Apple Mac OS X Server manual Executing Commands, Opening Terminal

Executing Commands 1

In this chapter you will find out how to execute commands and view online information about commands and tools.

A command-line interface is a way for you to manipulate your computer in situations where a graphical approach is not available. The Terminal application is the Mac OS X gateway to the BSD command-line interface (UNIX shell command prompt). Each window in Terminal contains a complete execution context, called a shell, that is separate from all other execution contexts. The shell itself is an interactive programming language interpreter, with a specialized syntax for executing commands and writing structured programs, called shell scripts.

Different shells feature slightly different capabilities and programming syntax. Although you can use any shell of your choice, the examples in this book assume that you are using bash, the standard Mac OS X shell.

Opening Terminal

To enter shell commands or run server command-line tools, you need access to a UNIX shell prompt. Both Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server include Terminal, an application you can use to start a UNIX shell command-line session on the local server or on a remote server.

To open Terminal, click the Terminal icon in the dock or double-click the application icon in the Finder (located in /Applications/Utilities/).

Terminal presents a prompt when it is ready to accept a command. The prompt you see depends on your Terminal and shell preferences, but often includes the name of the host you’re logged in to, your current working folder, your user name, and a prompt symbol.

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