Proper technical manuals - Des. Seeking...

[Freestyler]

Hey ...

Ive been on the look out manuals of any kind, that ARENT about showing people The Dock, or The Finder or The Eject Button...

Does anyone know of references that cover the UNIX administration and underpinnings of the Macnificent OS X?

stuff that covers admin functions - from the Command Line

that addresses questions about why Terminal Uses the Shell that it does

The over all structure of the file system and why its designed that way
{we all know about Windows Running on the normal default drive allocation of 'Drive C' and installing the system partition and boot partitions to \ and %systemroot%\system32 respectively : c:\ and c:\winnt\system32 or c:\windows\system ...etc , also, we understand that profiles basically reside in c:\documents and settings\user dir ... or programs install generally to c:\program files}

{we also are familar with OS 9 and a little of OSX in that the system installs to \system , programs to \applications or \applications OS 9 , user stuff to \users\user id etc}

BUT

What I really want to get into is stuff
like /usr /var /tmp /reg /etc /dev /bin /lib ....and so on
and the inter-relationship between these

perhaps re-cover old ground with chmod , chown, chgrp, init, boot, touch, etc

and look at the lower level command line processes and their dependence on eachother to give the GUI - things like MAIL or WEB SHARING

(ie i may be wrong, likely, but I thought that Mail was a front end to basically SENDMAIL ...is that right? how can that relationship be scetched out between the module called XXX located in /bin?? and its liason with a prefs file in (??) /users/userid/lib ???

or take WEBSharing , its built on Apache web server right?
where is the apache program housed? /bin/...? or ...?
how does it talk to the OS to note down the folder location and or web page that OS X - is sharing out?

or what about File Sharing ?

or what about Printing across the LAN to to 'shared windows printer' - i have one attached to a USB port, and thus cant assign a IP address to it, and set up a LPD - Jobs boasted seemless interconnect with Windows Shares via a native SMB client - I can view Shared Folders just great (albeit I WISH JOBS WOULD HAVE GOTTEN APPLE TO INSTALL UNC DRIVE MAP CONVENTIONS FOR NETWORK RESOURCES - what is up with
//smb:/server/share

what is wrong with
\\servername\sharename

Novell does it
Unix does it
PCs do it

Apple dont (its not a BIG deal, but its a pain in the ass
I know Apple used to employ path statements such as
Apple HD:Applicationsrogram

but since they are doing such radical changes , maybe they
can also move to standardised 'slash notation' such as
\AppleHD\Applications\Program


that sort of thing... any one have a resource/book or book(s)
that can help with this

or any one feeling bold enough to begin , perhaps starting a Advanced Documentation Thread on trying to cover the lower level relationships and workings of this new MaCnificent *niX OS?

Thanks for taking the time ...


FreeStyler

oh, um some people seem to be interested in gear ...
Im using a XP PC to act as a Software router for a USB ADSL (BT OPENWORLD) internet connection , I have a NIC multihomed out of that box and run it to a 10/100 switch, with a Buffalo Wireless AirStation PC Bridge on that - and it chats 802.11b to my two Apple Airport Cards in the new ibook (500/320/10gb) and Ti 550/512/30Gb .....running ....of course NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH CLASSIC (BLECH!)

 

[LordCoven]

Hey there,

Well, for starters you can check the man pages. They take a bit of getting used to -- but once you have, they're invaluable.

Secondly, the backslash notation for paths is Windows specific. Most other OSs and standards use forward slashes. PLUS: the way that OSX requires you to specify paths to network resources (e.g. smb://server/path/to) is (I'm guessing) taken from the URI standard used for such things as URLs on the Internet. Personally, I think its a good idea. But they could have documented it better (something that can be said about a lot of things Apple do ;-)) ... So all in all, I'm glad that Apple adopted the forward slash as opposed to the backward slash (plus, the backward slash being the escape character in most *nix OSs it would've played HELL with using the CLI ;-)))

But on the whole I agree. Apple should have produced more documentation. My guess is that Apple wanted to have a good reason to sell its Server OS. That is to say, principally you could use the "normal" Mac OS X distro as a server (I do at home ...) ... its just that you have to bring some *nix experience with you, otherwise Apple has you over a barrel!!! So they simply wrote a bunch of GUIs to handle the admin stuff and sell it as the "server" version of the OS. Good business move. Ticks ppl like me off, tho!

Anyway, rant over. Hope you get to grips with man pages ;-)

C

 

[Arin]

Specifialcally could someone post the command line command for starting up file sharing?

-A

 

[Arin]

here it is in case anyone's curious:

sudo /usr/sbin/AppleFileServer &

then just kill the PID when you want to stop it.

-A