MacOS System Administration & Optimization

Calendar February 27, 2026
Software, Administration
Macos, Terminal, Brew, Timemachine, Networking

macOS System Administration & Optimization#

Workstation Recovery & Rebuild Standard: If you need to rebuild your Mac Studio or synchronize its software and aliases with another Mac, refer to the master checklist at Mac OS - Recovery.

1 Modify Known Hosts#

# Add description
nano ~/.ssh/known_hosts
# To remove a specific host
ssh-keygen -R 10.1.1.14
# Clear the full file
cat /dev/null > ~/.ssh/known_hosts

2 Disk Management & Diagnostics#

2.1 Identify and Verify Disks#

# List all physical and virtual disks
diskutil list
# Verify a specific disk (replace X with disk number)
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/diskX

2.2 SMART Monitoring (via Homebrew)#

# Install smartmontools
brew install smartmontools
# Check health of the primary NVMe drive
smartctl -a /dev/disk0

3 Homebrew Package Manager#

Official site: brew.sh