Launching Mathematica on Mac OS X
Launching Mathematica Locally
To run
Mathematica using a network license, both the client machine and the license server must be on the network and
MathLM must be running.
To launch Mathematica:
Double-click the
Mathematica icon in the directory where
Mathematica is installed. Alternatively, if you have placed the
Mathematica icon in the dock, single-click the icon.
To launch only the Mathematica kernel:
Open the Terminal application and type the full pathname of the MathKernel binary in the window that appears. For example, if you installed
Mathematica in the Applications folder, type
/Applications/Mathematica.app/Contents/MacOS/MathKernel in a Terminal window and press
Return.
Launching Mathematica from a File Server
To maintain a centralized location for preferences and password files or to save disk space, you can run
Mathematica directly from a file server. To do this, the client machine does not need to have any
Mathematica files installed locally.
To run a copy of Mathematica installed on a remote file server:
1. Connect to a file server on which
Mathematica is installed.
2. Double-click the icon representing the volume with the
Mathematica files. Then navigate to the location where
Mathematica is installed.
3. Double-click the
Mathematica icon in the directory where
Mathematica is installed.
Mathematica Command-Line Options
The commands
MathKernel and
Mathematica have several command-line options used to specify certain configuration information and file locations.
MathKernel
The command
MathKernel starts the kernel, which is the part of
Mathematica that handles calculations. This command is also used by the
Mathematica front end.
Command-Line Options
-initfile file
Specifies the name of a file containing commands to be run on startup.
-lmverbose
Prints diagnostic information to
stderr on connecting to the license manager. This is useful for debugging problems related to the license server.
-mathlink
Specifies that the kernel should be run in
MathLink mode. See
www.wolfram.com/solutions/mathlink for additional information about
MathLink.
-noinit
Specifies that no initialization file should be read at startup.
-password str
Specifies a password to use instead of the password or passwords stored in the mathpass file. The password should have the form "
!servername" or "
machinename mathid licensenumber password".
-pwfile file
Specifies the name of a file that has a valid password.
-run
Takes a command to be run on startup as an argument.
Mathematica
The command
Mathematica runs the
Mathematica front end. In order to run
Mathematica with a command-line option, you must start it from the command line using the Terminal application.
Command-Line Options
-cleanStart
Tells the front end to ignore caches stored in the directory ~/Library/Mathematica/FrontEnd/6.0 Caches, and rebuilds the front end preferences file, ~/Library/Mathematica/FrontEnd/init.m.
-mathlink
Causes the front end to run in
MathLink mode. In
MathLink mode, the front end runs as a child process that is capable of accepting
MathLink packets. This option may be useful when the front end is used as a typesetting or graphics rendering service.
-preferencesDirectory dir
Specifies the location where preference settings are stored. The default location is ~/Library/Mathematica.
-topDirectory dir
Specifies the location of the
Mathematica installation directory.
