Command Line

Curl is the powerful command line utility that allows you to transfer data to or from a server or URL. One common function used by developers is to make a POST request with curl, which is what we’re going to cover here.

Many developers and pro users rely on MySQL for their database needs. We’ll walk through how to export or dump all databases from MySQL, dump a single database, and also show how to import all of those databases from a database.sql file back into MySQL. While there are GUI based tools to interact with MySQL, … Read More

Command line users rely on the ‘kill’ command to terminate a process as defined by the appropriate process identifier (PID). While there’s nothing wrong with targeting processes by their PID, another approach which is often easier is to target a process by name, rather than its unique identifier. There are a few ways to kill … Read More

Users can securely download a file from any remote server with SSH by using the scp tool at the command line. Essentially this means you can have a file stored securely on a remote server and transfer it to local storage without having to expose that file to the outside world, because scp offers the … Read More

If you need to view the IP addresses of other hardware on the same LAN (Local Area Network) as a Mac, the command line arp tool works quite well. You’ll quickly find other devices IP and accompanying MAC addresses, which can make direct network connections easier and be helpful for many other network and troubleshooting … Read More

Mac systems administrators may find a need to convert an existing regular user account into an administrator account on a Mac. While most Mac users would be best served by converting account status to admin through the Users & Groups preference panel, advanced users can perform the same function through the Terminal by using the … Read More

Mac users who come from a unix background may appreciate knowing how to implement the equivalent to the Unix “tree” command in macOS and Mac OS X. There are actually a few different ways to show a folder tree in the Terminal of Mac OS X, we’ll cover an easy tree equivalent achieved through an … Read More

Ever wished you could make a dialog alert pop-up on the Mac by way of the Terminal? Well it turns out that you can with the always useful osascript command, which allows execution of AppleScript from the Terminal. For those who spend a lot of time at the command line of MacOS, this can be … Read More

Some Mac users may require the ability to erase a disk or erase a hard drive from the command line on Mac OS, a task which is typically performed through the Disk Utility application from the GUI. The command line approach to disk erasure in macOS is a bit different and it requires precise syntax … Read More

Command line users are undoubtedly familiar with man pages, or manual pages, that contain details, help, and documentation to specified commands and functions. Referencing a man page can be essential when trying to learn proper syntax or how a command works, but with how large some manual pages are it can be a real drag … Read More

All modern Macs running macOS or Mac OS X come with SSH pre-installed by default, but the SSH (Secure Shell) daemon is also disabled by default. Advanced Mac users may appreciate knowing the ability to enable SSH and disable SSH are both available entirely from the command line of Mac OS, allowing for a simple … Read More

If you need to find the disk ID or disk node identifier (like /dev/disk0s2) of a volume attached to a Mac for one reason or another, perhaps the easiest way to obtain this information from the command line is with the diskutil utility.

Modern Macs with new versions of Mac OS (or Mac OS X) default to automatically reboot themselves upon a system freeze. This is a troubleshooting feature that aims to prevent average users from having to initiate a forced restart, since the Mac would simply restart itself if a system freeze were to occur. While most … Read More

If you spend a lot of time at the command line, you undoubtedly find yourself adjusting and editing text and commands, and you likely often need to move the cursor to a further position in the Terminal from where it’s actively located. Sure you can use the arrow keys to move left and right on … Read More

Mac administrators may find themselves in a situation where they need to display a list of all user accounts on a particular Mac by way of the command line. We’ll review a few methods for advanced individuals to list all accounts, both user and system, on any Mac with any version of Mac OS X … Read More

Polyglots, learners, and the bilingual often want to change their Mac system language for obvious reasons, but another less obvious situation can occur if you’re troubleshooting a Mac that either originates in another country, had the language changed at some point, or is just set to a different language. Since it can be pretty challenging … Read More

For anyone making customizations to their command line appearance, prompt, adding aliases, a new PATH, setting environment variables, or otherwise changing their bash_profile, bashrc, zshrc, and related shell profiles, it’s helpful to know how to quickly reload the profile. Many users simply launch a new shell or open a new terminal window, but there is … Read More

Removing a symbolic link is achieved through the command line, and as we’ll show you, there actually two different ways to undo a soft link. This is aimed at users who spend a lot of time at the command line, but for the less familiar, symbolic links are used in Linux, Mac OS X, and … Read More