Chapter 8. Administer the System

This chapter introduces utilities, tricks, and tips for administering your Mac. Although Apple-supplied graphical utilities such as System Preferences and Disk Utility maintain Mac OS X, the relevant subsystems are also accessible via command-line tools. The 11 projects cover the following topics:

User accounts. Query and maintain user accounts through the Directory Services command-line tool.

Disks and discs. Use a combination of Unix and Apple tools to query, mount, unmount, and repair disk drives.

Scheduling. Schedule tasks to run at periodic intervals, and maintain the daily, weekly, and monthly periodic maintenance scripts.

Network. Query and change the network settings, and change the active network location, from the command line.