Mac OS X: Notes
- AirPort hack on MacNN
- There is a hack to make AirPort cards work. It's very much unsupported, and may cause data corruption on the AirPort link and/or crashes, but many people find AirPort worth the risk. If you use TextEdit to create this file, make sure not to save it in RTF format, as this won't work.
- Stupid login tricks
- If you enter ">console" instead of a username, you drop into a text-based UNIX/BSD environment. You can now log in from a text-style console, and even run the Darwin port of xfree86 if you've installed it.">exit" and ">restart" are also recognized.
- Status messages
- If you hold down the 'v' key at startup, you get UNIX-style status messages scrolling across the screen, until startup is complete, at which point it switches to the graphical login box.
- Differences from other UNIXen
- Mac OS X inherits the NeXTStep NetInfo system database, somewhat like the Windows Registry. NetInfo controls user accounts, system startup, and networking, instead of the semi-standardized files in /etc/ (/etc/passwd and shadow files, /etc/rc*, and various other network configuration files).
- Links & aliases
- UNIX has 'hard' and 'symbolic' links, and Mac OS has aliases. OS X supports all three, although the command-line environment doesn't resolve aliases. The other difference is in how they're represented. In Mac OS X, if you create an alias /Users/pepper/amy pointing to /Users/amy, and then enter it, the Finder shows that you're in /Users/pepper/amy. In Mac OS 9, when you follow an alias, the Finder jumps you to the original location. This means that when you click on the popup at the top of a window to see where you are, it's not obvious that you're in an alias. This is hard to explain, so if it's not clear try making an alias to a folder and entering it.
- AppleShare
- Mac OS X PB's AppleShare client is very limited -- it can't connect to netatalk servers (netatalk is a popular free AppleShare server for UNIX), and may not be able to connect to Windows NT/2000 AppleShare servers. OS X can connect to the commercial EtherShare 2.6 & ExtremeZ-IP servers for UNIX and Windows NT, respectively.