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How to manage a nonfunctional Terminal in OS X

The OS X Terminal is an exceptionally useful tool for getting to the underpinnings of OS X and troubleshooting problematic aspects of the system, developing and testing code, and managing remote connections among many other details. When you launch the Terminal, the system should load the default shell in which you can execute various programs and scripts, but depending on how you have configured your system the shell may not load and instead show a blank Terminal window.

There are a couple of possible reasons why this might happen, which are that the default shell configuration for your account may … Read more

Using and managing the Terminal history in OS X

There are times when using the Terminal that you might enter a command or two and then want to either run it again or review a whole sequence of commands that have been entered. This can easily be done by pressing the up arrow, scrolling through the previous commands, and then pressing Enter to execute the selected one again. In addition to this approach, the Terminal supports a number of other options for revealing and rerunning entered commands.

The Terminal is able to do this because it stores a small history of the commands you have run both in its … Read more

How to use SSH host names for tabs in the OS X Terminal

While the OS X Terminal is not a familiar operating environment for most Mac users, those who have had experience with Unix-based systems will find it to be an invaluable tool for managing their systems. One of the most common uses of the Terminal is to establish a remote log-in session on a system using the secure shell (SSH) command, and sometimes invoke multiple connections to the same system and different systems at the same time.

As a result of this, you might find you have many windows open at once to manage these connections in, though starting with Snow … Read more

How to repeat commands in OS X Terminal

The OS X Terminal is a commonly used utility for troubleshooting OS X, because it allows you to run custom commands and scripts for looking up information and adjusting system settings. While useful, the Terminal is intended primarily for power users who have an understanding of the UNIX underpinnings in OS X.

Often when running commands in the Terminal, various iterations of the command will be executed to try different settings or perform slightly different tasks, which in the Terminal can be frustrating as it can require you type out sometimes extensively long commands over and over again.

For instance, … Read more

Has Samsung given up on bashing Apple?

Today's existential question is this: has Samsung gone all Floyd Mayweather?

Just as it seems that Mayweather is reluctant to again take on Manny Pacquiao, Samsung appears to have forsaken its Apple-thumping.

The evidence for this bathed my eyes last night as I was watching "The Voice." (You don't? Why not? It's full of human nuance.)

For there was an extremely tame, almost rudimentary ad for the Samsung Galaxy Note.

In an almost paint-by-numbers fashion, the ad tried to show that the Galaxy Note gives you the best of a tablet and the best of … Read more

Create an automatic 'ssh' server menu in the OS X Terminal

For people who manage remote servers, the use of the secure shell (ssh) Terminal command is quite common, and is very often the only command people use when opening a Terminal window. While you can enter each of your ssh connections (usernames, server, and arguments) for every new Terminal session, this can be a burden if you need to connect to many servers. While Apple's Terminal application has a connection manager option where you can store the addresses of the servers you access, even this can be a bit cumbersome to continually access. One option instead is to implement … Read more

Tip: set the Terminal to store only unique commands in the history

When you enter commands in the Terminal, they are saved in a history that you can scroll through by pressing the up and down arrows. This is convenient because you can quickly access previously entered commands for repetitive tasks, or to access previously used syntax for a command. While this is useful, if you have entered the same command several times you will have to scroll through the same command in the terminal in order to get to a unique command you entered. This default behavior can be changed, which may be convenient for people who access the terminal frequently.… Read more

Sidesplitting tech comics

Whoever said geeks have no sense of humor was wrong--laughably so. Some of the funniest comics out there are Web comics (or those rendered for the Web,) written by techies, for the techies who love them. Here's a bushel of geeky favorites, in no particular order.

1. xkcd Randall Monroe, physicist, cartoonist, and at-heart romantic, is behind xkcd, a Web comic whose name curiously holds no mathematically obscure meaning. In his own words, Monroe's stick-figure style "occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)." See? Funny.… Read more