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Get nice system information on Macintosh OS with the command line.


Get information about apps installed on your Macintosh PC with the lsappinfo command. Use grep as shown below to find out information about a certain app, i.e Firefox in this case.

deusexmachina:~ jason$ lsappinfo | grep Firefox
24) "Firefox" ASN:0x0-0x2a02a: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox"
26) "FirefoxCP WebExtensions" ASN:0x0-0x2c02c: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0x2a02a:  (inferred)
27) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x2d02d: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0x2a02a:  (inferred)
28) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x2e02e: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0x2a02a:  (inferred)
29) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x2f02f: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0x2a02a:  (inferred)

Get information about currently loaded Virtual File System modules.

deusexmachina:~ jason$ lsvfs
Filesystem                        Refs Flags
-------------------------------- ----- ---------------
nfs                                  0 
devfs                                1 
nullfs                               0 
hfs                                  1 local
CoreStorage                          0 local
autofs                               2

Get basic system information with a nice and simple command.

deusexmachina:~ jason$ hostinfo
Mach kernel version:
	 Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0: Fri Apr 27 17:59:46 PDT 2018; root:xnu-3789.73.13~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel configured for up to 4 processors.
2 processors are physically available.
4 processors are logically available.
Processor type: x86_64h (Intel x86-64h Haswell)
Processors active: 0 1 2 3
Primary memory available: 4.00 gigabytes
Default processor set: 248 tasks, 1004 threads, 4 processors
Load average: 1.17, Mach factor: 2.81

The Macintosh Sierra operating system is based upon the Darwin UNIX OS, and has many executables from the FreeBSD UNIX distribution. That is fine, Windows 7 used a ftp.exe executable that was FreeBSD code compiled on Windows, they left the copyright notice intact as per the license agreement. They could not write their own FTP client, so they used BSD code instead. But it is allowed under that license.

Get some nice information about the status of the backlight.

deusexmachina:~ jason$ sudo systemstats | grep Display
        Display Backlight:	39.0%
        Display Backlight:	39.0%
        Display Backlight:	40.0%
        Display Backlight:	29.1%

Display comprehensive information about the CPU in your system.

deusexmachina:~ jason$ sudo systemstats | grep CPU
CPU Summary
           Package Power::	Pkg: 1.44W, CPU 0.84W, GPU: 0.02W
    CPU TLVL Distribution:	[MIN,1): 42, [1,26): 0, [26,51): 0, [51,101): 0, [101,151): 0, [151,201): 0, [201,MAX): 0
CPU Time	(CPU % of wall)		Energy Score	(Energy % of total)
           Package Power::	Pkg: 2.32W, CPU 1.31W, GPU: 0.03W
                 CPU Time:	00:06:06 (60.0%)
           Package Power::	Pkg: 2.32W, CPU 1.44W, GPU: 0.03W
                 CPU Time:	00:04:40 (51.9%)
           Package Power::	Pkg: 1.73W, CPU 1.05W, GPU: 0.01W
                 CPU Time:	00:03:00 (32.8%)
Ranked CPU Activity
           Package Power::	Pkg: 2.32W, CPU 1.31W, GPU: 0.03W
                 CPU Time:	00:06:06 (60.0%)
           Package Power::	Pkg: 2.33W, CPU 1.44W, GPU: 0.03W
                 CPU Time:	00:04:44 (52.7%)
           Package Power::	Pkg: 1.60W, CPU 0.87W, GPU: 0.03W
                 CPU Time:	00:03:40 (36.8%)

The systemstats utility returns very comprehensive system information. Best to redirect it to a text file and read it all in an editor.

Even fun commands like banner are present on Mac OSX.

deusexmachina:Desktop jason$ banner 
Message: H
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The above command is used to create Dot Matrix banners. They used to be all the rage in the 80`s.


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