As you get more adventurous in terminal mode, you may wish to explore UNIX commands to get your work done. There's a command called "apropos" that searches all the man(ual) pages for keywords, and voila, a list of appropriate commands appear.
BUT - OS X's "apropos" doesn't work until you establish a "whatis" database. How? Simple:
1) Start a terminal session and get into su mode (root).
2) Type the follow line exactly:
/usr/libexec/makewhatis
3) Wait several seconds for the root prompt to appear, and quit the terminal session.
Now, you can start a terminal session as yourself, and the "apropos" command will work. For more information about apropos, type "man apropos".
[Editor's note: I published a related tip quite a while back, but I'm sure not everyone has dug through all the pages, so I thought this was a good chance to bring it up again. Note that the makewhatis will also run if you leave your machine on regularly; it's part of a scheduled task that runs (if I recall correctly) weekly.]
BUT - OS X's "apropos" doesn't work until you establish a "whatis" database. How? Simple:
1) Start a terminal session and get into su mode (root).
2) Type the follow line exactly:
/usr/libexec/makewhatis
3) Wait several seconds for the root prompt to appear, and quit the terminal session.
Now, you can start a terminal session as yourself, and the "apropos" command will work. For more information about apropos, type "man apropos".
[Editor's note: I published a related tip quite a while back, but I'm sure not everyone has dug through all the pages, so I thought this was a good chance to bring it up again. Note that the makewhatis will also run if you leave your machine on regularly; it's part of a scheduled task that runs (if I recall correctly) weekly.]
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