Use for UNIX in OSX

jkuehn1010 · 07-03-2002, 10:03 AM

Where I work...I'm the lead tech for fixing and the maint of 700 macs and the network for them. While at work...I have no use to tap the power of UNIX in OSX to benifit my work flow, so I'm kind of out of the loop on what to actually use OSX's UNIX part for. The perils of being controled by Captain Corporate at AOL/TimeWarner, we aren't migrating to OSX till January and would like to have some things under my belt to know how to use to possibly make fixing/troubleshooting/networking fixes and so forth that may make my daily life easier.

Our network is totally controled by Windows servers (blah) but we are getting a test OSX Server (praise God) and if I can show the raw power of OSX and the Server and things inside of UNIX...we'll get the go ahead to switch, and Microsoft will have lost another battle to Apple.

I know that a lot of people use FINK, and XWindows and many more but...what the heck are those used for? And if I put that on my machine...could I use that to benifit my daily work?

The only thing that I use the terminal for is to learn UNIX and the commands, but that's all I know how to use it for. But, outside of "dinking" around in the terminal I have NO CLUE what else to use UNIX for.

Can everyone please tell me what they use UNIX for at home or work...so that I can get an idea of what in the world I can do with it. Shoot me anything that you think would be helpfull, links, downloads whatever. You can PM me or email me at jami@virtutechinc.com.

The fate of OSX and the servers rest on my shoulders to proove to my bosses that they should spend $1000 to migrate and purchase certain apps for the helpdesk to make our lives easier.

Thanks for your time and help.

Jami

Blacknova · 07-03-2002, 11:03 AM

Okay.... these are my perceptions and opinions, possibly innacurate, yada yada. I have probably left a lot of holes in here, so I hope people can help clear up the mess I am no doubt going to create.

What is X windows?

In a nutshell, it's a GUI, or more accurately a system of being able to draw terminal shells graphically on a computer. It also makes up the subsystem that Unix boxen require if you are to run desktop managers such as KDE and Gnome.

The X11 engine in order to provide GUI functionality requires some sort of window manager (sawfish, windowmaker, Kwin) which adds the widgets and manages the appearance and behaviour of the shell windows.

A good comparison would be to look at Quartz (what draws all the fancy whizz bang windows under X) as being a vague equivalent to X11 with a window manager on the top. Aqua makes up the desktop environment providing the overall "look and feel", roughly equivalent to KDE or Gnome.

Whilst a desktop manager is not necessary, Xwindows is a serious plus if you intend to run things like Nmap and need a fancy interface to avoid all the command switches.

What is Fink?

Fink could be viewed as a combination toolset of apt-get, dselect and a few other toys. Fink uses the same packaging system as found in Debian which makes it insanely easy to keep up to date with whatever utilities you might have installed. Fink effectively brings the debian package management system to X, it might be possible to avoid it if you can get apt-get running seperate, but why bother?

A utility called fink commander further simplifies the process to "point 'n click", giving you a nice pretty list with even nicer and prettier tools to manage your installed packages.

Why go to all this hassle of installing XWindows, Fink, etc?

Because you can?? In all seriousness, the level of benefit you get out of Fink and Xwindows depends on your commitment to learn and "dink" around in it. For me XWindows is nice, I get toys like nmap (port and network scanning tool, great for isolating security holes), netcat (the network swiss army knife, use limited by your imagination) and sniffit (passive detection of packets between two computers, good for figuring out what hidden stuff might be going on).

There is a vast amount to digest, but if you're willing to put the time in, the rewards are worth the effort. Once you get comfy working with the innards of X, you'll find administering it becomes a sinch.

Greets,
Nova

phidauex · 07-03-2002, 11:43 AM

The unix aspect of OSX has its greatest value in simply being there, and being out of sight. Its not just like another app in os x, its the core that gives the operating system its stability, its flexibility and its power. Each time you do something on OS X, you are using unix. When you turn on remote logins, or turn on web sharing, you are using the power of unix. "What do you NOT use unix for?" might be a better question.

On a more direct note, I use unix in a more obvious manner by running programs various gpl type unix programs that remove my need to pay for expensive software. Abiword is a nice word processor, gnumeric is a good spreadsheet. Openoffice is coming along, and star office is always handy. Between them, i don't need microsoft office, and I save a big chunk of change.

For serving applications, I run samba, sftp servers, ssh servers, apache web server, etc. Those programs all gain their stability and power from the unix core, and because of the relative ease of porting unix/linux software to OS X, I can have access to the same powerful software that drives the internet. I don't have to rely on proprietary, crappily ported software that lacks critical features, i can go straight to the enterprise class software i need.

peace,
phidauex

jkuehn1010 · 07-08-2002, 09:19 AM

Hey guys...thanks for your input on this topic. You've helped me out in a major way.

