S

secondary group

Solaris users must belong to one group, which is their primary group. However, users can also belong to several other groups, known as secondary groups.

sector

A 512-byte individual storage unit on a hard disk.

server

A computer on the network that provides services or information to other devices on the network.

shared disk set

A logical grouping of hard disks that can be shared with other computers. If the host computer were to fail, another computer could take over the management of the hard disks.

shell

The interface that enables users to input information to be interpreted by the operating system. Examples are the Bourne shell (sh), Korn shell (ksh), and C shell (csh).

site initialization file

A file located on a server that affects all user login profiles.

slave servers

In a NIS domain, these computers contain copies of the NIS maps, resolve queries for client computers, and act as backups for the NIS master server.

snapshot backup

A file created with the fssnap command, a snapshot is a picture of the file system at a given time. The snapshot can be used to create a backup archive while the file system remains mounted.

soft link

Also known as a symbolic link, a soft link is an indirect pointer to a file or a directory. Soft links can span file systems.

soft partition

A logical volume created on a hard disk (from within the Solaris Volume Manager) that enables you to create more than eight volumes per hard disk.

software group

A collection of Solaris software packages. Solaris 9 has five software groups: Core, End User, Developer, Entire, and Entire plus OEM.

software package

A collection of files and directories needed to run a specific program, application, or service.

Solaris Volume Manager (SVM)

A utility packaged with Solaris that provides advanced storage management capabilities, including creating RAID volumes, soft partitions, hot spare pools, and transactional volumes.

source files

On a NIS master server, these are the files from which the maps are created or updated.

SPARC(Scalable Processor Architecture)

A RISC processor type developed and used by Sun Microsystems.

spawning

Also known as forking, it's when a process causes another process to start.

state database

A database on your hard disk that stores information about the computer's Solaris Volume Manager configuration. A state database is composed of several state database replicas.

state database replica

Each individual copy of a state database. There should be a minimum of three replicas per computer.

sticky bit

A security attribute that can be enabled to prevent the accidental deletion of files located in public directories.

submirrors

The individual hard disks or slices that are components in a mirrored volume.

suninstall

One of the four Solaris installation programs, it uses a rudimentary graphical and command-line interface.

superblock

An area at the beginning of each disk slice (and replicated throughout the slice) that stores critical file system information such as the size of the file system, disk label (VTOC), cylinder group size, number of data blocks present, summary data block, file system state, and pathname of the last mount point.

Swap File System (SWAPFS)

A virtual file system responsible for managing physical and virtual memory as well as the paging process.

switch

A network device, similar to a hub, that enables several computers to communicate with one another. Switches are more intelligent than hubs and can do a better job of managing network traffic.

symbolic mode

When setting permissions by using the chmod command, symbolic mode uses letters to identify whom the permissions will affect as well as the permissions that will be set.

sysidcfg

A file that provides system network identification information to a computer.

syslog

The name of the Solaris logging service.

syslogd

The daemon responsible for system logging.

system disk

The hard disk that contains the operating system files (located on slice 0).

system logging

Tracking events (such as user logins, file access, and various problems) as they happen on the computer.

System V Release 4 (SVR4)

One of the two major UNIX architecture standards and the most commonly used one today. Since 1992 (with the release of Solaris 2), Solaris has been based on SVR4.