| Tip 3: Install the Bash Shell: |
| OSX 10.2 ("Jaguar") comes with Bash pre-installed, so you do not have to run my installer. If you want to install Bash for earlier versions of OS X, click here. If you want the source code to Bash, you can get it here. Bash is brought to you by The Free Software Foundation (yay!). |
| Note: The OSX 10.2 installer will overwrite any previous version you might have of the file the file "/etc/profile", (if you have installed a previous version of Bash), so please back up your copy before installing OSX 10.2, or edit it as per below. note that my sample code for "/etc/profile" is provided as a starting point only - you should edit it to suit your needs. In particular, it assumes that you will be using the color version of "ls", however OSX 10.2 does not install this. If you wish to use it, follow the install instructions in my Tip 2. If you are not going to install the color version of ls, then you'll need to comment out the line in /etc/profile which reads alias ls='/bin/ls2 --color -a' |
To make bash your default shell, open /Applications/Utilities/Netinfo, and edit your user as shown (here the username is "jsw"):
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| You will also need to make bash the default shell in the Terminal app. That is done in the menu Terminal/Window Settings (not in preferences as in the older versions of Terminal). |
| To check if you are running the new or old version of bash, type bash -version at the command prompt. My version will read "version 2.05.0(1)-release (powerpc-apple-macosx)", whereas OSX 10.2's version will read "version 2.05a.0(1)-release (powerpc-apple-darwin6.0)". |
Finally, you will want to modify /etc/profile (and/or ~/.bashrc) - here is mine: # /etc/profile for bash startup (also see ~/.bashrc and
~/.profile) |
| This is only a starting point - edit it for your needs. |
| The Bash shell has some advantages over the tcsh which is supplied as standard on OS X, and is standard on most Linux systems, making it very widespread. If you use a shell a lot, it is worth it to learn some of its options, such as automatic command completion, searching and editing the history of commands, etc. Check the Bash info page, and the online documentation. The O'Reilly book is also quite good. |
| Using the Bash shell? Press ESC twice (or press TAB) to autocomplete commands. For example, to cd to a directory named xyz.1-2-3, type cd xy ESC ESC (xy must be unique - type as many letters as required to be unique). To get the last command argument, type ESC . (that's a period). For example, cd xyz, ls ESC . |
| To open any program from the shell, simply type open path_to_program/name_of_program. Try open . (that's a period) to open the current folder in the Finder. For more Terminal tips, click here. |
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| Last update 09-15-02 |
