macfidelity

I stumbled upon SystemStarter while searching a way how to restart a service in Mac OS X.

Quote from the man page:

The SystemStarter utility may be used to start, stop, and restart the system services which are described in the /Library/StartupItems/ and /System/Library/StartupItems/ paths

Example:

1. Restart NetInfo: sudo SystemStarter restart NetInfo
2. Restart Printing / CUPS: sudo SystemStarter restart PrintingServices

I guess the missing part now is a full listing of the Services…lets see if i can find the time to collect them later.

Links:

• macosxhints.com with a similar post
• Apple Inc.   - Mac OS X Manual for SystemStarter

I was used to a keycombo on Linux boxes to restart X and always asking myself if Mac Os X has a similar function. Well not 1:1 but i found an ugly hack how to restart your Desktop environment very quickly. I dont know how safe this method is (so be warned), but it works for me.

How to:

• Open Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities)
• Use the search function to locate the process “loginwindow”
• Kill this process (quit or force quit) and you’ll find yourself back on the login dialog