A Tour of Mac OS X Utilities

The Utilities folder is located within the Applications folder. It contains a collection of programs to help you set up and work with various subsystems of hardware and software on, or connected to, your Mac.

Tip

If you find yourself frequently going into the Utilities folder, drag it into the Dock or Panther’s Finder window sidebar; otherwise those wasted seconds really add up!

Activity Monitor

Activity Monitor, shown in Figure 19-17, is a new-for-Panther utility which replaces and combines the functionality of the utilities CPU Monitor and Process Viewer, which were included with previous versions of Mac OS X. Activity Monitor also has lots of new bells and whistles to explore.

Figure 19-17: The Activity Monitor window, showing the three available CPU graph styles in front of it.

You can use Activity Monitor to watch what your computer is doing behind the scenes, in great detail. Activity Monitor shows you what is running on your computer, how much memory is being used and for what, how the hard disk is being used, and the speed and throughput of the network.

The large window lists the processes that are presently active on your Mac. A process is an instance of a program running in a computer; so this list shows all the applications, utilities, other programs that are running, including some that run without you otherwise being aware of them (called background processes). Examining this list is particularly useful if, for instance, you are troubleshooting the performance of an application which seems too slow. Here you can find out if another process is hogging all the processor time.

The list now has seven columns, up from the five that were shown in Jaguar’s Process Viewer. The columns have the following headings:

• Process ID: This is a unique number assigned by the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X in order to simplify identifying, interacting with, or terminating the process in the command line interface (the Terminal utility).

• Process Name: Just as you would expect, this is the name of the process or application. You will see some that are familiar and some that are not familiar — these latter are likely background processes. You will notice the icon of the process, if it has one, precedes the name — a nice touch.

• User: This is the user name of the account that launched the process.

• %CPU: This is the percentage of available CPU (Central Processing Unit) time that the process is using.

• # of Threads: A thread is a computer programming term referring to the information in a program which is used to serve one individual user or one particular service request, when the program is capable of handling more than one user or request. Such a program is said to be multithreaded; in layman’s terms, this just means the program can do more than one thing at a time. Mac OS X, to its great benefit, is a multithreaded operating system, and so are the programs made to work with it. This column displays how many of these threads are in use.

• Real Memory: This is the amount of actual RAM memory being used by the process, as opposed to virtual memory.

• Virtual Memory: This is the amount of virtual memory being used by the process, as opposed to real RAM memory. Virtual memory, as certain users of Mac OS 9 and before may recall, allows the computer to use some of the free space on the hard drive as if it were RAM; even though it is much slower than RAM, the benefit is that you no longer had to be constrained by the amount of RAM installed in your computer. In Mac OS 9, you could turn virtual memory on and off in the Memory control panel. Mac OS X has and needs no such setting because virtual memory is always “on,” and the operating system is constantly, automatically, and intelligently managing memory usage to maximize performance. And this column is where Mac OS X shows you what it is doing with each process.

Note

For those who are interested in seeing the Unix command line way of doing things, if you open the Terminal utility, enter top and press return, you will be treated to a non-graphical, but more detailed version of Activity Monitor’s process list. To help decipher what you are seeing, enter man top to see the manual for the top command.

In the toolbar at the top of the Activity Monitor window are the following three icons.

• Export: Clicking this icon (same as the Mail application) or pressing Command+E exports the current list of processes as an XML file with the default name of Exported Processes.plist. You can view the file with Apple’s XML editor, available on the Developer Tools CD.

• Quit Process: Clicking this icon or pressing Option+Command+Q quits the selected processes. You cannot quit a process unless you are the owner of it. Be warned: if you quit certain processes, you will suddenly be logged out of the system!

• Inspect: Clicking this icon or pressing Command+I will open a window which gives additional details of memory, statistics, and a listing of the files the system believes are open in the process. Using buttons at the bottom, you can quit the process or get a sample of the calls the process is making at that moment. The results are shown frame by frame, displayed in any one of five ways, with options to hide or unhide particular frames, refresh the sample, or save the sample as a text file. Most of this information is of use to developers or highly technical types, for which these provisions are very convenient and exciting.

Also in the toolbar at the top of the Activity Monitor window you will find a Filter field, with which you can quickly find particular processes by typing their names. There is also a Show pop-up menu, which filters the process list to only display processes in one of the eight categories in the menu. Note that the default view, My Processes, only shows the processes owned by the present user. If you do not see what you are looking for, select All Processes from the pop-up menu.

