Booting Mac OS X in verbose mode (and other boot time options)

Just to remind myself 🙂

Press Option during startuo to boot into Open Firmware to select a boot device
Press :@:+Option+P+R to reset Parameter RAM (PRAM) and non-volatile RAM (NVRAM)
Press (mouse button) to eject (internal) removable media
Press X during startup Force Mac OS X startup
Press :@:+Option+Shift+Delete during startup to bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
Press C during startup to start up from a CD that has a system folder
Press N during startup to attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)
Press R during startup to force PowerBook screen reset
Press T during startup to start up in FireWire Target Disk mode
Press Shift during startup to start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
Press :@:+V during startup to start up in Verbose mode
Press :@:+S during startup to start up in Single-User mode (command line)

To turn on verbose boot logging all the time, in the terminal, type:
sudo nvram boot-args="-v"
You can find out the status of your boot args with
sudo nvram boot-args

5 thoughts on “Booting Mac OS X in verbose mode (and other boot time options)”

  2. Oh ! Thanks for the keys you provide. This is more helpful to the new user like me. I started my Mac adventures with OS X Tiger (the one before Leopard), so perhaps don’t have the context to say whether Leopard is the most advanced release yet. But one thing is certain: Leopard gilds the lilly that is OS X. It is far from an achievement in its own right.

    It’s like Apple took a load of shareware applications and added them into OS X. So you now get virtual desktops, and a backup utility. These are excellent features, and will prove useful to some, but perhaps not to everybody (you need an external drive for the backup, for example, and it must be plugged in and operating all the time — quite a electricity drain if you ask me).

    The new features are also typically easy to use. The backup function only has one control, and that’s to turn it on and off. Everything is configured automatically. This is Apple, after all.

    The new GUI look and feel is a little heavy and dull. It’s like somebody looked out the window onto a steely grey day and decided to replicate that in Leopard’s applications. Even the folders are now a repressively dark blue (a bit like how things look when set to low-contrast for some visual disabilities, in fact).

    The new 3D dock is so-so, neither better or worse than the old version. The spring-loaded folders that pop out are kinda useful and undoubtedly impressive, but only really replace other ways of working that are just as quick and intuitive. Rather than download files to your desktop, you now download them to a special spring-mounted Dock folder. The new method is tidier than the old method, but I had nothing against tidying up a cluttered desktop every now and again.

    The key status of your boot args with
    sudo nvram boot-args
    ———-is really help me. thanks.

  3. Thanks a lot for your info. A month ago I decided to give Mac a try, and I must say, it’s amazing. But, it is very difficult for me as a beginner to use my Mac at its full potential.

    So I hunger for tips like the one you provide. thanks

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