Specifications
10
Use this chapter to determine when to use command-line
tools and to understand the fundamentals of how to
use them.
A command-line interface (CLI) is an alternative to graphical applications for
interacting with and controlling your computer. Mac OS X Server provides graphical
applications—primarily, Server Admin and Workgroup Manager—to address common
administration tasks. There are situations, though, where using a command-line
interface might be appropriate. These situations include:
Conguring advanced options that aren’t supported by the graphical applications. Â
Conguring remotely from a computer that doesn’t have the Server Admin tools Â
installed—for example, a computer with Windows, Linux, or another UNIX-based
operating system.
Performing tasks that are repetitive or that need to be run at predened times. Â
Editing text les, usually in order to change advanced conguration settings and Â
preferences.
The primary way to access the CLI in Mac OS X is with the Terminal application. Other
ways to access the CLI are discussed in “Accessing the Shell” on page 11 , and
in Chapter 4, “Connecting to Remote Computers.”
Each window in Terminal contains an execution context, called a shell, which is
separate from all other execution contexts. The shell is an interactive programming
language interpreter, with a specialized syntax for executing commands and writing
structured programs (shell scripts). Dierent shells have slightly dierent capabilities
and programming syntax. Although you can use any shell, the examples in this book
use bash, the startup shell for Mac OS X and the default user shell.
1
Introduction to the Command-Line
Environment