At the bottom of the Activity Monitor window is an area that shows details selected by the row of five buttons marked CPU, System Memory, Disk Activity, and Network.

• CPU: Shows a tiny graph (or graphs for dual processor machines) of processor activity.

  Tip

  Don’t worry, you can display the same graphs as the old CPU Monitor did; they can be found under the Monitor menu. Show CPU Usage calls up the small blue vertical LED-style display. Floating CPU Window calls up the green and gray bar, which can be chosen to be horizontal or vertical — but can no longer be positioned over the menu bar, or made transparent, as before. CPU History calls up the expanded view graph, but you can no longer choose what the colors mean, as you could in CPU Monitor. Now, system processes are red, user processes green, niced processes are blue, and the background is gray. By the way, a niced process is one that has been adjusted in the Terminal to have more or less access to CPU time than normal.

• System Memory: Reveals a pie chart of memory usage, color coded to a key on the left (and yes, in case you were wondering, you can change the colors on the graphs by clicking on the key color box to summon the OS X Cocoa color picker).

• Disk Activity: Shows data in and out on a line graph, along with disk statistics.

• Disk Usage: Shows a pie chart of utilized and free space on your hard disk partitions. A pop up menu allows you to select the partition.

• Network: Shows a line graph of data in and out rates as well as statistics on the left.

Under the Monitor menu you can select any of these graphs (except Disk Usage) to appear in the Dock instead of the Activity Monitor icon. You can also set the frequency at which Activity Monitor updates its information; the default is every two seconds.

AirPort Admin Utility

If you have an Apple AirPort Base Station, which is a flying saucer shaped device that establishes a wireless network, you can use the AirPort Admin Utility to change settings that are not handled by the AirPort Setup Assistant (described next, and used first). For example, by changing settings with AirPort Admin Utility you can do the following:

• Change the AirPort network name, wireless channel number, and so on.

• Change individual Internet connection settings, such as the phone number for a modem connection.

• Share a single public IP address on your AirPort network and optionally on an Ethernet network.

• Turn on a built-in DHCP server to automatically assign private IP addresses to computers on your AirPort network, and optionally on an Ethernet network.

• Restrict use of the wireless network to computers that you identify.

• Designate computers on your network to provide particular Internet services, such as Web server (Web sharing) and FTP server.

AirPort Setup Assistant

The AirPort Setup Assistant leads you through the process of setting up or reconfiguring an AirPort Base Station. Macs equipped with AirPort cards can join the wireless network, as can other computers that have cards or circuitry that is compatible with the 802.11b standard for wireless networking. The AirPort Setup Assistant can also help you set your computer to join an AirPort wireless network. Chapter 15 covers the AirPort Setup Assistant in more detail.

You can’t use the AirPort Setup Assistant included with Mac OS X 10.3 to set up or reconfigure a software base station. In this case, the wireless network is established by turning on Sharing in the Internet tab of the Sharing pane of System Preferences.

Asia Text Extras

This folder is installed with Mac OS X if you do an Easy Install, which by default includes multiple language files. The folder contains the utilities Chinese Text Converter and IM Plugin Converter, along with a folder containing sample text.

Chinese Text Converter is used to do encoding conversion between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, as well as supporting other encoding conversions.

IM Plugin Converter converts a text file to a Chinese Input Method Plug-in data file.

Obviously, unless you are planning to be working with Chinese, you can ignore or even delete this folder.

AudioMIDI Setup

The AudioMIDI Setup utility, shown in Figure 19-18, provides control of the audio and MIDI inputs and outputs on the various ports of your computer. Audio can be routed between the CD/DVD drive, the headphone port, the built-in speakers (if present), attached USB devices, and so on.

Figure 19-18: The AudioMIDI Setup utility provides control of the audio and MIDI inputs and outputs on the computer.

Bluetooth File Exchange

Bluetooth is essentially a short range, wireless form of USB, intended to eliminate cables between devices. Bluetooth has a range of about 30 feet. You need Bluetooth hardware built into your computer and your device; you can also use an approved USB Bluetooth adapter such as the D-Link DBT-120 on your computer.

To set up a device to use Bluetooth with your computer (known as “pairing”), open Bluetooth Setup Assistant (described later in this Chapter) and follow the onscreen instructions. Devices your computer is paired with are listed in the Bluetooth System Preference pane’s Devices panel.

Bluetooth File Exchange is used to set up the transmission of files to other Bluetooth devices.

