William H. Magill on 27 Mar 2009 07:51:47 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] OT: Mac Mini/BSD question


On Mar 27, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Art Alexion wrote:

> I am experimenting, trying to learn OS X on a Mac Mini that was lying
> around, unused in our office.  It appears that it was set up with a
> user, and never turned on again.
>
> It has a 70 GB system partition, and another, seemingly hidden
> partition named "`" with some system files on it
>
> ls /Volumes/\`/
> Desktop		Desktop DF	bin		private
> Desktop DB	Network		cores		sbin
>
> The partition is not viewable in the Finder app.
>
> Any idea what this is and whether I can get rid of it?

Sounds like a typo.  (It is easy to change a volume name.)

Launch the disk utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) and see  
what it shows.
The files imply that it is/was a user account, or something that  
someone was playing with.

The "normal" top level files for a volume should be:
.
..
.0017f2cd4bd8
.DS_Store
.Spotlight-V100
.TemporaryItems
.Trashes
.com.apple.timemachine.supported
.fseventsd
Backups.backupdb
Desktop
Desktop DB
Desktop DF
private


bin, cores and sbin imply that somebody was "playing" ... installing  
something "non-apple."

>
> Is the shell bash?


Yes, the default shell is bash.
Keep in mind that the default path is NOT DEFINED.

Yes, OSX is VERY BSD/OSF  like, but with LOTS of Apple modifications.

The default profile for terminal is defined in a directory, you will  
have to create in your home directory.

.MacOSX
The file in that is called: environment.plist

Plists are basically xml files. (gone are the days of flat files...  
sigh). You can handcraft it or use plist editor,
which unless you have the Developer CD installed, you won't have...

                 /Developer/Applications/Utilities/PropertyList  
Editor.app

This is my:      .MacOSX/environment.plist


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd 
">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>LC_ALL</key>
	<string>C</string>
	<key>LANG</key>
	<string>ENGLISH</string>
	<key>PATH</key>
	<string>/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local1/bin:/ 
opt/local/bin</string>
	<key>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</key>
	<string>/usr/local1/lib:/usr/local1/opt/local/lib</string>
	<key>DISPLAY</key>
	<string>:0</string>
</dict>
</plist>


 From the sounds of things, I would strongly recommend that you find  
the original OSX CDs, wipe the disk and re-install.
There is nothing worse than trying to learn from something that is  
brain-dead  because someone else has lobotomized it
to begin with... and yes, there ARE significant differences between  
10.4 or earlier and the current 10.5 , aka Leopard.



T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.4.11
# iMac6,1 Core 2 Duo [2.16GHz - 3 GB 667] OS X 10.5.6
# Mac mini Core Duo [1.66 Ghz - 2 GB 667]OS X 10.5.6
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/magill/
whmagill@gmail.com










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