iTerm and Motd

Guys, this is Matt. Kids are on today. I will be doing a review on a terminal application called iTerm. You can download this either by going to the iTunes website or, in the description of this video, I will have a link directly to the downloads page.

So, let me just show you how iTerm works. It'll just download as iTerm.app right here. I don't want to get the update, but maybe I'll get it later. So, right here is my iTerm window. I've already customized it a bit, and if you, of course, go to iTerm preferences, you can customize it. I like my cursor type being underlined. If you like it being writable vertical, then it can look like this line, more like TextEdit, or you can make it a box like in real terminal. I'm gonna keep it underlined.

Of course, you can set all these. I don't like the scroll bars, so I got rid of those. Display refreshing rate under general means how fast the display refreshes. So, if I have it on fast and I type that the man keeps on spilling out stuff, it looks like it's really, really fast. I changed it to the slowest, then it takes a long time; like it only refreshes every second. So, I keep that on fast.

So, that's how that works. You can set all these other ones. Tabbing is cool; like if you type "cd space slash" and you want to go to applications, if you type "cd space app" then hit tab, it'll type "applications" for you because "applications" is the only thing in slash that starts with "app".

Okay, that's another thing. iTerm also has a URL handler. So, if I type "http colon slash slash backheads101.com" and click that, I can make it go to that. I don't have that set up though. You can also, if you click this button, type a file to execute, click bookmarks, and bookmark for a server. Namely, there's of course the close button, the customize button—not that much stuff we can add there. And, of course, a new default Bonjour. I like they have a nice tab system set up there.

So, yeah, I'm also going to show you how to use iTerm or terminal to make a message. So, this is not really part of the review; I've already done the iTerm review. It's great, I’d rather use Terminal still. But, of course, anywhere you can type "xterm" and it'll open up X11's terminal application. But, I don't like that; it is X Windows, in fact, though. And that's iTerm.

So, this is how to use iTerm, Terminal, or even if you use a Terminal dashboard widget, how to make a message come up. Right now, this message comes up; it says "Notice to users," and then a copyright thing, etc. So, let me just show you how to set this up with any terminal or anybody else who's teaching.

First, you want to open Terminal or Xterm or iTerm. Type "cd space tilde," or just type "cd" (just c/d) and hit enter. Then type "cd space desktop" with a capital D. Then type "nano space motd." Now you want to just type the message that you want to come up when you turn on your computer. So, I'll just type "Joe." Okay, then press Control X, then press Y, then hit enter.

So now, on your desktop, you should have something called motd. Now you can open this with TextEdit or do whatever to edit it some more. After you're done editing it, making it good, wanna type "mv," and actually, here's—you want to type "sudo space," and you need to be an admin to do this.

Then type "MV space motd space /etc/motd," then hit enter. If you're already logged in as root, you won't need to type your password, but if you aren't, then you'll need to type your password. So that’s um, that. So now when we open up Terminal, it says my message, which was "jumped." Now, I've actually had one that is better, so I'll just get that one back. But that is how to make a message that comes up, and this is pretty cool in my opinion. That message also comes up when someone SSHs to you, for instance.

So, that's useful. If you want to make a message come up like "Stop SSH into me," then you can do that. So, that's pretty cool. And so let me just get my motd back. Okay, so there's motd. So now I’ll just see the desktop, and now I’ll just type "mv motd /etc/motd." Okay, so now...