the reasons for this design decision, but why isn't it just "All links are symlinks, no matter where they came from"?

    Having links that the gui creates be incompatible with the command line, but having links the command line makes be compatible with the gui, just creates complication.

    Apple's been on this site before... The Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com]
    • The reason why they designed it that way is because, unlike what the article says, Classic apps *won't* follow symlinks. So they where faced with either making aliases incompatible with Unix apps, or incompatible with Classic apps. Considering that when OS X was deployed, the vast majority of users were still using tons of Classic apps, it was a good design decision.

    • Re:Talk about bad design... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xil ( 151104 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:49PM (#4533553)
      Because aliases and symlinks do different things. Normally users want aliases, since they have been around on the traditional MacOS for years.

      In a nutshell: symlinks only point to one fixed path. If the target file's name is changed, or the name of any directory in its path changes, the symlink will no longer work. Aliases, however, can track a file even if it is renamed or moved, or if any of its parent directories are renamed or moved.

      The Finder, as well as most applications, can deal with either one.

      It's not bad design to do things that most users want, and to provide a way for power users (who know about symlinks) to get what they want as well. I could imagine a better way to do it than through an obscure key combination, but that's not what you were complaining about.

  • 6. Aliases and Links (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ribo99 ( 71160 )

    There are two ways to create links to files. The first is to select the file in the Finder, and drag it to a new location while holding down the Option and Command keys (or select Make Alias from the File menu). This creates a Mac OS alias that Cocoa, Carbon, and Classic applications can follow. However, Unix applications will ignore those links, seeing them as zero-byte files.

    You can also create a link with ln or ln -s. If you use this kind of link, Unix, Cocoa, Carbon, and Classic applications will happily follow it.

    If this is the case I'm suprised that they didn't just have the Finder create Unix-style links behind the scenes if they work with everything that Finder-style links work with but additionally Unix applications. Is there some advantage to using Finder links over Unix links that I'm unaware of?
    • Finder links will find a new file in the old spot with the same name. i.e. if you have a file /Users/Me/thisfile.txt and delete it and put a new file there the alias will still work.

      So in concept Finder Aliases are superior. In practice though programs like Apache and FTP don't work with them. Over on MacNN [macnn.com] there is a script to convert Aliases to Symlinks.

      Going the other way, Apple makes SymLinks work for native OSX software. So the problem is mainly that they have full Unix software compatibility which typically entails Unix software can't take advantage of some OSX features.

      Part of the problem is that most people run OSX on HFS+ rather than UFS file systems. This gives more backwards compatibility but also ties you to the limits of HFS+. Most expect this to change in about a year due to extensive work Apple has been doing on filesystems. (They have some of the folks from BeOS working on them)

    • Re:6. Aliases and Links (Score:5, Informative)

      by alangmead ( 109702 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:02PM (#4533670)
      Apple's aliases have slightly different semantics than unix aliases. Aliases work even if you change the name of the original file. If the alias points to an file on a remote volume, and that remote volume isn't mounted the alias contains enough information to report back to the OS that the remote volume should be mounted. Aliases also have some information to check that the original file is probably the same one the alias used to point to. (using the type, creator, and file creation date for its heuristics.)

      If you are interested in Apple's aliases, check the "Alias Manager" chapter of Inside Mac: Files [apple.com]

      It seems to me, if you try to look at OS X as a generic Unix system, things tend to get a little skewed. Rather than trying to be an good Unix OS, they are trying to be a good OS, and willing to pick up pieces (like a Unix process model and system call interface) that will help them in that goal, then great. I bet if they could do it easily, they would even dump everything in /bin, /usr, /var, and /etc. I suspect that they are willing to let the Unix geeks play around with the Unix underpinnings of their system, but I doubt they want to extend and enhance any of it to suit us.

      On the other hand, last time I got in this discussion with a co-worker [slashdot.org], he pointed out the addition of ruby and the upgrade of python to 2.2 as counter examples.

  • After switching earlier this year once OSX seemed stable for regular home use, I haven't been happier with my TiBook. it sits nicely at home next to the 2 RedHat systems, Tivo, and the WinXP gaming platform.