If there's anything more that ANYONE would like to contribute please...no matter how small or big...please let me know anything you know that might be helpfull.

Thanks again everyone,

Jami

Craig R. Arko · 07-08-2002, 09:32 AM

I'd suggest you spend a little time reading through some of the threads in the UNIX-Newcomers and UNIX-General forums.

This will give you a pretty good feel for the kinds of things people are doing, I think.

Mikey-San · 07-08-2002, 09:46 AM

I use Unix for:

1. Not crashing;

2. Not crashing;

3. And not crashing.

Oh, and that whole "remote administration" thing is decent, too, I guess. ;-)

-/-
Mikey-San

bakaDeshi · 07-09-2002, 12:15 AM

I would add scripting, either Shell or Perl, most likely Perl. These will give you the ability to automate tasks.

You will probably need to learn more about unix as the underbelly just to understand the os even though Apple will give you a gui to handle things.

Good Luck.

p.s. any openings?

pmccann · 07-09-2002, 11:51 AM

Far be it from me to dispute scripting as a potential benefit, but it'd be worth remembering that perl works *great* on windows boxes, and pretty damn well under OS8/9 macs as well. So while the BBEdit/OSX/perl combination is a ferociously good one it's not really unique.

Shell scripting may be another matter entirely. cygwin makes things bearable on windows, but every now and then you just have to break out the ultimate horror: cmd.exe (shudder!). It's absolutely/positively/appallingly/unbelievably disgusting. After grappling with that monster for any length of time it's a joy to encounter terminal.app, an xterm, or a good substitute for either.

Maybe the nicest aspect of OS X, as a contrast to other OS's on which I've worked, is the integration of the command line with the GUI. After a while I've found it almost unnecessary to distinguish between the two. Of course they're just two "views" of the same information/structure, but on some platforms it's as if they're two different planets. There's something lovely about moving to a directory in the terminal and then entering:

> open .

to crank up the Finder at that location. (There are scripts that allow the easy inverse procedure.) And dragging and dropping items from the Finder window into terminal windows so as to paste their paths is also damned nice. Little things that tie the two together.

I wrote the crappiest little script today in order to view man pages in html via a simple command. It relies on you having "rman" installed (I think this comes with XFree/XDarwin?). Here it is in full laziness. I've called it "bman", for "browse man pages".

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Writes an html formatted manpage to a given file, then
# opens the default browser to display the thing (assuming
# that you've associated .html files with your browser of choice
# Otherwise use eg "open -a mozilla $tfile" on the last line
tfile=/Users/pmccann/junk/somefile.html
man $1 | rman -f HTML > $tfile
open $tfile

Obviously you'll have to change the path to the outfile (which is overwritten every time you call the script). To call it, simply save the script in ~/bin/bman (for example), then "chmod u+x ~/bin/bman", then "rehash", and finally you can

> bman tcsh

for example. Dumb, but *real* simple, and surprisingly rewarding!!! (Yep, there are definitely apps that do this, but rah rah rah... I'm drifting.)

Cheers,
Paul

mervTormel · 07-09-2002, 12:14 PM

helloooooo, paul. still wiggling, i see. bman. sheer poetry. quite possibly the most beautiful thing i'll see today. whoops! hedy lamarr just appeared on my desktop. she beats bman with a brick bat. but, your magic is still highly regarded.

07-09-2002, 01:38 PM

bman rocks! Thanks!

sao · 07-09-2002, 03:34 PM

pmccann,

Candies, chocolates, bombons, they keep coming out from your bag of goodies...

Thanks a lot for your gift !

Cheers...

07-09-2002, 03:50 PM

Man this is so fast! I was using the command line version of ManOpen, but this sucker loads up pages quicker, and with clickable links. What a handy new tool. Thanks again!

pmccann · 07-09-2002, 10:38 PM

Wow: thanks for the replies. As should be clear from the meagreness of bman, the author of rman has done good things! Lots of other output filters are available if anyone prefers, say, latex, or even POD. Err, "bman rman" I suppose.

Obviously things could be complicated (and you could try to enliven those links to other utilities *within* the man pages), but that'll take away all the laziness and most of the fun!

Cheers,
Paul (still *trembling*: it *is* winter down here...)

