Terminal's <bless> command

Terminal includes a <bless> command that can be used to enable a volume as a potential startup volume. Here are some specifics:

Bless and selecting a Classic volume On Monday, we mentioned the problem where an OS 9 volume is not listed as available for selecting as the Classic volume. The article also noted some possible solutions. Mike Barron offers yet another one. Using Terminal: type: <sudo bless -folder9 /"System Folder" -setOF>. Mike adds: "Use this is if OS 9 System Folder resides on the startup partition. Otherwise, substitute the appropriate path (e.g., /Volumes/volume-name/"System Folder"). This works for me every time."

Bless and external drives Gerry Altmann suggested using the bless command to solve problems where an external FireWire drive is not bootable. Type: <sudo bless -folder /Volumes/volume-name/System/Library/CoreServices>. He writes: "This has worked each time for me. It doesn't set the external drive as the start-up, but simply sets a flag that allows it to be selected."

Carbon Copy Cloner includes an option to do this, bypassing the need for Terminal commands. Selecting it as the startup volume in Startup Disk System Preferences should also do this. Note: None of this solved our particular problem with booting from a FireWire drive; but it is now clear that this is a hardware-specific issue.]

Update: Thomas Richard has created an AppleScript utility to run this bless command, bypassing the need to use Terminal.

For more info on the bless command, type <man bless> in Terminal.