    Fink helped edumacate me to all that apt-stuff and provides a good base for GNU utilities and applications.

    But I still find myself cd'ing to /etc/init.d or trying to figure out why the hell my shutdown scripts don't work. Any set of helpful hints (and these are) are helpful to me!

  • Excuse me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:32PM (#4533396)
    It's a directory dammit! Not a freakin' folder!!!

    Thank you.

    Now back to your regularly scheduled beowulf "jokes", first posts, goatse.cx links, trolls and astroturfers.

  • Errors on the table in the aritcle (Score:4, Informative)

    by netringer ( 319831 ) <maaddr-slashdot@NospaM.yahoo.com> on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:36PM (#4533425) Journal
    There's an editting error on the 2nd and 3rd lines of the table of directories in the article.

    AFAIK, it should read:

    .trash - This directory contains files that have been dragged to the Trash.
    ./vol - This directory maps HFS+ file IDs to files.

    Isn't it suposed to be ~/.trash - in your user directory?

    I don't own a Mac but I see 'em on the Sreen Savers.

  • fwiw, there are other unix gotchas (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:37PM (#4533432)
    FYI, the HFS+ filesystem has a hidden "feature": it is NOT case sensitive (just case preserving). So "SlashDot" is the same as "slashDOT" is the same as "/." Well, maybe not that last one. This reared its ugly head when using gcc (not Apples fake version) and autotools.


    Another "feature", at least in 10.1 is the 255 char line limit the Terminal has. This pops up in shell scripts at the worst times without warning.

  • My Top 10 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:39PM (#4533451) Journal
    In no particular order:
    * Forget tcsh and get bash [sourceforge.net], copy it to /bin, add it to /etc/shells, and change root's shell and your shell.
    * Go to The Fink Package Database [sourceforge.net] and snag a ton of cool Open Source apps.
    * Mount /home [withay.com] from somewhere.
    * Usually stay away from /etc 'cause most of that stuff is ignored.
    * Forget sudo and enable root access (I forget how, I don't have an OS X box in front of me), then use su.
    * Don't delete ~/Library, that's where all your preferences are saved.
    * Load XDarwin in rootless mode and run x2x [freshmeat.net] way cool.
    * Get the absolute latest autoconf, automake, etc that recognize Darwin.
    * Don't forget to click "Require Password" in your screen saver.
    * Put your own pictures in, er, somewhere in your home directory (don't remember where) so the screen saver can display them in its slide show.

    Now if only the WM had "focus follows mouse" and iTunes played Ogg Vorbis.

    • Re:My Top 10 (Score:3, Funny)

      by sulli ( 195030 )
      Just make sure that you're showing your pictures, not your (um) pictures on the screensaver.

    • Re:My Top 10 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:08PM (#4533707)
      * Forget sudo and enable root access (I forget how, I don't have an OS X box in front of me), then use su.

      Uhhh... why? If your suggestion resulted in some kind of improvement I might be convinced to go along, but why mess with things that don't need to be messed with? There's no reason at all to enable the root account on your OS X machine. If you absolutely, positively have to have a root shell, you can always use this little trick:

      % sudo su -
      Password:
      #

    • Re:My Top 10 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by melatonin ( 443194 )
      * Forget tcsh and get bash [sourceforge.net], copy it to /bin, add it to /etc/shells, and change root's shell and your shell.

      Yes, forget tcsh but there's no reason to get bash. OS X comes with zsh [zsh.org] built in. Rather than chaning your login shell (which is still good for when you log in remotely), tell Terminal to exec /bin/zsh in Terminal's Preferences. Otherwise it calls login(), which is pretty slow.

      Zsh is the successor to ksh, and, generally speaking, kicks butt. Put 'setopt automenu; setopt autocd; setopt autolist;' in your ~/.zshrc file and you will be happy.

      * Forget sudo and enable root access (I forget how, I don't have an OS X box in front of me), then use su.

      sudo passwd root

      Put your own pictures in, er, somewhere in your home directory (don't remember where) so the screen saver can display them in its slide show.

      That would be ~/Pictures.

  • One: under item 2 he states you need to change Login Options once root has been enabled; this is not true--Jaguar automatically provides an "Other" button that allows you to log in as root.