Before you use Bluetooth File Exchange, you can go to the Bluetooth System Preference pane’s File Exchange panel to configure your Mac’s settings for the file exchange.

Bluetooth File Exchange features two interface windows, Browse Device (shown in Figure 19-19) and Select File to Send, shown in Figure 19-20. You can call them up only one at a time from the File Menu. You can call either one up first.

Figure 19-19: The Browse Device window of Bluetooth File Exchange.

Figure 19-20: The Select File to Send window of Bluetooth File Exchange.

Use Browse Device to select a device within range of your computer to browse files on. Hold the device close to the computer and click the Search button; the device should appear in the Device field. Selecting the device reveals a list of the services supported by the device. Click the Browse button to continue.

Select File to Send to navigate to the file you would like to send to the Bluetooth Device; click the Send button to accomplish this.

Bluetooth Serial Utility

Use the Bluetooth Serial Utility to set up Bluetooth services for paired devices. When Mac OS X 10.2.4 was released, Apple removed the configuration settings for virtual serial ports from the Bluetooth System Preferences pane to the Bluetooth Serial Utility. This utility allows you to add, name, configure, activate, or deactivate virtual serial ports to your computer, enabling communication with the Bluetooth device. Figure 19-21 shows the Bluetooth Serial Utility interface.

Figure 19-21: The Bluetooth Serial Utility interface.

The only time you need to set up a virtual serial port is if the device you are connecting to does not have a port.

To set up a virtual serial port, click New. Enter the port’s name and select options for it. If you are setting up an outgoing port, click the Select Device button to select a device.

Bluetooth Setup Assistant

You use Bluetooth Setup Assistant, shown is Figure 19-22, to perform the initial configuration of Bluetooth hardware, called pairing. You must pair a Bluetooth device with your computer before exchanging information over the Bluetooth network. Paired devices are listed in the Devices panel of the Bluetooth System Preferences pane.

Figure 19-22: The Bluetooth Setup Assistant.

To pair your computer with the device, follow the onscreen instructions.

ColorSync Utility

Use the ColorSync Utility (shown in Figure 19-23) to view, modify, verify, and repair the ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles installed on your computer. These ColorSync profiles coordinate the color spaces employed by different devices, such as a printer and your screen, so that the colors you see are rendered consistently and correctly. The profiles are increasingly used in professional graphic design and publishing.

Figure 19-23: The ColorSync Utility interface, showing the default profiles for each color space.

ColorSync Utility allows you to view a list of all ColorSync profiles that are installed in your system, organized by location. You can view a list of registered ColorSync devices, such as Scanners, Cameras, Displays, and Printers. There is also a tool to help you work with ColorSync Filters.

A ColorSync tutorial and additional information can be found on the ColorSync Web site at www.apple.com/colorsync.

Console

The Console is a monitoring tool that displays all the messages being sent by applications and system processes to the Unix console hidden behind the Mac OS X interface. Unless you are experienced with Unix system administration, these messages are unlikely to be of any interest or help to you; however, they can be utilized to discern where problems are arising, or if you’re a programmer, they can be helpful in debugging your software. Figure 19-24 shows an example of a Console window full of messages.

Figure 19-24: The Console displays all the error and informational messages sent by applications and processes.

DigitalColor Meter

This utility is similar to a Photoshop function in that it tells you what color is beneath the pointer, as shown in Figure 19-25. The frame on the left of the window shows a zoomed-in view of the area around your pointer. You can view the color information as RGB in percentage, decimal (Actual Value), or hexadecimal format; CIE 1931, CIE 1976, or CIE L*a*b (CIE is short for Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage, which is the French title of the international commission on light), or tristimulus (a three-dimensional color space in X, Y, and Z coordinates). Not all devices provide color translation tables for CIE or tristimulus — for example, the Color LCD in the figure does not.

Figure 19-25: Know what color is under your pointer anywhere on the screen. Here a pixel in the DigitalColor Meter icon is being measured.

Directory Access

Mac OS X, and some applications, obtain information about users, servers, and other entities that may be located on a network from directories that are listed in the Directory Access utility. You can use Directory Access to change the directory that Mac OS X uses to authenticate users during login, define LDAP data and attribute mapping, configure search policies, select NetInfo domains, and so on.

Directory Access is primarily for the use of a network administrator. If your computer is connected to a home network or a small office network, you don’t need to touch the settings in Directory Access. If your computer is connected to a corporate or school network, ask the network administrator whether you need to make changes in Directory Access. The Directory Access interface is shown in Figure 19-26.

