Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By : Herta Nava
Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By: Herta Nava

Overview of this book

Apple is pushing the capabilities of its technologies to help users achieve high performance, including improvements in its OS running across all Mac systems, macOS, and new technologies such as M1 Silicon chips. This book walks you through macOS from a system administration and support point of view, exploring its latest features. The book starts by explaining macOS architecture, installation, and startup processes to enable you to get started with the OS. You'll learn how to manage users and discover techniques for user security and privacy. Moving on, you'll get to grips with the macOS file system and learn to manage disks, volumes, and partitions for effective file management. Most of the examples covered in this book are from an administrator's perspective; however, when relevant, a standard user's perspective is also presented. You'll find illustrations for Mac systems running macOS 11 (Big Sur), and when necessary, for macOS 10.15 (macOS Catalina). Finally, you'll explore advanced topics such as networking and using command-line tools for administration tasks. By the end of this macOS book, you'll be well-versed with macOS features, administration tasks, and best practices. You'll also be able to apply the concepts to increase your chances of success in obtaining Apple certifications such as Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP).
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
18
About Packt

Using the command-line tool

Let's review some basic aspects of the command-line tool in macOS. The command-line interface (CLI) is the most complete tool for executing and processing commands that look like text strings. Because most user interfaces like the one you see when you power on your Mac, also known as a GUI, only include commands through buttons and menus to make the interface user-friendly and to provide most users with the most commonly used functionalities, these interfaces could be limited for advanced users or administrators. For this reason, a CLI allows them to access many more commands, if not all the commands that are available. The CLI has been used for a long time, and it still remains a very powerful tool.

Regardless of how you connect to the command-line tool (we will explain the different ways you can access it shortly), you obtain access to the input and output of a Unix shell process or shell scripting. Different shells have different features and may use...