    Two: people really should learn to use NetInfo.

  • tell me WHY before WHAT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:42PM (#4533492) Homepage Journal
    Interesting article. It shows that *IF* I decide to move from Unix (actually from my Linux/PPC) to Mac OS X *THEN* I know where to get a help. But it doesn't help to answer to the question, which logically comes first: *WHY* should I migrate from Unix/Linux to Mac OS X.

    Remember? I am a Unix geek and as such I don't buy any eye candy. Normally I deal with serious data processing stuff. And I don't buy hardware args as a reason - I've already got G4 to run Gentoo Linux.

    So, is there any *REAL* serious reason?

    • Re:tell me WHY before WHAT (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mosch ( 204 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:09PM (#4533720) Homepage
      OS X runs Office, Quicken, Photoshop, Illustrator, Cubase, Logik, etc.... No more wondering if your resume is going to display correctly in Microsoft Word, or having to keep a Windows box around to make PowerPoints.

      No more /dev/dsp clusterfuck. No more wondering how to turn on anti-aliased fonts in X... or did you only enable them for GTK apps... or was that KDE aps...

      In short, OS X is a great OS because you don't have to spend time fucking with things you don't care about, you can spend your time actually doing your work, leaving you that much more time to play.

  • sudo rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AT ( 21754 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:42PM (#4533493)
    Their suggestion to use sudo is good advice for *any* Unix, not just MacOS X. Since I started to use it, I've reduced the time I spend as root by 80%, which probably reduces my chances of making a really ugly mistake by the same amount. I have to shake my head when I see people who do all their work in Unix as root -- it is only a matter of time before you make some fatal typo.

    On the other hand, their advice to use tcsh/bash as a sudo command is poorly thought out. How is that any better than su? Better to use sudo with a few simple commands and scripts that need root for 80% of cases, and use su for the rest.

  • I would switch but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kbielefe ( 606566 ) <karl.bielefeldt@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:52PM (#4533578)
    I read on Microsoft's web site that you can only use roman numerals in OS X.

  • Smooth transition indeed! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brad-x ( 566807 ) <brad@brad-x.com> on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:54PM (#4533604) Homepage

    I'm afraid a transition away from UNIX and toward MacOS X will be a step down for a long time to come.

    UNIX supports, in its open source forms, a larger and more powerful variety of platforms than Apple makes, and in its closed source forms runs on much higher end systems.

    Want a workstation OS? Great. Get MacOS if it makes you happy. Tinker with FreeBSD/Linux if you like to be a geek.

    Don't waste time thinking MacOS is the answer to everything. Don't waste other people's time trying to convince them it is.

    • Throwing Around "UNIX" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ablair ( 318858 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:54PM (#4534039)
      I hate to point out nitpicky but important points (OK, well no I don't) but:

      "a transition away from UNIX and toward MacOS X"
      That's sort of like a transition away from birds but towards ducks. Here the author is assuming MacOS X is somehow not a *NIX... an assumption that's been proved wrong here many times before. MacOS X is a subset of UNIX, just look up any UNIX history [levenez.com].

      Sadly, even the original story submitter made this mistake: "There are big differences between Mac OS X and Unix machines." Sorry, that's not correct unless it's specified what other type of UNIX we're comparing OS X to.

      After all, even the O'Reilly article author himself says "These tips will show you the differences between Mac OS X and other flavors of Unix" (my emphasis) MacOS X is a UNIX. Let's get it straight.

  • My top 10 OS X Tips (Score:5, Funny)

    by chmod u+s ( 211367 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:55PM (#4533612) Journal
    Tip #10 Fink is not what you call your older brother when he gives you a wedgie.

    Tip #9 Despite claims of Cocoa, Aqua, and Java there is absolutely nothing to drink in OS X

    Tip #8 'Switching' will get you more dates than 'I am SciFi'

    Tip #7 Buying OS X and pirating XP will raise your karma

    Tip #6 Sherlock kicks msBob's ass!

    Tip #5 iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, and best of all
    iDon'tHaveToDownloadTheCrossoverPluginToWatchMov ie Trailers.