Figure 19-26: The Directory Access interface, showing the default state of the plug-ins.

Directory services within Mac OS X are based on a plug-in architecture. With Panther, Apple ships plug-ins for the following Directory Services:

• Active Directory

• AppleTalk

• BSD Flat File and NIS

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol version 3 (LDAPv3)

• NetInfo

• Rendezvous

• SLP

• SMB

This list is a great improvement over Jaguar, which only included plug-ins for NetInfo and LDAP. By default in Panther, they are all enabled except Active Directory and AppleTalk.

The Services pane lists all available directory service plug-ins installed. To configure a directory service, you will first need to click the padlock icon in the lower-left corner of the Directory Services pane and authenticate with an Admin login and password. To enable a service, place a check mark in the Enable column next to the desired service. To configure a service, select the service and click the Configure button. Each plug-in has its own setup interface and will need to be configured, as appropriate, for the intended network.

The Authentication pane allows you to choose in what Directory Node to search for user authentication information. The Contacts pane provides a similar choice for contact information. By default, both are set to the /NetInfo/root directory node.

When configured correctly, directory access–capable applications can reference the Directory Setup utility for appropriate configurations, although some applications, such as email clients and OS X’s Address Book, have a built-in facility for accessing directory services and do not utilize the Directory Setup utility.

Disk Utility

Use Disk Utility for repairing, erasing, formatting, and partitioning hard drives, rewritable CDs, and other storage devices. Disk Utility can also set up multiple hard drives as a RAID set, repair Mac OS X permissions, and restore a disk image to a destination disk.

Disk Utility combines the functionality of the Mac OS 9 programs Drive Setup, Disk First Aid, and Disk Copy. In Panther, Disk Utility now includes the functionality of the Disk Copy utility included with previous versions of Mac OS X, and the interface has been overhauled. Simplified instructions now appear on the different panels.

From a list on the left side of the window, you first select the storage device or volume that you want to work on. If you have partitioned disks, the partition volumes are listed under the physical hard drive; the buttons at the top of the window change appropriately depending on what you click on, as does the information at the bottom of the window.

Next, select the type of operation that you want to perform by clicking a button.

First Aid panel

Click the First Aid button in the Disk Utility window to check the condition of a volume directory. The First Aid panel, shown in Figure 19-27, provides you with a volume directory to keep track of which files are on the volume and where they are stored. The volume directory is susceptible to corruption. If you have any problems with a volume directory, Disk Copy’s First Aid can often fix them. It’s good to run First Aid every once in a while — say once a month — to make sure your volume directory is in good shape.

Figure 19-27: Disk Utility’s First Aid panel, after the selected disk has been verified.

To have First Aid check a volume, select the volume on the left side of the window and click the Verify Disk button. If First Aid discovers problems, it informs you of them, and you can click the Repair Disk button to try to remedy matters.

The Verify Disk Permissions button and the Repair Disk Permissions button allow you to check for and correct incorrect Mac OS X file permissions, which can cause files to which you should have rights to become inaccessible. This has a tendency to happen far too often. (For more about Unix file permissions in Mac OS X, see Chapter 24). Run Verify Disk Permissions first, as shown in Figure 19-28. Progress notices such as “Determining correct file permissions” and “Permissions differ on...” will appear in the window. If problems are discovered, they will be described in detail. To stop the process, click the same button, which now reads Stop Verify Permissions. To perform the repairs, click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

Figure 19-28: Disk Utility’s Verify Permissions function at work.

Erase panel

Click the Erase button to erase the contents of a volume or an entire unpartitioned disk. (The Disk Utility Erase panel is shown in Figure 19-29.) If your disk is partitioned, you can only erase the partition volume, not the physical disk (the controls will appear grayed-out when the disk is selected).

Figure 19-29: Disk Utility’s Erase panel.

Select the volume or disk on the left side of the Disk Copy window. Next, choose a volume format from the pop-up menu: MS DOS File System (for installing a Microsoft Windows operating system to an entire disk only), Mac OS Extended, or the default, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (recommended for most users). Choose this last one if you will be installing Mac OS X Server on the volume; journaling protects the integrity of the file system in the event of an unplanned shutdown, and expedites repairs to the volume when the system restarts. You can enable Journaling on a disk prepared in this way by selecting the disk and choosing Enable Journaling from the File menu.

