About time I posted this for my own benefit. I always wanted to just list down the special shortcuts/commands/procedures for my powerbook, which I’ve used at one point in time. Since I’m posting it, might as well make it useful for other folks as well… so before I continue, here are some things to remember (for those of you who are new to this):

• CMD is the Command button, shown as an apple and clover icon, depending on what you identify better with.
• CTRL is Control button, also printed as “ctrl.”
• ALT is the Option or Alternate button. Designated as “option” & “alt.”
• FN is the Function button, displayed as “fn” usually at the bottom left of the keyboard.
• POWER is the power button.
• ENTER is the Enter or Return button

Pressing these buttons during startup will have different effects

X                     Force OSX Startup
ALT                   Select boot volume
C                     Boot from CD
N                     Network boot
R                     Force screen reset
T                     FireWire target disk mode
SHIFT                 SAFE MODE
CMD+V                 Verbose mode
CMD+S                 Single-user mode
CMD+ALT+O+F           Open Firmware

Resetting the PMU

Hold down the following keys for at least 5 seconds: CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+POWER

Resetting PRAM and NVRAM

Hold down the following keys while powering up: ALT+CMD+P+R

Do not let go until you hear the chime at least three times.

You can also do it via Open Firmware by typing:

reset-nvram set-defaults reset-all

note: reset-all should’ve sufficed, but after confirming, it doesn’t reset the NVRAM as it should.

Verbose boot mode

Verbose booting is like the /sos argument in WinXP, which bypasses the graphic “wait screen” and shows what’s actually happening to the operating system while booting up. In OS X, this is particularly useful for power users, since there have been quite a number of instances wherein the operating system wouldn’t go past the spinning wheel (or grey screen) when a user tries doing something “special.” By booting in verbose mode, you can see exactly where the system has stalled.

For permanent Verbose booting, in the terminal, type: sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

You can find out the status of your boot args with: sudo nvram boot-args

Log-in screen trick

You’d think that you’ll have to either select either the normal login (a list of names and icons) where you only have to input the password, or a more secure way which requires both usernames and passwords.

Say you, on occassion, want to access the root account (assuming you have enabled it, it’s disabled by default). Since the normal login screen never displays the root account as a choice, you would think you need to set your login mode to that which requires a username and password.

While that is one way of doing it. What you didn’t know, is that you already have the best of both worlds in the normal screen. Simply press ALT+ENTER then click on any displayed name. Voila, you have now temporarily switched to the alternate input screen! Now you can enter those hidden usernames (e.g. root) while retaining the default eye-candy login screen.