As part of trying to trace down a separate mystery, the folks in the ##osx-server IRC room made an interesting discovery: Apple’s asr tool has hidden documentation.
Normally, to access Apple’s documentation on a command-line tool, you would use man toolname_here or toolname_here help. asr has both of those, but it also has a separate command that reveals additional asr options not mentioned in the regular man or help pages.
With asr help, you get the following output:
Usage: asr
is one of the following:
asr help | version
asr restore --source --target []
asr restore --source asr:/// --file []
asr server --source --config []
asr imagescan --source [--filechecksum] [--nostream] [--SHA1]
is in bytes but may end with a scale factor (b, k, m, g)
common are any of:
--source path or url to disk image file, mountpoint, or
web accessible disk image
--puppetstrings print out messages in format good for machine parsing
--verbose display verbose output
--debug display debug output
restore are any of:
--target path to volume or mountpoint
--erase formats target volume
--format target format when erasing (defaults to source)
--noprompt don't require confirmation on erase
--noverify don't checksum results
--buffers number of buffers to use in block copy
--buffersize size of buffers to use in block copy
--csumbuffers number of buffers for the checksum if different
--csumbuffersize size of buffers for the checksum if different
--timeout max wait for stream in multicast client mode
server are any of:
--interface Use 'if' as the interface for the server's
outgoing stream
--config server configuration file in plist format
imagescan are any of:
--filechecksum calculate file checksum
--nostream don't reorder file for multicast streaming
--SHA1 add a SHA-1 checksum to the image
However, when you run FULL_USAGE=1 asr help, you get the following output:
Usage: asr
is one of the following:
asr help | version
asr restore --source --target []
asr restore --source asr:/// --file []
asr server --source --config []
asr imagescan --source [--filechecksum] [--nostream] [--SHA1]
asr partition --target [--testsize ]
[--retestsize ] [--recoverysize ]
asr freeze --target [--testsize ]
[--retestsize ] [--recoverysize ]
asr thaw --target [--recovery] [--modifyrecovery]
asr adjust --target [--settype ]
is in bytes but may end with a scale factor (b, k, m, g)
common are any of:
--source path or url to disk image file, mountpoint, or
web accessible disk image
--puppetstrings print out messages in format good for machine parsing
--verbose display verbose output
--debug display debug output
restore are any of:
--target path to volume or mountpoint
--hidden restore to the hidden customer software partition
--erase formats target volume
--format target format when erasing (defaults to source)
--noprompt don't require confirmation on erase
--noverify don't checksum results
--buffers number of buffers to use in block copy
--buffersize size of buffers to use in block copy
--csumbuffers number of buffers for the checksum if different
--csumbuffersize size of buffers for the checksum if different
--timeout max wait for stream in multicast client mode
server are any of:
--interface Use 'if' as the interface for the server's
outgoing stream
--config server configuration file in plist format
imagescan are any of:
--filechecksum calculate file checksum
--nostream don't reorder file for multicast streaming
--SHA1 add a SHA-1 checksum to the image
There are now four additional options listed:
asr partition --target [--testsize ]
[--retestsize ] [--recoverysize ]
asr freeze --target [--testsize ]
[--retestsize ] [--recoverysize ]
asr thaw --target [--recovery] [--modifyrecovery]
asr adjust --target [--settype ]
The question I don’t know the answer to is “What do these options do?”
I’ve seen asr adjust used to correct an incorrectly set Recovery HD partition, but I’m not familiar with what asr freeze and asr thaw do.
Do you know? Let me know in the comments.