    Tip #4 [these are not the droids you are looking for]

    Tip #3 31337 h4x0r5 use RISC

    Tip #2 Ellen Feiss is a hottie

    AAAAAAAANNNNND.... The #1 Tip is:

    Don't let eyecandy and marketing fool you into thinking it is open source ;)

  • New command line tools (Score:5, Informative)

    by prodos ( 50696 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @05:56PM (#4533628)
    A good taste of what is in the book, but I think a point on some of the new included command line utilities should probably have made the top 10. Things such as:

    ditto - Copy files and directories while preserve resource forks.

    hdid and hdiutil - Mount disk images (even over HTTP), create ram disks, and all sorts of fun stuff.

    disktool and diskutil - Complementary command line counterparts for the GUI Disk Utility. Unfortunately not much documentation is provided for them, but they can do everything from fsck to repairing system file permissions.

    softwareupdate - Command line version of the GUI Software Update. Run it without arguments to see packages that need updating, run it as root with arguments of packages to update and it will download them, install them, and even display a text version of the evil EULA for you to read and agree to.

    For those interested in the book, it is nice to note that most of these items are covered as shown by the online index. [oreilly.com]

  • tip: command line fun (Score:5, Funny)

    by chmod u+s ( 211367 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:17PM (#4533787) Journal
    wanna irritate a 'switching' unix geek?

    create root owned directory called "-p" or some suitable switch-like string

    you can't delete it, or move it, or rename it.

    rm -rf "-p" nope
    rm -rf \-p nope
    rm -rf '-p' nope
    rm -rf * nope

    try mv, ls, chown, chmod, anything! it won't let ya do it. And even when authenticated as an admin the finder won't delete it.

    Finally I was able to chown -R from a higher level directory and then whack it via finder. But what a PIA!

    • Re:tip: command line fun (Score:5, Informative)

      by khuber ( 5664 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:50PM (#4534005)
      Also remember that the program will never see your quotes or backslashes which is why all the things you tried are equivalent to rm -rfp. -- tells rm "no more options follow", and ./-p gets passed in directly and it doesn't look like an option to rm.

      There's nothing magical going on here, it's just the difference between escapes that are processed by the shell before the program ever sees them and correct parameter syntax.

      -Kevin

  • I just can't understand what they were thinking... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Featureless ( 599963 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:34PM (#4533896) Journal
    They reorganized almost everything, so that everything from cp (only "ditto" copies metadata) to shutdown (not rewritten to care about Apple's replacement for /etc/init.d) to /etc/passwd (user information is now stored in "the NetInfo database") is now useless, and worse, vestigal (!), but everything new they introduced makes the previous unix "non-naming schemes" and disorganization look great by comparison. ".vol" is where trashed files go? It's ".DS_Store" rather than ".Finder Settings"? For that matter, why on earth are we still prepending periods to hide files? Or hiding /usr and /tmp at the application level rather than having a legacy emulation layer and just doing it right? Aliases don't work at the "unix level," and symbolic links work everywhere, but we're once again back to things that break when you move the target... This is the freakin 21st century here.

    It may appear to work, and it may crash less than OS9, but from a design point of view, OSX is an anathema. This article just makes it clearer: OSX is, not a port of MacOS or an enhancement of Unix, but a bloody (and fatal?) collision between the two, where both lost what clarity and integrity they had by attrition to the other. A great opportunity to do a new system right was squandered by what appears to be terrifyingly sloppy-looking engineering.

    • Re:I just can't understand what they were thinking (Score:4, Informative)

      by JMax ( 28101 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @08:22PM (#4534584)
      ...but from a design point of view, OSX is an anathema. This article just makes it clearer: OSX is, not a port of MacOS or an enhancement of Unix, but a bloody (and fatal?) collision between the two, where both lost what clarity and integrity they had by attrition to the other.

      What? Have you actually *used* it? How about this explanation instead: they've managed to create one unified operating system that keeps some very diverse users happy. If you're an end-user technophobe, what you see is a very nice, clean, end-user system, far nicer than Windows, and without the 10 years of cruft that OS9 had accumulated. On the other hand, if you understand computing, you have a complete Unix-ish system, again, without a lot of the cruft that other Unix systems have accumulated. The Apple engineers deserve major kudos for keeping the "collision" under control as well as they did... they of course have backward compatibility to deal with, too.

