Fast User Switching, when enabled, allows users to leave one session open and hop to another user account. Great for training, testing and impressing friends (ok, so maybe it won’t impress your friends, but the thumb trick is getting old). To enable Fast User Switching, open the Accounts System Preference pane and click on Login Options. Then check the box for Show fast user switching menu. By default you’ll then see your user name in the menu bar. To do this from the command line: defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences MultipleSessionEnabled -bool 'YES' To then disable it from the command line: defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences MultipleSessionEnabled -bool 'NO' What’s really cool though, is…
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Adding Color to & Customizing the Shell Prompt
As promised in the article on colorizing the terminal, let’s look at how to customize your bash prompt. First note that text as well as the following can be used in your string. a – ASCII bell d – date e – ASCII escape h – LocalHostName H – HostName j – number of jobs managed by shell l – basename of terminal device name n – insert a newline r – insert a carriage return @ – time in 12-hour HH:MM format A – time in 24-hour HH:MM format t – time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format T – time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format u – current user v –…
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Mac OS X 10.5: The New Terminal
I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Apple has been slowly winning over a lot of traditional Unix and Linux converts. This new breed of switcher is after a cool shell environment. In Leopard, Apple has upgraded Terminal.app to provide a whole slew of new features that are sure to continue winning new converts. Let’s just take a look at a few of them: Secure Keyboard Entry – Prevent other applications from detecting keystrokes used in terminal. Enable this using the Terminal menu. Tabbed Interface – I always have 3 shell windows open. That’s how I roll. But with the new tabbed interface (which you can access using the Command-T keystroke) I find…