07-03-2002, 10:03 AM	#1
jkuehn1010 Prospect Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Alabama Posts: 10	Use for UNIX in OSX Where I work...I'm the lead tech for fixing and the maint of 700 macs and the network for them. While at work...I have no use to tap the power of UNIX in OSX to benifit my work flow, so I'm kind of out of the loop on what to actually use OSX's UNIX part for. The perils of being controled by Captain Corporate at AOL/TimeWarner, we aren't migrating to OSX till January and would like to have some things under my belt to know how to use to possibly make fixing/troubleshooting/networking fixes and so forth that may make my daily life easier. Our network is totally controled by Windows servers (blah) but we are getting a test OSX Server (praise God) and if I can show the raw power of OSX and the Server and things inside of UNIX...we'll get the go ahead to switch, and Microsoft will have lost another battle to Apple. I know that a lot of people use FINK, and XWindows and many more but...what the heck are those used for? And if I put that on my machine...could I use that to benifit my daily work? The only thing that I use the terminal for is to learn UNIX and the commands, but that's all I know how to use it for. But, outside of "dinking" around in the terminal I have NO CLUE what else to use UNIX for. Can everyone please tell me what they use UNIX for at home or work...so that I can get an idea of what in the world I can do with it. Shoot me anything that you think would be helpfull, links, downloads whatever. You can PM me or email me at jami@virtutechinc.com. The fate of OSX and the servers rest on my shoulders to proove to my bosses that they should spend $1000 to migrate and purchase certain apps for the helpdesk to make our lives easier. Thanks for your time and help. Jami

07-03-2002, 11:03 AM	#2
Blacknova Prospect Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 28	Opinions - Innacuracies are liable to be here - Apologies in advance Okay.... these are my perceptions and opinions, possibly innacurate, yada yada. I have probably left a lot of holes in here, so I hope people can help clear up the mess I am no doubt going to create. What is X windows? In a nutshell, it's a GUI, or more accurately a system of being able to draw terminal shells graphically on a computer. It also makes up the subsystem that Unix boxen require if you are to run desktop managers such as KDE and Gnome. The X11 engine in order to provide GUI functionality requires some sort of window manager (sawfish, windowmaker, Kwin) which adds the widgets and manages the appearance and behaviour of the shell windows. A good comparison would be to look at Quartz (what draws all the fancy whizz bang windows under X) as being a vague equivalent to X11 with a window manager on the top. Aqua makes up the desktop environment providing the overall "look and feel", roughly equivalent to KDE or Gnome. Whilst a desktop manager is not necessary, Xwindows is a serious plus if you intend to run things like Nmap and need a fancy interface to avoid all the command switches. What is Fink? Fink could be viewed as a combination toolset of apt-get, dselect and a few other toys. Fink uses the same packaging system as found in Debian which makes it insanely easy to keep up to date with whatever utilities you might have installed. Fink effectively brings the debian package management system to X, it might be possible to avoid it if you can get apt-get running seperate, but why bother? A utility called fink commander further simplifies the process to "point 'n click", giving you a nice pretty list with even nicer and prettier tools to manage your installed packages. Why go to all this hassle of installing XWindows, Fink, etc? Because you can?? In all seriousness, the level of benefit you get out of Fink and Xwindows depends on your commitment to learn and "dink" around in it. For me XWindows is nice, I get toys like nmap (port and network scanning tool, great for isolating security holes), netcat (the network swiss army knife, use limited by your imagination) and sniffit (passive detection of packets between two computers, good for figuring out what hidden stuff might be going on). There is a vast amount to digest, but if you're willing to put the time in, the rewards are worth the effort. Once you get comfy working with the innards of X, you'll find administering it becomes a sinch. Greets, Nova __________________ "I am pentium of borg, division is futile, you will be approximated."

07-08-2002, 09:19 AM	#4
jkuehn1010 Prospect Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Alabama Posts: 10	Thanks... Hey guys...thanks for your input on this topic. You've helped me out in a major way. If there's anything more that ANYONE would like to contribute please...no matter how small or big...please let me know anything you know that might be helpfull. Thanks again everyone, Jami

07-09-2002, 12:15 AM	#7
bakaDeshi Triple-A Player Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Restaurant at the End of the Universe Posts: 171	I would add scripting, either Shell or Perl, most likely Perl. These will give you the ability to automate tasks. You will probably need to learn more about unix as the underbelly just to understand the os even though Apple will give you a gui to handle things. Good Luck. p.s. any openings? __________________ —bakaDeshi Caution! Mac User at the Command Line.

