Resources for Unix migrators?

On May 2, 2006, at 8:16 AM, Nigel Stanger wrote:

> Does anyone know of any good web sites or other resources that talk
> about the differences between Mac OS X and other Unices?

I haven't found exactly what you want, unfortunately.

There are various documents in Apple's developer area

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/index-date.html>

including this discussion of porting Unix applications

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Porting/Conceptual/PortingUnix/index.html>

and this more general look

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001067>

On May 2, 2006, at 9:16 AM, Nigel Stanger wrote:

> Does anyone know of any good web sites or other resources that talk
> about
> the differences between Mac OS X and other Unices?

As you probably know already, Darwin (the underlying Unix OS under
MacOS X) is based on BSD Unix 4.2. Most anything specific to BSD 4.2
will work under Darwin. But, as you pointed out, Apple's made some
"improvements" to the basic underpinnings, which can throw an
experienced user for a loop. (Or, in the case of Launchd, throw an
experienced MacOS X admin for a loop!)

The OpenDarwin web site and lists are probably your best place to
start. I'd get going with the FAQ and work out from there. There have
been plenty of discussions on the (archived) mailing lists about just
this sort of information.

<http://www.opendarwin.org/en/faq/>

Apple's developer documentation on Darwin also contains a lot of this
sort of information.

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/index.html#//
apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000440-TP30000422>

There's also an excerpt from a Unix on MacOS X book which lists
various command line programs unique to MacOS X.

<http://www.matisse.net/OSX/darwin_commands.html>

None of this, of course, packages it all entirely neatly, but it's
the best place to start. I'm confident that 90% of the information
your friend will need is on Apple's tech docs site, but that site is
very much geared toward developers and no so much at end users.

--Nik

At 8:16 AM -0700 2006/05/02, Nigel Stanger wrote:
>Does anyone know of any good web sites or other resources that talk about
>the differences between Mac OS X and other Unices? I'm thinking of things
>like NetInfo vs. /etc/whatever, cron vs. launchd and so on --- the kinds of
>things that would really catch out a long-time Unix user. We have such a
>person here who is considering switching to Mac, and I'd like to point them
>at something that tells them about the more obvious gotchas.

        For admins, afp548.com is helpful. I don't know of anything for users.

--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

This book from O'Reilly may be just what you're looking for: "Mac OS
X Tiger for Unix Geeks".

<http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxtigerunix>


Jochen.


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