Guide - Part 8: System Management

Question 1

What are the four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by Mac computers running OS X?

Answer 1

The four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by OS X are:

• Universal Serial Bus (USB)
• FireWire
• Thunderbolt
• Bluetooth wireless

Question 2

Which action must take place for a Mac to communicate with a Bluetooth peripheral? Where can this be configured?

Answer 2

Bluetooth devices must be paired to each other for communication to occur. Bluetooth preferences in the System Preference application is responsible for pairing your Mac with Bluetooth peripherals. You can quickly open Bluetooth preferences from the Bluetooth status menu.

Question 3

What’s a device driver? Which three primary types of device drivers are there?

Answer 3

A device driver is software specially designed to facilitate the communication between OS X and a peripheral. Device drivers can be kernel extensions, framework plug-ins, or standalone applications.

Question 4

How does OS X support third-party devices without needing third-party device drivers?

Answer 4

OS X uses built-in generic drivers based on each device class. For example, there are generic drivers for scanners and printers that can be used instead of official third-party drivers.

Question 5

What can you infer about a connected peripheral if it doesn’t appear in the System Information application?

Answer 5

If a connected peripheral doesn’t appear in System Information, the issue is likely to be hardware related. Troubleshoot accordingly.

Question 6

What does CUPS do?

Answer 6

Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) manages all printing for OS X, including both local and shared printing.

Question 7

What are PPD files responsible for?

Answer 7

PostScript Printer Description (PPD) files are printer driver files that instruct the CUPS system on how to communicate with specific printer models.

Question 8

What’s the best source for acquiring printer drivers for OS X?

Answer 8

The Apple print drivers are the best source for configuring OS X printers. One method is to let the software update system automatically download and install the appropriate printer drivers. Or you can manually download and install printer drivers from the Apple support website.

Question 9

Under what circumstances can a standard (nonadministrative) user configure a printer?

Answer 9

Assuming the default settings for OS X, a standard user can only configure directly attached or local network printers from the Print dialog. Also, the appropriate drivers must be installed before the standard user configures the printer.

Question 10

How do you share printers with other users?

Answer 10

You can enable printer sharing from Print & Scan or Sharing preferences. Note that Windows clients may need additional drivers to access the Mac computer’s shared printers via the IPP protocol.

Question 11

How can you select a new printer driver for a configured

printer?

Answer 11

It depends on the printer. From Printing & Scanning preferences, sometimes you can simply select a new printer driver from the Options & Supplies dialog. In many cases though, to select a new printer driver for a configured printer you must delete and then add the printer again.

Question 12

If it appears that all configured printers are having problems, what’s a potential quick fix?

Answer 12

If all printers appear to be having problems, a quick fix is to reset the entire printing system by using secondary (or Control-) click in the printer list and then choosing “Reset printing system.”

Question 13

What are the primary system initialization stages in OS X? What are the visual and audible cues of these items?

Answer 13

Each primary stage of system initialization can be indicated by the following: firmware, startup chime or bright flash of the power-on light, followed by a light-gray screen on the primary display; booter, a dark-gray Apple logo on the primary display; kernel, a small dark-gray spinning gear or spinning Earth icon below the Apple logo; and system launchd, a white screen on all displays followed by the login screen.

Question 14

What does the firmware do? What’s the POST?

Answer 14

The firmware initializes the Mac computer’s hardware and locates the booter file on a system volume. The Power-On Self-Test (POST) checks for basic hardware functionality when the Mac powers on.

Question 15

What role does the system launchd process serve during

system startup?

Answer 15

The system launchd process is ultimately responsible for starting every system process. It also manages system initialization and starts the loginwindow process.

Question 16

Which items are automatically started by the system

launchd during the system initialization process?

Answer 16

During system initialization, the system launchd process automatically starts /System/ Library/LaunchDaemons, / Library/LaunchDaemons, /Library/StartupItems (via SystemStarter), and the /etc/rc.local UNIX script if it exists.

Question 17

What are the primary user session stages in OS X? What are

the visual and audible cues of these items?

Answer 17

Each primary stage of the user session can be indicated by
the following: The loginwindow process displays the login
screen, the user launchd process loads applications like the
Finder after user authentication, and the user environment is active any time the user is logged in to the system.

Question 18

What’s the difference between launch daemons, startup items, launch agents, and login items?

Answer 18

Launch daemons and startup items open during system initialization by the system launchd process on behalf of
the root user. Launch agents and login items open during the initialization of the user environment by the user’s specific launchd process.

Question 19

What are Safe Sleep and Power Nap?

Answer 19

Safe Sleep is a feature of all OS X–compatible portable Mac computers that saves the system’s state to permanent storage in cases where the computer’s battery drains completely. Power Nap is a feature of Mac systems introduced after mid-2011 that use all-flash storage. Power Nap allows the Mac to automatically wake in a low-power mode so the system can perform a variety of application and system updates.

Question 20

What happens during user logout?

Answer 20

During user logout, the user’s loginwindow process does the following: requests that all user applications quit, automatically quits any user background processes, runs any logout scripts,records the logout to the main system.log file, resets device permissions and preferences to their defaults, and quits the user’s loginwindow and launchd processes.

Question 21

What happens during system shutdown?

Answer 21

At system shutdown, the loginwindow process logs all users out and then tells the kernel to quit all remaining system processes. Once the kernel quits all system processes, the Mac shuts down.

Question 22

Which keyboard shortcut is used to Safe Boot OS X?

Answer 22

A Safe Boot is initiated by holding down the Shift key during system startup.

Question 23

Which keyboard shortcut can be used to temporarily choose another startup disk?

Answer 23

Holding down the Option key at startup opens Startup Manager, which allows you to temporarily choose another startup disk.

Question 24

Which changes are made when OS X Safe Boots?

Answer 24

A Safe Boot performs the following permanent actions: attempting to repair the system volume structure, deleting system KEXT caches, and deleting font caches.

Question 25

Which items aren’t loaded when OS X Safe Boots?

Answer 25

When performing a Safe Boot, OS X doesn’t load third-party KEXTs, third-party launch agents, third-party launch daemons, third-party startup items, third-party fonts, any user login items, or any user-specific launch agents.

Question 26

How do you further resolve an issue that disappears when the Mac successfully safe-boots?

Answer 26

If an issue disappears when a Safe Boot is successful, you must find and remove the third-party startup resource that caused the issue. The best way to isolate the problem is to start up the Mac in Verbose mode and then observe where the startup process fails. Verbose mode is initiated by holding down Command-V during system startup.