After choosing the volume format, type a name for the volume in the Name field. Click the checkbox if you want OS 9 drivers to be installed; as noted below the checkbox, they are necessary to use the volume to boot Mac OS 9, and are not necessary for running Classic under Mac OS X.

When you click the Erase button, the volume will be formatted, permanently deleting all files.

Caution

You can’t recover the contents of a volume or disk after erasing it unless you have the resources of the FBI. Make sure you have an up-to-date backup copy of all important files on a volume before you erase it.

Partition panel

Partitioning splits a disk into separate volumes, each of which appears on your desktop with its own icon, as if it were a separate disk. Partitions are useful for loading different versions of the Mac OS, or for organizing your information. Click the Partition button in the Disk Utility window to change the number of volumes or the sizes of volumes on the currently selected disk.

The partitioning of the startup disk or a read-only disk cannot be changed. You can choose the number of volumes you desire from the Volume Scheme pop-up menu. You can adjust volume sizes either by dragging the divider handles in the boxes on the left or by typing numbers into the Size text box. When you select a volume on the left, you can use the Split and Delete buttons to, respectively, split that volume in two or delete it from the scheme. The Revert button returns you to the settings you had before you made any changes — Revert is disabled until you’ve made a change. Figure 19-30 shows the Partition button, which tells Drive Setup to proceed with the settings you’ve made.

Figure 19-30: Partition a disk into multiple volumes by clicking Disk Utility’s Partition button.

RAID panel

If your computer has multiple hard drives, Disk Utility can create a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) set. A RAID set coordinates two or more hard drives to optimize storage capacity, improve performance, or increase reliability.

In the RAID panel, you must designate which disks you want to be part of the RAID set by dragging the icons of the physical hard disks to the Disk field which initially reads, “Drag disks here to add to set.” Only when you have dragged the second disk will the items above the field become selectable and stop being grayed out. If you drag the wrong disk to the field, simply drag it off.

In the RAID Scheme pop-up menu, you can choose Stripe or Mirror. Stripe will cause the multiple disks to look and act like a single disk with the combined capacity of all the disks, but with dramatically improved performance due to the redundancy of drive heads. Mirror will cause one disk to automatically duplicate the other to ensure redundant data if one of the disks should fail.

Enter the name of the RAID set in the field, and below that choose the volume format for the disks from the pop-up menu. The estimated size (capacity) of the set appears. Click the Create button to create the RAID set.

Restore panel

Use the Restore panel, shown in Figure 19-31, to copy the contents of a disk image onto a destination volume. You cannot drag copy the contents of a Mac OS X disk to another disk, like you could with Mac OS 9, so you should make an image of the disk first (see the instructions for the Images menu below) and then restore it using this feature.

As the onscreen instructions mention, you must prepare a disk image for the restore process by first “attaching” it so it can be seen in the Disk Utilities volumes list (see the Image menu instructions below). When it can be seen, select it. Then select “Scan Image for Restore” from the Images menu. When the image has been checksummed, drag it to the Source field, or browse for it with the Image... button. Drag a disk to restore onto the Destination field, check the box if you would like to erase the destination first, and check or uncheck the Skip Checksum box (it is recommended that you leave this box unchecked). Click the Restore button to complete the process.

Figure 19-31: The Restore panel of Disk Utility.

Images menu

The Images menu contains much of the functionality of Jaguar’s Disk Copy.

A disk image is a file that contains the contents of a disk. A disk image file’s icon looks like a document with a picture of a hard disk, and the file name is followed by a “.dmg” extension. Double-clicking a disk image file causes an icon of a removable drive to appear on the desktop (the image is “mounted”), and double-clicking this icon reveals the contents of the file. Once the image is mounted, your computer treats it like a hard drive; you can drag files to and from it, or run installers to or from it. You drag it to the Trash to “eject” it (unmount it).

To create a disk image choose New from the Images menu. From the submenu, choose Blank Image, Image from Folder, or Image from disk. Blank Image will create an empty disk image which you can add files to. Image from Folder will create an image from any folder you choose. Image from Disk will create an image containing the contents of any disk you choose. When creating an image, you can choose its size, format (Mac OS, MS DOS, or Unix), and encryption.

The Checksum command calculates a checksum for any disk you choose in the list. A checksum changes when any character in the volume or disk is changed, so it is a good way of insuring an image has not been corrupted. Most images use a UDIF-CRC32 checksum.

