macOS for DevOps

Where It Helps

macOS often serves as an engineer’s workstation: terminal, SSH, VPN, Docker Desktop, kubectl, Terraform, cloud CLIs, and local development.

Basic Commands

sw_vers
system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
networksetup -listallhardwareports
ifconfig
scutil --get HostName
defaults read
brew doctor
brew update
brew upgrade

Useful Directories

• /Applications
• /Library
• ~/Library
• /etc/hosts
• ~/.ssh
• ~/.zshrc

What to Remember

• Homebrew is effectively the standard package manager.
• For network diagnostics, common tools include ifconfig, netstat, route, scutil, and networksetup.
• Docker and Kubernetes on macOS typically run through virtualization rather than natively as they do on Linux.

Practice

• The default shell is usually zsh.
• For infrastructure work, keep separate CLI profiles and a clean SSH config.