Terminal 101: Managing Disk Space

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Whether you've got limited space because you're running OS X on a tiny SSD, or you're just conscious about getting the most out of every byte you've paid for, you can use two Terminal commands to help you keep track of disk space usage. We’ll show you how to track down large files eating away at your disk space using these built-in tools.

df

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Terminal 101: Managing Memory in Mountain Lion

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Keeping an eye on your Mac’s memory usage can bes vital for making your applications run faster and eliminate those that eat away at your virtual memory. You can do this right from within Terminal without any specialized apps using various commands.

Top

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Terminal 101: Viewing and Displaying File Differences

We’ve shown how to use diff to view differences between files and folders, but the output that command provides is a little confusing, especially if you are new to using the command line. Vimdiff is much more sophisticated, but because it uses highlighting to represent changes, the output is much easier to read for new users. Let’s take a look at how to compare up to three different files with vimdiff and read the output.

 

 

Running the Command

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Terminal 101: 5 Mountain Lion UI Tricks

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

With the release of Mountain Lion last week, many users have now downloaded and installed the latest cat on the block. While the new version of OS X has many great new features, some features and tricks that were present in past versions are no longer available. Let’s take a look at a few of these missing features and re-enable (or disable) them in Mountain Lion.

Please note that for each of the commands below, you will need to log out and back into your OS X account for the changes to take place.

1. Key Repeating

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Terminal 101: Head and Tail Text Commands

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

In OS X, you can easily view the contents of almost any file in the Finder by using Quick Look. But, did you know you can also do the same with the command line. The head and tail commands let you preview the first or last bits of a text file you’re working with, letting you narrow down the file that you need without opening it in a text editor like nano.

Head

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Terminal 101: Setting Up and Running Disk Maintenance

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Hardware maintenance is one way to ensure that your Mac has a long and prosperous life of reading and writing bits, but software maintenance is also very important to preserving the speed and performance of your machine. By default, your Mac will automatically perform scheduled maintenance at regular daily, weekly, and monthly intervals; however, it may be important to run some of these scripts more often than prescribed by OS X. Read on to learn how to check when the scripts last run, and run them manually through the Terminal.

Why Run these Scripts Manually?

Occasionally, the scripts may not run properly (or at all) if your computer is frequently shut down or in sleep mode. In this case, these scripts allow you to manually invoke the scripts to ensure that OS X is properly cleaning up and rotating the log files.

What is a log file rotation?

In Unix-based systems, it is important to rotate the log files on daily, weekly, or monthly intervals to ensure that the log file doesn’t get out of hand. Without rotating the log files, they will constantly grow until they eventually expand to take all available disk space. To prevent that, rotation of the files is important. When a log file is rotated, the current log is archived with a date/time stamp. When the files become old, they will be deleted from the system to conserve disk space.

1. Determining When the Scripts Last Ran

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Terminal 101: Shutting Down Your Mac

by Cory Bohon 4Comments

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Powering off your Mac properly can avoid incurring problems like system file corruption. All it takes is a little patience and the right routine. You can use the Apple menu to turn off your computer, put it to sleep, or restart it, but with Terminal you can select even more options for shutting down your Mac, including logging off all users and setting up certain times for your Mac to shut down. These commands are extremely handy if you manage a server or remote Mac through SSH. Read on to learn more. 

Shutting Down

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Terminal 101: Control Time Machine from the Command Line

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Time Machine is Apple’s answer to backup. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it just works. However, you can still use the backup utility built into your Mac through the command line and over SSH. Very handy for those times when you may not have physical (or screen sharing) access to your Mac remotely.

In this week’s tip, we’ll show you some of the basics of backing up your Mac using Time Machine through the Terminal and using the tmutil program.

It should be noted that in order to use the tmutil program, you must be running Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or later.

Enabling / Disabling Time Machine

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Terminal 101: Solving Math Equations

by Cory Bohon 4Comments

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

This week’s Terminal 101 tip will help you solve both simple and complex equations through the command line without having to launch a dedicated application. With the Terminal and bc (a command line-based basic calculator), you’ll be able to perform quick calculations in long string formats, and even set variables and refer to them throughout the equation.

Opening bc

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Terminal 101: Running AppleScripts from the Terminal

by Cory Bohon 0Comments

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

We’ve covered a few AppleScripts in the past, but we've taught you about running these scripts from within the AppleScript editor. While that is the ideal place to test those scripts, it’s not the best way to run them. That’s where this Terminal 101 tip comes in: you can also run almost any AppleScript from within the Terminal. Read on to find out how.

Preparing Your AppleScript

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