      Yes, the file copy stuff is a little ridiculous, but geez, the complaints on that level are pretty few, considering how much elegant functionality there is in there otherwise.
      • Of course I've "*used*" it. I've spent quality time with people who are programming against it, and I've read much of the developer literature. I see a lot of ambivalence about OSX. I don't think the OS9 cruft is eliminated; I believe that it's all still there, both in the Classic emulation layer and in the APIs which (in earlier drafts I read were simple, beautiful, and well-organized, very Java-like) Adobe forced Apple to cruft up to make native ports of their software easier... and then took their sweet time with those native ports to boot.

        You said: "without a lot of the cruft that other Unix systems have accumulated," but I have no idea what you mean. What unix cruft is gone? Are you talking about X11 being replaced by Aqua? From my point of view, all the bad things about Unix are still there, and worse, new unix-esque crap has been piled on top of it, often conflicting, and badly, to add to the confusion that Unix already is.

        I think the ditto issue is emblematic of the entire conflict between unix and OS9; they've met, and they've been joined by a confusing and unfortunate kludge which everyone who uses the system is guaranteed to run afoul of. Copying files is about the most basic and fundamental activity you get into in an OS - that's not a little detail you overlook. Why not just modify cp to copy metadata if it exists, or make cp a link to ditto? Or the passwd file being superceded (at least in "some cases," I'm sure) by another database... My rule on this stuff is that if you're going to fsck with the password file, you'll break a lot of old code, but once you do replace it, you take the old piece out... the only thing worse than broken old code is broken old code that thinks its working.

        There are more complaints I didn't even get into. The incredible performance hit of scattering metadata of various kinds in what seems like dozens of flat files, so that the UI chains up thousands of seeks all over the disk, parsing XML and doing lots of complicated crap just to show you the contents of a folder or the properties of an application... And then apparently tying everything up in the layout loop... Have you tried resizing windows? It's tragic. And then there's the fact that Apple seems to have abandoned the superior use of metadata it once had; I see gnr9ng.xyz files scattered everywhere, not legacy stuff but new stuff created by Apple, as if it's a DOS box... IOW, turning their back on one of the earliest and best ideas in the Mac: type and creator information, instead of goofy abbreviations and naming conventions that are super-easy for the user to run afoul of.

        My big complaint with them is rather than boxing up traditional unix organization and features (which have no place on a desktop Mac, IMO), they made MacOS into a Unix clone, and an annoying one, because there's a bunch of important differences and gotchas and thus hassles actually porting and running unix software, since they did change quite a bit, even if they didn't fix it... meanwhile hiding /usr at the application level means that the user is guaranteed to see it at some point and be confused... I don't understand why they didn't approach unix more like they approached classic. With some containment. Seems like that would have been simpler, more much compatible, easier to use...

  • Transition? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:40PM (#4533934)
    I think use of the word "transition" illustrates the pipe dream that Apple has: UNIX users will leave UNIX in droves to commit to using Mac OS X.

    I don't think that's going to happen, and I think Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with that assumption. UNIX users like open systems: that come from multiple vendors and have open specifications. If they didn't, they would have moved to Windows long ago.

    Sure, there are some UNIX users that really go for the OS X pretty look and are happy with a BSD-like system call interface and a C compiler. But I think for the most part, OS X enjoys popularity among UNIX users only to the degree that it is UNIX compatible. If Apple wants to be in the UNIX market in the long term, rather than just receive a brief shot in the arm from a few UNIX converts, they need to make a long-term commitment to interoperating more with UNIX systems, and they need to give up dreams of "transitioning" UNIX users to Mac OS X.

  • Not Linux, but DEFINATELY Unix (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kakos ( 610660 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @06:52PM (#4534017)
    I see a lot of people complaing that OS X is supposedly a lot different from Unix. Well, hate to break to the Linux fanatics out there, but it is a lot CLOSER to Unix than Linux. Remember that Linux is not actually Unix, but a Unix-like operating system. OS X is Unix. It is BSD through and through. OS X is more Unix than Linux will ever be.

