Mac OSX Terminal – Get System Details

If you only have SSH access to a Mac OSX server and need some details on the machine you can use these commands to help.

uname -a

Darwin MyMacMini 15.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

sw_vers

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.3
BuildVersion:   15D21

System_Profiler can get you a lot of the information you are likely looking for but it pulls a lot of information so initially you may want to output it to a text file and determine what you need.

system_profiler | more > sys.txt

Of course you can do a simple grep command to filter through system_profiler

system_profiler | grep Memory

Memory: 4 GB
Memory:
      Upgradeable Memory: Yes
      Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled

The sysctl command is capable of getting a lot of information (see Mac Man Page)

sysctl kern.ostype kern.osrelease kern.osrevision kern.version kern.maxvnodes kern.maxproc kern.maxfiles kern.argmax kern.securelevel kern.hostname kern.hostid kern.clockrate kern.posix1version kern.ngroups kern.job_control kern.saved_ids kern.boottime vm.loadavg vm.swapusage net.inet.ip.forwarding net.inet.ip.redirect net.inet.ip.ttl net.inet.icmp.maskrepl net.inet.udp.checksum hw.machine hw.model hw.ncpu hw.byteorder hw.physmem hw.usermem hw.memsize hw.pagesize user.cs_path user.bc_base_max user.bc_dim_max user.bc_scale_max user.bc_string_max user.coll_weights_max user.expr_nest_max user.line_max user.re_dup_max user.posix2_version user.posix2_c_bind user.posix2_c_dev user.posix2_char_term user.posix2_fort_dev user.posix2_fort_run user.posix2_localedef user.posix2_sw_dev user.posix2_upe

kern.ostype: Darwin
kern.osrelease: 15.3.0
kern.osrevision: 199506
kern.version: Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:x                                                                                                                               nu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
kern.maxvnodes: 66560
kern.maxproc: 1064
kern.maxfiles: 12288
kern.argmax: 262144
kern.securelevel: 0
kern.hostname: MyMacMini 
kern.hostid: 0
kern.clockrate: { hz = 100, tick = 10000, tickadj = 2, profhz = 100, stathz = 10                                                                                                                               0 }
kern.posix1version: 200112
kern.boottime: { sec = 1459339211, usec = 0 } Wed Mar 30 08:00:11 2016
vm.loadavg: { 0.77 0.80 0.84 }
hw.machine: x86_64
hw.model: Macmini6,2
hw.ncpu: 8
hw.byteorder: 1234
hw.physmem: 2147483648
hw.usermem: 1363705856
hw.memsize: 4294967296
hw.pagesize: 4096