Running Mac OS X Tiger

Appendix A. Boot Command Keys

It seems like the people who truly know how their Mac works inside and out can do odd things with it by holding down a key, or a combination of keys, as the machine boots. Table A-1 lists the known boot keys that can be used when Mac OS X is starting up.

Table A-1. Keyboard shortcuts used for starting, restarting, logging out, and shutting down

Key command	Description
C	Holding down the C key at startup boots from a CD or DVD (useful when installing or upgrading the system software).
N	Attempts to start up from a NetBoot server.
R	Resets the display for a PowerBook.
T	Holding down the T key at startup places your Mac into Target mode as a mountable FireWire drive. After starting up, your screen will have a blue background with a floating yellow FireWire symbol. Target mode makes the hard drive(s) of your Mac appear as mounted FireWire drives when connected to another system. To exit Target mode, press the Power-On button to turn off your Mac. After your Mac has shut down completely, press the Power-On button again to restart your Mac.
X	Holding down the X key at startup forces your Mac to boot into Mac OS X, even if Mac OS 9 is specified as the default startup disk.
-S	Boots into single-user mode (something you’ll only need to do when troubleshooting your system, or if you’re a system administrator).
-V	Boots into verbose mode , ...