Apple oxs manual Using Terminal, To open Terminal

1Typing Commands 1

How to use Terminal to execute commands, connect to a remote server, and view online information about commands and utilities.

To access a UNIX shell command prompt, you open the Terminal application. In Terminal, you can use the ssh command to log in to other servers. You can use the man command to view online documentation for most common commands.

Using Terminal

To enter shell commands or run server command-line tools and utilities, 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:

mClick the Terminal icon in the dock or double-click the application icon in the Finder (in /Applications/Utilities).

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

server1:~ admin$

you’re logged in to a computer named “server1” as the user named “admin” and your current directory is the admin’s home directory (~).

Throughout this manual, wherever a command is shown as you might type it, the prompt is abbreviated as $.

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