  • A wonderful full-screen console (Score:4, Informative)

    by caseyc ( 559060 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @07:08PM (#4534128)

    When this story was posted over at MacSlash, somebody replied with a tip of their own, which I've found to be quite nifty.

    What it involves is logging out, then logging back in as user ">console", with no password. You might have to select "Other User" or whatever that option is called, on the login screen. That'll allow you to skip Aqua, and just have a nice full-screen terminal to work with, instead.

  • developer woes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gol64738 ( 225528 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @07:17PM (#4534177)
    our entire development department and company backend is 100 percent linux (mostly RedHat). we just hired a new developer whose laptop is running OSX.
    since he was going to be a remote user, he attempted to get his laptop up to speed with the necessary compilers, python modules and other development pieces.
    after two days, he gave up in frustration, went to the nearest CompUSA, bought a new laptop and installed RedHat 8.0.

    now, he is a happy, development camper.

    now, i don't know much about OSX. so my question is, can OSX easily be used as a competent developer platform?

    • Re:developer woes (Score:4, Informative)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @08:17PM (#4534554)
      If this was back in the OSX 1.0 days you are right. With 10.2 it comes standard with a full Python distro along with the latest GNU tools. Further Fink has pretty much every tool compiled and debugged and installs them for you. This inlcudes X11 apps which admittedly once were a pain to run on OSX.

      So this isn't a problem anymore and hasn't been for quite some time.

    • Re:developer woes (Score:3, Informative)

      by Darchmare ( 5387 )
      It probably depends on what kind of development your developer is trying to do, but...

      It sounds like he either tried to do all this with a pretty early version of OS X (before most major tools were ported), or he just didn't know where to look.

      If I didn't have it all installed already, in just a few hours I could have Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL CVS, CVSWeb, and a number of other tools installed and ready to go. Install the dev tools and you'll likely have most of this stuff installed to begin with.

      Again, it depends on what he does. But for my own needs (admittedly relatively light), it was a piece of cake.

    • Re:developer woes (Score:5, Informative)

      by BlueGecko ( 109058 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (kcallop.nimajneb)> on Friday October 25, 2002 @09:03PM (#4534752) Homepage
      Did you introduce him to fink [sf.net]? By default, the Mac comes with the entire GNU toolchain, plus perl, python, and a ton of other utilities. If he needed newer versions of perl or python, or if he something else (Ruby, MySQL, PostreSQL, X window, Ant, OCaml, LaTeX, even KDevelop and KDE for Pete's sake!) he just types in

      fink install python

      for example, and, after five to twenty minutes (depending on the package), he's got whatever he needed. It's as easy as apt-get and it's fully OS X native. Check out the link; there are 1600 packages so far and going up literally daily. So my question is, how experienced was your developer?

  • Mac OS X Hints website (Score:5, Informative)

    by develop ( 88564 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @07:42PM (#4534318) Journal
    a great website for these kind of tips is http://www.macosxhints.com [macosxhints.com]. it has tips and advice coming in daily from all over the place and a forum to give your opinion on the tip. i really suggest folks interested in the article check it out.

    of course for the sake of keeping up, here's my top ten:

    1. kill processes by name [macosxhints.com]
    2. fixing command-line typos before hitting enter using Option-S [macosxhints.com]
    3. creating a talking cat in Jaguar [macosxhints.com]
    4. use gcc_select to switch compilers [macosxhints.com]
    5. open urls from the command line [macosxhints.com]
    6. search macosxhints from the commandline [macosxhints.com]
    7. Replace iTools with your own web and mail servers [macosxhints.com]
    8. Run Software Update from the Terminal [macosxhints.com]
    9. Correct command line typos with carets [macosxhints.com]
    10. AND THE BEST ONE! running the screensaver as your background [macosxhints.com]

  • Debian for Mac OS X == Fink (Score:3, Informative)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @08:28PM (#4534613) Journal
    from the um,-install-debian-instead? dept.
    Why instead? You can get most of a debian distro on your Mac OS X by using fink [sourceforge.net]. Hell, you can even run X11 on Darwin and eschew Aqua if you are so deeply in the Free-as-in-Stallman-uber-alles camp.

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