Mac OS X Unleashed

By John Ray and William C. Ray

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Introduction to Mac OS X
  • Chapter 1. Mac OS X Component Architecture
  • Chapter 2. Installing Mac OS X
  • Chapter 3. Mac OS X Basics
  • Chapter 4. The Finder: Working with Files and Applications
  • Chapter 5. Running Classic Mac OS Applications
    • The Classic Environment
    • Launching Classic
    • The Boot Process
    • Running Classic Applications
    • Classic Options
    • Direct Booting Mac OS 9.x
    • Summary
  • Part II: Inside Mac OS X
  • Chapter 6. Native Utilities and Applications
  • Chapter 7. Internet Communications
  • Chapter 8. Installing Third-Party Applications
  • Part III: User-Level OS X Configuration
  • Chapter 9. Network Setup
  • Chapter 10. Printer and Font Management
  • Chapter 11. Additional System Components
  • Part IV: Introduction to BSD Applications
  • Chapter 12. Introducing the BSD Subsystem
  • Chapter 13. Common Unix Shell Commands: File Operations
  • Part V: Advanced Command-Line Concepts
  • Chapter 14. Advanced Shell Concepts and Commands
  • Chapter 15. Command-Line Applications and Application Suites
  • Chapter 16. Command-Line Software Installation
  • Chapter 17. Troubleshooting Software Installs, and Compiling and Debugging Manually
  • Chapter 18. Advanced Unix Shell Use: Configuration and Programming (Shell Scripting)
  • Part VI: Server/Network Administration
  • Chapter 19. X Window System Applications
  • Chapter 20. Command-Line Configuration and Administration
  • Chapter 21. AppleScript
  • Chapter 22. Perl Scripting and SQL Connectivity
  • Chapter 23. File and Resource Sharing with NetInfo
  • Chapter 24. User Management and Machine Clustering
  • Chapter 25. FTP Serving
  • Chapter 26. Remote Access and Administration
  • Chapter 27. Web Serving
  • Part VII: Server Health
  • Chapter 28. Web Programming
  • Chapter 29. Creating a Mail Server
  • Chapter 30. Accessing and Serving a Windows Network
  • Chapter 31. Server Security and Advanced Network Configuration
  • Chapter 32. System Maintenance
  • Appendix A. Command-Line Reference
  • Appendix B. Administration Reference

Launching Classic

The Classic environment is typically launched once during a Mac OS X login session—either manually or automatically. After it is running, Classic remains active until you log out or manually force it to shut down.

There are two ways to launch the Classic environment: by double-clicking a Classic application and through the Classic panel within System Preferences.

Classic applications appear to the Mac OS X Finder just like any other application. To verify that a piece of software is indeed a Classic application, you can select the icon and select Show Info (Command+I) from the Finder's File menu. Or Control-click on the icon and choose Show Info from the context menu. Figure 5.1 shows the General Information panel for the Graphing Calculator, a Classic application.

Figure 5.1 The General Information panel will identify Classic applications.

Memory Settings

Classic applications, because they still use the Mac OS 9.x Memory Manager, require a preferred and minimum memory size to be set. Because you have no direct access to the 9.1 Finder under OS X, Classic applications have an additional Show Info panel called Memory. This is shown in Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.2 Classic applications allow memory limits to be set.

Two limits can be set:

• Preferred Size— The amount of memory that you want the application to have. This is the upper limit of the memory partition that will be requested from Mac OS 9.x.
• Minimum Size— The minimum amount of memory that an application must have in order to run. The Mac OS 9.x environment will prohibit the application from launching unless the minimum memory size can be met.

To take advantage of the new Mac OS X memory architecture, set these values higher than you would in older versions of the Mac OS. If you do, be aware that your settings here will carry over if you boot directly into Mac OS 9.x, where you might not have as much real or virtual memory available.

Forcing Carbon Apps into Classic

Carbon applications are a special case of Mac OS X application. They are capable of running natively on Mac OS X, and on Mac OS 9.x through the use of CarbonLib. If you'd like to use the Classic environment to launch a Carbon application, there is a setting within the General Information panel that can force a Carbon-compliant package to launch through Classic. Figure 5.3 shows the General Information panel for a Carbon application.

Figure 5.3 Carbon applications can be forced to launch in the Classic environment.

To launch a Carbon application in Classic, check the "Open in the Classic environment" check box, and then close the info panel. Double-clicking the application will launch it in Classic rather than in Mac OS X.

Manually Starting and Configuring Classic

If you have multiple Mac OS 9.x installations, or want to manually start or stop the Classic environment, you can do so from the Classic System Preferences panel. First, open System Preferences (path: /Applications/System Preferences), and then click the Classic icon.

The basic Classic controls are shown in Figure 5.4.

Figure 5.4 The Classic System Preferences panel configures the startup volume and allows manual startup and shutdown.

The Classic Preferences panel can control how and when Classic boots. The following options are found in the Start/Stop tab of the Classic panel:

• Select a startup volume for Classic— Mac OS X can start the Classic environment by booting any available Mac OS 9.x system. It is recommended that you use a separate drive or partition for Mac OS 9.x. Refer to Chapter 2, "Installing Mac OS X," for more information.
• Start up Classic on login to this computer— If you'd like Classic to start up immediately after you log in to your computer (or immediately at startup, if you're using Mac OS X as a single-user system), click this button. Be warned, the Classic environment takes a few minutes to start and your system performance will be degraded during this time.
• Start/Stop— Click the Start button to launch Classic manually or Stop to shut it down.
• Restart— The Restart button is equivalent to choosing Restart from the Mac OS 9.x Finder. Open applications will prompt you to save open documents, and then exit. The Classic environment will reboot.
• Force Quit— If Classic becomes unresponsive (that is, it crashes), the only option is to force it to quit. Open documents are lost, exactly as if Mac OS 9.x crashed (as it tends to do from time to time). You can also use the Control+Option+Escape keystroke to force it to quit.

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