How This Book Is Organized

There are three essential parts to this book, with the first part covering the shells and Unix commands found in Mac OS X Tiger. The two remaining parts cover text and text processing and include chapters on managing your Mac OS X system. The parts and chapters of this book are defined as follows :

Part I, Commands and Shells

This part of the book introduces you to the basic concepts of networking and system administration, including coverage of Directory Services.

Chapter 1, Introduction\

This chapter provides you with a quick introduction to the Unix side of Mac OS X.

Chapter 2, Unix Command Reference

This chapter lists descriptions and usage terms for over 300 of the Unix commands found in Mac OS X. The commands have been painstakingly run and verified against the manpages for accuracy; this is the most complete and accurate Mac-based Unix command reference in print.

Chapter 3, Using the Terminal

With Mac OS X, you'll normally use one way to gain access to the Unix core : the Terminal application. This chapter introduces you to the Terminal application and shows you how to issue commands and tweak its settings.

Chapter 4, Shell Overview

This chapter provides a quick overview of the differences between bash , Mac OS X Panther's default shell, and tcsh , the default shell for earlier versions of Mac OS X.

Chapter 5, bash: The Bourne-Again Shell

This chapter provides a quick overview of the bash shell, along with a listing of its built-in commands for shell scripting.

Part II, Text and Text Processing

The chapters in this part of the book provide insight to the tools you'll use to work with text files, the underlying structure of any Unix operating system, including Mac OS X Tiger.

Chapter 6, Pattern Matching

A number of Unix text-processing utilities let you search for, and in some cases change, text patterns rather than fixed strings. These utilities include editing programs such as vi and Emacs, programming languages such as Perl and Python, and the commands grep and egrep . Text patterns ( formally called regular expressions ) contain normal characters mixed with special characters (called metacharacters ).

Chapter 7, The vi Editor

vi is the classic screen-based text editing program for Unix. In Mac OS X Panther, vim is the default version of vi and runs when you invoke vi from the command line. This chapter covers some of vi 's most commonly used options and features.

Chapter 8, The Emacs Editor

The Emacs editor is found on many Unix systems, including Mac OS X, because it is a popular alternative to vi . For many Unix users, Emacs is more than "just an editor." While Emacs provides a fully integrated user environment, this chapter focuses on its editing capabilities.

Part III: Managing Mac OS X

This part of the book offers chapters on managing your Mac OS X Tiger system:

Chapter 9, Filesystem Overview

Like any Unix system, much of Mac OS X's functionality is based on its filesystem layout. This chapter tours the various folders found on a typical Mac OS X volume, including the Unix-centric directories that the Finder usually keeps out of sight.

Chapter 10, Directory Services

This chapter details the way Mac OS X stores and accesses its administrative information, ranging from the NetInfo system of network-linked databases to the "old-school" file-based system familiar to Unix administrators.

Chapter 11, Running Network Services

Mac OS X's suite of open source Unix software includes a full complement of network services programs (what the Unix wizards call daemons ). This chapter details the major categories of services Unix supplies , including web servers, file sharing, and mail servers. This chapter also covers the control that Mac OS X gives you through either the Sharing preferences pane or the command line.

Chapter 12, The X Window System

This chapter highlights some of the key features of Apple's X11 distribution and explains how to install Apple's X11 and the X11 SDK. It also explains how to use X11 in both rootless and full-screen modes (using the GNOME and KDE desktops). You'll also learn how to connect to other X Window Systems using Virtual Network Computer (VNC), as well as how to remotely control the Mac OS X desktop from other X11 systems.

Chapter 13, The Defaults System

Like the old saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat. In this case, the cat we're skinning is Tiger. When you configure your system or an application to your liking, those preferences are stored in what's known as the defaults database . This chapter describes how to gain access to and hack these settings via the Terminal application and the defaults command.