Darwin Commands

NetInfo Database

The NetInfo Database holds information about the active users on the system, the networks, active services, printers etc. etc., hence it is quite an important piece of data. To access this from the command line, the command

  niutil

is used, which allows reading and writing, albeit the latter only with root-privileges. The access by niutil is directory based. To get the list of entries in the main directory, execute the following statement:

  niutil -list . /

Kernel Extensions

To manipulate the kernel, or to be more precise, the kernel extensions, one can use the following three commands to load, unload or to get information:

  kextload
  kextunload
  kextstat

Disk Manipulation

Another major point in the daily usage of Darwin regards the manipulation of disks, which is accomplished by the command

  disktool

In the following, a list of options to disktool is shown.

-l: list the currently known and available disks
-u: unmount a disk
-p: unmount a single partition
-m: mount a disk
-a: notify other application on the mount of a disk
-d: notify other application on the unmount of a disk
-e: eject a disk