Verify checks the integrity of the disk image file you select first in the list. After choosing this command, the verification begins immediately; a progress bar appears in the lower right of the Disk Utility window. The results are shown in both in a sheet and to the left of the progress bar.

Convert allows you to convert the image format and encryption scheme of a disk image.

Burn lets you burn a disk image onto a CD or DVD disk.

Toolbar

The Disk Utility toolbar, a new feature, contains some handy icon buttons. Burn has the same functionality as the burn button in the Finder. New Image is a convenient way to create a new disk image. Unmount and Eject performs those operations on the selected disk. Enable Journaling turns journaling on for the selected disk. Info produces a rundown of information about the device or volume.

Tip

Most hard disk drives can warn you if they are going to fail, using their S.M.A.R.T. hardware to test themselves for problems. The S.M.A.R.T. status of a selected disk is shown at the bottom of the Disk Utility window, and in the Info window that opens when you click the Info button in the toolbar. “Verified” means all is well. “About to Fail” in red letters means you should immediately make a backup of your disk, and then replace it. “Not Supported” means the drive has no S.M.A.R.T hardware.

Grab

Grab facilitates capturing images from your computer screen. Grab really doesn’t have much of an interface, but that is good because there is not much to get in the way of viewing the screen. And Grab is admirably self-explanatory. Grab’s capture menu is shown in Figure 19-32.

Figure 19-32: This image of Grab’s Capture menu is an example of what you can produce with a Timed Screen Grab.

Grab specializes in helping with trickier screen captures. Simple captures are best done without Grab by pressing Command+Shift+3 to image the entire screen, and Command+Shift+4 to turn the cursor into a cross-hair you can use to draw a shaded selection rectangle around what you want. Images produced in this way appear on the Panther desktop as PDF files, viewable in Preview.

Grab’s Capture menu reveals four kinds of capture:

• Selection Grab (Command+Shift+A): Similar to the Command+Shift+4, mentioned in the previous paragraph, in that you drag the cursor to make a rectangle around what you want to image. The rectangle is red and gives screen pixel coordinates at the start and end of the drag.

For all four kinds of capture Grab performs, a small notice opens in the center of the screen to remind you what to do. The notice floats in front of all windows and is not imaged.

• Window Grab (Command+Shift+W): Allows you to capture one window of any size. The notice tells you when you have the window you want ready, click the Choose Window button, then click the window to capture it.

• Screen Grab (Command+Z): Similar to Command+Shift+4 mentioned above. Click outside the notice window to image the entire screen. You can cause a cursor image to appear exactly where you click, if you have first chosen one from the File Preferences window. Grab’s Preferences are shown in Figure 19-33.

  
  Figure 19-33: Grab’s Preferences and Image Inspector windows represent the height of interface minimalism.

• Timed Screen (Command+Shift+Z): Capture the screen ten seconds after you click the Start Timer button. Click the button and the cursor turns into a little camera with which you can manipulate things on screen; you can, for instance, get images of menus pulled down, much like the figure which shows Grab’s Capture menu. At the end of the ten seconds, the flash of the camera icon goes off, and the screen image is captured.

After you make a capture with Grab, the image appears in a Untitled window smaller than the screen; you must name the image and save it. Grab saves these images as TIFF files. The Image Inspector window also appears, detailing the size and bit depth of the resulting image.

Grab is available from applications as a Mac OS X Service under the File menu (turn to Chapter 11 to learn more about Services).

Installer

The Installer is a utility that installs software packages, such as System Updates, which are assembled in a specific format. Software vendors will usually use disk images when all you need to do is place the proffered application in your Applications folder; however, if support files (such as frameworks) also need to be installed, the software company may choose to provide an installer package.

Java (folder)

The Java folder contains Applet Launcher, Input Method Hotkey, Java 1.3.1 Plugin Settings, and Java 1.4.1 Plugin Settings.

Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems which is used to create small, platform-independent applications, called applets that your browser can automatically retrieve from a Web page, thereby extending the functionality of that Web page. The divergence from original platform-independent intent (particularly by Microsoft) has made this vision less than fully realized, resulting in Java applets being one of the principal causes of browser instability and crashes.

Other than being able to run applets in Web pages, how important is Java? So far, not very important; however, Mac OS X goes to great lengths to make Java a partner in developing full-featured applications.

If you want to run Java applets without a Web browser’s interaction, you can do it with Applet Launcher. After you launch Applet Launcher, you can open an applet’s HTML file and launch the applet.

