Apple’s deeply buried airport command

Posted on 2012/07/15 by RedNectar Chris Welsh

I wanted to check which wireless AP my new Mac had connected to, so I entered the command:

airport -I

…but it didn’t work!  I’d become so used to using this on my MBP that I’d forgotten that this command was not automatically available.  After assuming that it had been removed in the Lion version of OS X, I went googling for a replacement command, and when I found this site I remembered that I’d been there before, and this was how I got the airport command on my MBP in the first place:

sudo ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport /usr/sbin/airport

I am now happily able to use the airport command on my new Mac.  This shows me the BSSID and Channel of the AP that I have connected to.

About RedNectar Chris Welsh

Professional IT Instructor. All things TCP/IP, Cisco or Data Centre
This entry was posted in BSSID, Mac OS X, Macintosh, Memory Jog, wifi, wireless network and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Apple’s deeply buried airport command

  1. jimcolv says:
    2012/07/15 at 21:30

    Now if only I can get my MacBook to actually stop dropping my connection, all will be good in the world. I’m using Leopard (10.5.8). Waiting for Snow Leopard to come in the mail.

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