Status checking is a crucial task for any systems engineer to ensure that the system is running smoothly and efficiently. In the Apple environment, specifically on macOS, there are several built-in tools and commands that you can use to check the system's status. This article will guide you through some of the most common methods to check the status of various system components.

Checking System Uptime

To check how long your macOS system has been running since the last reboot, you can use the uptime command.

Example:

uptime

This command will output something like:

14:23  up 3 days,  4:12, 2 users, load averages: 2.15 1.75 1.68

Checking Disk Usage

To check the disk usage of your macOS system, you can use the df command.

Example:

df -h

This will display the disk usage in a human-readable format:

Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused      ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1   250Gi   50Gi  200Gi    20%  500000  100000000    0%   /

Checking Memory Usage

To check the memory usage, you can use the vm_stat command.

Example:

vm_stat

This will output various statistics about your system's memory usage:

Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                               123456.
Pages active:                             234567.
Pages inactive:                           345678.
Pages speculative:                        456789.
Pages throttled:                                0.
Pages wired down:                         567890.
Pages purgeable:                          678901.

Checking CPU Usage

To check the CPU usage, the top command is very useful.

Example:

top -l 1 -s 0 | grep "CPU usage"

This will give you a snapshot of the current CPU usage:

CPU usage: 15.67% user, 8.34% sys, 75.99% idle

Checking Network Status

To check the network status, you can use the ifconfig command.

Example:

ifconfig

This will display information about all network interfaces:

en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 00:1c:42:2e:60:4a 
    inet6 fe80::21c:42ff:fe2e:604a%en0 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x4 
    inet 192.168.1.2 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Checking System Logs

To check system logs, you can use the log command.

Example:

log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "error"' --info

This will display system logs that contain the word "error":

2023-10-01 14:23:45.123456-0700 0x123456   Error       0x0                  123   kernel: (AppleACPIPlatform) ACPI Error: [DSSP] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20160930/psargs-569)