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TMI

Just enough info.

Fathoming the quagmire of modes of files and their directories together with ownerships, sticky bits, and extended attributes can be daunting. TMI spells it all out in plain language.

Knowing who can do what with a file is a matter of keeping track of who one is both in general and for the moment, noting who owns what file and who controls the directory the file is in, seeing if any set ID bits or sticky bits are present, and watching the user and system file flags.



TMI ('too much information') provides more information than any other utility of its kind. All data is easily exportable in plain text format and picked up with ease by the ACP text editor Rixedit.

If you find it a bit difficult to understand why some files but not others can go some places but not others, TMI might be a good place to start.

Just Enough Info

TMI shows you info in ten categories.

1. Summary

Shows you the name of the item and its path, who you are, what group you're in, what your effective user ID and group ID are, what groups you can belong to, whether the item is a directory, how many hard links it has, who owns it, what extended attributes it has, who owns its directory, and what you may and may not do with the item.

2. Stat

The data returned by the two 'stat()' calls for the item and its directory. Symbolic links are resolved.

  1. dev - the device the item resides on.
  2. ino - the item's inode.
  3. mode - the item's protection mode.
  4. nlink - the number of hard links to the item.
  5. uid - the user ID of the item's owner.
  6. gid - the group ID of the item's owner.
  7. rdev - the device type.
  8. atime - the time the item was last accessed.
  9. mtime - the time the item was last modified.
  10. ctime - the time the item's status was last changed.
  11. size - the size of the item in bytes.
  12. blocks - the number of blocks allocated for the item.
  13. blksize - the optimal I/O block size for the item.
  14. flags - the extended attribute flags for the item.
  15. gen - the item's file generation number (visible only to the superuser).

3. Lstat

The data returned by the 'lstat()' call. Symbolic links are not resolved. For an explanation of the data see above.

4. NSFileManager (0)

The Cocoa call corresponding to the 'lstat()' call.

5. NSFileManager (1)

The Cocoa call corresponding to the 'stat()' call.

6. Catalog Info

An HFS call. Note that HFS returns garbage values for the 'size' fields for directories.

7. Forks

The item's forks. Note that data forks generally have no name, resource forks by default have the name 'RESOURCE_FORK', and there may be more than two forks for the item.

8. Finder Flags

Applicable only to the Finder application, these are the item's creator code, type, flags, and physical location in/of the referenced folder.

9. Volume Info

An HFS call for the item.

10. Mount Info

The data returned by an 'fstat()' call for the current path of the item.

  1. type - the type of device the item resides on.
  2. flags - the device's flags.
  3. block size - the block size of the device.
  4. I/O size - the I/O size of the device.
  5. blocks - the number of blocks on the device.
  6. blocks free - the number of free blocks on the device.
  7. blocks available - the number of blocks available to the user on the device.
  8. inodes - the number of inodes on the device.
  9. inodes free - the number of free inodes on the device.
  10. file system ID - the device ID.
  11. owner - the owner of the device.
  12. name - the name of the device type.
  13. mounted to - where the device is mounted.
  14. mounted from - where the device comes from.

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