07-09-2002, 11:51 AM	#8
pmccann Major Leaguer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Adelaide, South Australia Posts: 470	Far be it from me to dispute scripting as a potential benefit, but it'd be worth remembering that perl works great on windows boxes, and pretty damn well under OS8/9 macs as well. So while the BBEdit/OSX/perl combination is a ferociously good one it's not really unique. Shell scripting may be another matter entirely. cygwin makes things bearable on windows, but every now and then you just have to break out the ultimate horror: cmd.exe (shudder!). It's absolutely/positively/appallingly/unbelievably disgusting. After grappling with that monster for any length of time it's a joy to encounter terminal.app, an xterm, or a good substitute for either. Maybe the nicest aspect of OS X, as a contrast to other OS's on which I've worked, is the integration of the command line with the GUI. After a while I've found it almost unnecessary to distinguish between the two. Of course they're just two "views" of the same information/structure, but on some platforms it's as if they're two different planets. There's something lovely about moving to a directory in the terminal and then entering: > open . to crank up the Finder at that location. (There are scripts that allow the easy inverse procedure.) And dragging and dropping items from the Finder window into terminal windows so as to paste their paths is also damned nice. Little things that tie the two together. I wrote the crappiest little script today in order to view man pages in html via a simple command. It relies on you having "rman" installed (I think this comes with XFree/XDarwin?). Here it is in full laziness. I've called it "bman", for "browse man pages". Code: #!/bin/sh # Writes an html formatted manpage to a given file, then # opens the default browser to display the thing (assuming # that you've associated .html files with your browser of choice # Otherwise use eg "open -a mozilla $tfile" on the last line tfile=/Users/pmccann/junk/somefile.html man $1 \| rman -f HTML > $tfile open $tfile Obviously you'll have to change the path to the outfile (which is overwritten every time you call the script). To call it, simply save the script in ~/bin/bman (for example), then "chmod u+x ~/bin/bman", then "rehash", and finally you can > bman tcsh for example. Dumb, but real simple, and surprisingly rewarding!!! (Yep, there are definitely apps that do this, but rah rah rah... I'm drifting.) Cheers, Paul

07-03-2002, 11:43 AM	#3
phidauex Prospect Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 37	The unix aspect of OSX has its greatest value in simply being there, and being out of sight. Its not just like another app in os x, its the core that gives the operating system its stability, its flexibility and its power. Each time you do something on OS X, you are using unix. When you turn on remote logins, or turn on web sharing, you are using the power of unix. "What do you NOT use unix for?" might be a better question. On a more direct note, I use unix in a more obvious manner by running programs various gpl type unix programs that remove my need to pay for expensive software. Abiword is a nice word processor, gnumeric is a good spreadsheet. Openoffice is coming along, and star office is always handy. Between them, i don't need microsoft office, and I save a big chunk of change. For serving applications, I run samba, sftp servers, ssh servers, apache web server, etc. Those programs all gain their stability and power from the unix core, and because of the relative ease of porting unix/linux software to OS X, I can have access to the same powerful software that drives the internet. I don't have to rely on proprietary, crappily ported software that lacks critical features, i can go straight to the enterprise class software i need. peace, phidauex

07-08-2002, 09:32 AM	#5
Craig R. Arko Site Admin Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Minneapolis, MN Posts: 3,988	I'd suggest you spend a little time reading through some of the threads in the UNIX-Newcomers and UNIX-General forums. This will give you a pretty good feel for the kinds of things people are doing, I think.

07-08-2002, 09:46 AM	#6
Mikey-San Hall of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 3,541	I use Unix for: 1. Not crashing; 2. Not crashing; 3. And not crashing. Oh, and that whole "remote administration" thing is decent, too, I guess. ;-) -/- Mikey-San

07-09-2002, 12:14 PM	#9
mervTormel League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 5,536	helloooooo, paul. still wiggling, i see. bman. sheer poetry. quite possibly the most beautiful thing i'll see today. whoops! hedy lamarr just appeared on my desktop. she beats bman with a brick bat. but, your magic is still highly regarded.

07-09-2002, 01:38 PM	#10
Titanium Man Guest Posts: n/a	bman rocks! Thanks!

07-09-2002, 03:34 PM	#11
sao Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Singapore Posts: 4,237	pmccann, Candies, chocolates, bombons, they keep coming out from your bag of goodies... Thanks a lot for your gift ! Cheers...

07-09-2002, 03:50 PM	#12
Titanium Man Guest Posts: n/a	Man this is so fast! I was using the command line version of ManOpen, but this sucker loads up pages quicker, and with clickable links. What a handy new tool. Thanks again!

07-09-2002, 10:38 PM	#13
pmccann Major Leaguer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Adelaide, South Australia Posts: 470	Wow: thanks for the replies. As should be clear from the meagreness of bman, the author of rman has done good things! Lots of other output filters are available if anyone prefers, say, latex, or even POD. Err, "bman rman" I suppose. Obviously things could be complicated (and you could try to enliven those links to other utilities within the man pages), but that'll take away all the laziness and most of the fun! Cheers, Paul (still trembling: it is winter down here...)