P

pages

Units of physical and virtual memory allocation.

paging

The process of writing information located in physical memory into virtual memory.

parity information

Part of each RAID 5 stripe that contains information designed to provide data redundancy.

partial resynchronization

The process of resynchronizing a part of a mirrored volume with the rest of the mirrored volume.

pass number

A number that determines in which order the submirrors in a mirrored volume will be resynchronized.

password aging

A feature that forces users to change their passwords periodically.

patch

A collection of files designed to improve the performance of a program or an operating system. Put another way, patches fix bugs.

Personal Computer File System (PCFS)

The file system used in Solaris on floppy disks.

physical memory

The amount of RAM physically in a computer.

primary group

Every Solaris user account must belong to at least one group. The first group that a user belongs to is their primary group.

primary submirror

The first submirror created when creating a mirrored volume.

print client

A computer on the network that does not have a printer attached locally; instead, a print client will print to printers located on a remote print server.

print driver

The piece of software that tells Solaris how to talk to the printer.

print queue

An area on the print server that accepts, holds, and processes print jobs, and redirects the jobs to the appropriate printer. Also called a print spooler.

print server

A computer (or specialized device) on the network that has printers attached to it and enables other computers to print to those printers.

print spooler

An area on the print server that accepts, holds, and processes print jobs, and redirects the jobs to the appropriate printer. Also called a print queue.

printer class

A logical grouping of several locally attached printers. Instead of printing to a specific printer, users will print to the printer class, and their print job can appear on any of the printers in the class.

printer definitions

The printer's configured settings, such as the printer name, description, port, and type.

printer interface program

An application located in /usr/lib/lp/model and used by the LP print service to interface with other parts of the operating system.

priorities

A ranking system used by Solaris to determine which process or processes get more CPU time than other processes.

privileged application

An application that can override standard security and check for specific User IDs, Group IDs, or authorizations.

process

A single program running in its own memory space.

process class

A grouping of processes in Solaris. Each process belongs to a process class, which defines the default priority of the process. There are six process classes: real-time (RT), time-sharing (TS), interactive (IA), fair share (FSS), fixed priority (FX), and system (SYS).

Process File System (PROCFS)

A virtual file system that tracks all active processes on the computer and manages the /proc directory.

processes

The running parts of an application or service. Each process runs individually and is managed by the Solaris kernel.

profile

A file used with custom JumpStart that contains information on how to install Solaris on the specified computer.

profile diskette

The floppy disk that contains the custom JumpStart profile. Profile diskettes are used on computers that do not have a network connection.

profile server

The custom JumpStart server that contains the custom JumpStart profile.

project

A workload component that can be used to allow system usage or to provide a basis for resource allocation charge-back. Functionally, a project is a lot like a group, but is task based and provides more features.

protocol

The set of rules that computers use to communicate with each other over a network.

pseudo file system

Also known as a virtual file system, a pseudo file system is one that resides in memory instead of on a hard disk.