[david_copperfield]

I immigrated form Unix to Mac. When using terminal to perform some operations, I found that they don't quite similar to each other. Many files, such as hosts.allow and hosts.deny can't be found on Mac.

Is there any sites which introduce properties of terminal on Mac in details?

Thanks for your ideas.

[OreoCookie]

What kind of *nix have you used before? OS X has a full-fledged unix underneath (although legally, it is not unix, as Linux is also not unix). If you are interested, take a look at FreeBSD, much of the user environment is kept in sync with FreeBSD 5. OS X is just a different kind of unix.

If you tell us more specifically what it is you want to do, we could help you. Just saying some operations are done differently is a bit fuzzy.

Maybe you can also try freebsdforums.org, they have a Mac section as well.

[pat++]

Originally Posted by david_copperfield

I immigrated form Unix to Mac. When using terminal to perform some operations, I found that they don't quite similar to each other. Many files, such as hosts.allow and hosts.deny can't be found on Mac.

Is there any sites which introduce properties of terminal on Mac in details?

Thanks for your ideas.

hosts.allow/hosts.deny files do not exist by default on Mac OS X, you just need to create them in the /etc directory as usual.

Notice that by default, the root account is locked on OS X. This means you cannot telnet/rlogin with root (this is usually a bad idea). To get a root shell, just use :

sudo -s

and enter your admin password.

[pat++]

You can see OpenDarwin for more info on the "differences" of Mac OS X with other unix (mainly netinfo, and SystemStarter which replaces /etc/rc.d/*)

http://www.opendarwin.org/en/articles/
http://www.opendarwin.org/en/faq/

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by pat++

You can see OpenDarwin for more info on the "differences" of Mac OS X with other unix (mainly netinfo, and SystemStarter which replaces /etc/rc.d/*)

http://www.opendarwin.org/en/articles/
http://www.opendarwin.org/en/faq/

Note that on 10.4, SystemStarter has itself been replaced (by launchd). Both SystemStarter and rc.d still exist for backward compatibility.

[raduga]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

(although legally, it is not unix, as Linux is also not unix)

I don't think it's so much of a legal thing as a technical thing. Linux is not UNIX because they don't share hardly any codebase. Linux was written "from scratch" and is not directly derived from any of the UNIX lineages. Anyway, there is a really awesome chart showing the "family tree" of the Unix-like OSes, including Mach, which helped form the OSX kernel, and of course the BSDs which are also very closely tied to OSX. I know O'Reilly has a copy on their website but I can't find it

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by raduga

I don't think it's so much of a legal thing as a technical thing. Linux is not UNIX because they don't share hardly any codebase. Linux was written "from scratch" and is not directly derived from any of the UNIX lineages. Anyway, there is a really awesome chart showing the "family tree" of the Unix-like OSes, including Mach, which helped form the OSX kernel, and of course the BSDs which are also very closely tied to OSX. I know O'Reilly has a copy on their website but I can't find it

Are you thinking of this family tree?

It is entirely a legal thing. There are many Unixes that don't share any kernel code, but they can call themselves Unix (aix for instance). But well, since most people identify unix-like OSes via their userland, it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

[Tesseract]

If anything, OS X is more of a "Unix" than Linux is, since it is descended from the original Unix code (through FreeBSD, of which Darwin is a fork/variant), while Linux does not share any code with the original Unix (unless you believe Darl McBride).

But, as OreoCookie says, it is things like the filesystem layout, utilities available, programming interface, etc. that is usually used to determine whether an OS is "Unix-like". Given this loose set of criteria, both OS X and Linux qualify.