Input Method Hotkey allows Java developers to assign a key combination of their choice to bring up a pop up menu that lists input methods to choose from.

Java 1.3.1 Plugin Settings and Java 1.4.1 Plugin Settings allow Java developers to control settings that pertain to the Java Plugin.

Keychain Access

Keychain Access, shown in Figure 19-34, allows you to manage your collections of user IDs and passwords that you don’t want to have to remember individually and type in repeatedly. You need only remember the passphrase that opens the Keychain, and it feeds the information required to any Keychain-aware application, as described in detail in Chapter 11.

Figure 19-34: The Keychain Access interface.

NetInfo Manager

NetInfo is Mac OS X’s directory system, which stores and finds important information about users and resources on your computer (or a network of computers) in a special database, and makes it available to application or system processes that need to use it.

You have already used NetInfo, perhaps without realizing it. When you first set up Mac OS X, you were asked to enter your name and a password to create a user account. This name and password were recorded in the NetInfo database, along with the information that this first user account, by default, has administrator rights to the machine. Whenever you log in to Mac OS X (if you have enabled login), you are authenticating your identity against the records in the NetInfo database.

NetInfo Manager, shown in Figure 19-35, is the graphical interface to this NetInfo database, allowing you to control the details of its contents directly. Most users of Mac OS X will never need to do this, so they will never use NetInfo Manager. In fact Apple advises that you should only use NetInfo Manager if you know what you are doing — similar to the Terminal.

Figure 19-35: The Netinfo Manager interface, with the root user selected.

However, if you are a little savvier than the average user, you may find yourself using the NetInfo Manager now and then in order to achieve a particular objective. Perhaps the most common task you might use NetInfo Manager for would be to give yourself access to the root user account, to do something you are ordinarily prevented from doing. The root account is the most powerful account in Mac OS X, with unlimited control over system settings, file access, user accounts, and so on.

To enable the root account within the NetInfo Manager application, unlock the padlock icon in the lower-left corner of the NetInfo Manager pane and authenticate with an Admin login and password. Continue by selecting Security from the Domain menu and Enable Root from the submenu. After acknowledging the warning message that appears, you will be prompted to supply the root account with a password. (By the way, the password cannot be “root”). You will then be prompted to verify the password in order to complete the procedure.

When you log out, and log back in with the root user name and password, there will be nothing you cannot do to your system. In Mac OS X, this is actually quite dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. You can irrevocably disable your system and lose your data if you, say, delete the wrong files. Do not dabble or linger; do what you must and then log out. Even power users do it this way.

The same stern warning applies if you boot from Mac OS 9 on your Mac OS X machine. Because you are not in Mac OS X, there are no constraints on your actions, and if you start playing around with your Mac OS X system files you can do serious damage. It is interesting to note that in Mac OS 9, you have and always have had root powers; it’s just that before the advent of Mac OS X, you could not be as dangerous. If you are intimidated by the process of enabling and logging on as the root user in Mac OS X, you can actually achieve the same end by booting into Mac OS 9 and doing what you have to do.

One other point to clarify about root: this same word applies to both the “superuser” account we have been talking about, and the top level of a hard drive. The first is the root user account, and the second is the root directory or the root level of the disk hierarchy “tree.”

Network Utility

Network Utility incorporates several tools that are helpful in working with networks. By using its various tabs (shown in Figure 19-36), you can perform such tasks as:

Figure 19-36: Network Utility provides a graphic interface to a collection of Unix-based network search commands.

• Netstat: Provides a statistical summary of the network activity on your Mac.

• Ping: Lets you send answer-back messages to another IP address to discern how long it takes to communicate with that location.

• Lookup: Enables you to ascertain various details about an Internet address, for example, what server hosts it and its IP address after resolution by a DNS (Domain Name Server).

• Traceroute: Reports back to you the route taken to get a message between your Mac and the address entered.

• Whois: Communicates with the servers where Internet domains are registered and returns to you the information as to who has registered a given domain name, when they registered it, and what its name servers are.

• Finger: Feed this Internet lookup tool a username and domain name, and it queries the host for that domain to retrieve any published information about that account. Not all domains provide finger information on their users.

• Port Scan: Scans a domain for open ports. You can limit the scan to only ports within a given range.

• Info: Tells you about your particular network connection.

ODBC Administrator

The ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) Administrator, shown in Figure 19-37, was introduced in Jaguar to allow users to configure ODBC drivers and data sources. ODBC is a programming interface that enables applications to access data in a SQL (Structured Query Language) database. Databases that use SQL are very popular in corporations, and this utility enables Mac OS X to access them.

Figure 19-37: The ODBC Administrator interface.

Printer Setup Utility

Printer Setup Utility in Panther replaces the Jaguar-and-before Print Center. Using Printer Setup Utility, you can add or delete printers, monitor the progress of print jobs, start and stop print jobs, and manage a printer’s options. The Printer List window is shown in Figure 19-38. New in Panther is a convenient feature: the print jobs appear as an icon in the dock while they are being sent to the printer. Also new is the Fax List, shown if Figure 19-39, which part of Mac OS X’s build-in fax capabilities. Printer Setup Utility is described in Chapter 9.

Figure 19-38: The Printer List window of the Printer Setup Utility, showing one installed printer.

Figure 19-39: The Fax List window of the Printer Setup Utility, showing its default state.

StuffIt Expander

Stuffit Expander is an excellent little tool provided to Apple for free redistribution by Aladdin. StuffIt Expander decodes and decompresses a wide variety of formats used on Mac, Windows, and Unix computers. Many of the files you download from the Internet are automatically decoded and decompressed by Stuffit Expander; it opens, does its work, and quits. You can also use Stuffit Expander with files that aren’t processed automatically. Just drag the files over the StuffIt Expander icon shown in Figure 19-40 and let go; Expander decodes and decompresses them for you. If you receive many encoded or compressed files, we recommend keeping StuffIt Expander in your Dock for quick and easy use.

Figure 19-40: If you double-click the Stuffit Expander icon, you will see this larger image to drop your files on top of.

System Profiler

System Profiler, shown in Figure 19-41, which prior to Panther was called Apple System Profiler, tells you what you may need to know if you ever need to call Apple Computer (or some other hardware or software vendor) for technical assistance. You can find out what your processor type is, exactly which version of Mac OS you’re running (including any updates), which bus your startup drive is on, how much RAM is present and where it is located, and what frameworks, extensions, and applications are installed.

Figure 19-41: System Profiler tells you more than ever wanted to know about your hardware and software.

System Profiler’s new interface makes Apple System Profiler seem primitive. On the left is the Contents list, containing the following items: under the heading Hardware: Memory, PCI/AGP Cards, IDE (ATA), SCSI, USB, FireWire, AirPort Card, Modems; under the heading Software: Applications, Frameworks, Extensions, and the headings Network and Logs.

As you click on each item in the contents list, the large area on the right of the window changes to accommodate the details. At times there is a second list at the top of this area, and clicking on the items brings up their information below. The whole utility is pretty self-explanatory.

From the view menu, you can choose a report length of Short, Standard, or Extended, and you can Refresh the results.

The results can be saved as a System Profiler 4.0 document, which is identical to what you see in the window; or, with the File Export command, as Plain or Rich text documents.

The About This Mac window features a helpful shortcut to System Profiler. Select the Apple menu, then the About This Mac... command from the Apple menu. The More Info... button shown in Figure 19-42 opens the System Profiler. This is faster than digging through the hierarchy to get to the Utilities folder.

Figure 19-42: The System Profiler can be opened by clicking the More Info... button in the About This Mac window.

Terminal

The Terminal utility, shown in Figure 19-43, allows you to communicate directly with the Unix underpinning of Mac OS X via a command-line interface. This may be helpful in certain situations, for instance if you have to troubleshoot a tricky problem and you are following a procedure in one of Apple’s Knowledge Base articles. But otherwise, most typical Mac users would never need to use Terminal.

Figure 19-43: The Terminal window after the command top has been entered (see the description of Activity Monitor for an explanation of top).

If you are a Unix person, you will feel right at home in Terminal, and may prefer using it to using the Aqua graphic user interface. But if you are a typical Mac user, the thought of going into Terminal may give you something approximating a severe anxiety attack. Not to worry! If this sounds like you, but you are curious, check out Chapter 24, Commanding Unix, where we will demystify Terminal and all you can do with it.

X11

Before Mac OS X came along, virtually the only way developers could create a graphical application in a Unix-based operating system was with the X Window System, which is more commonly known as X11. Thousands of these applications were created for Unix and Linux, and many have become indispensable. Apple’s X11 utility, shown in Figure 19-44, offers the ability to run these applications on Mac OS X. We discuss X11 further in Chapter 25.

Figure 19-44: The X11 interface with its default command prompt. Two auxiliary windows are also seen here, the xman and xlogo windows.