A special file name that refers to the current directory.
A special file name that refers to the parent directory.
A path name beginning with a slash (/).
A form of access permitted to a file.
The range of memory locations to which a process can refer.
A file comprised of the contents of other files, such as the tar archive.
An acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Any process that gives the shell prompt back to the user .
The process of making a copy of all or part of the file system in order to preserve it, in case a system crash occurs.
The fundamental unit of information HP-UX uses for the access and storage location on a mass storage medium.
A special file associated with a mass storage device.
The process of loading, initializing, and running an operating system.
A portion of a mass storage medium on which the volume header and a "bootstrap" program used in booting the operating system reside.
A program residing in ROM (Read-Only Memory) that executes each time the computer is powered up.
A number which makes up part of the address HP-UX uses to locate a particular device.
An element used for the organization, control, or representation of text. Characters include graphic characters and control characters .
A set of characters used to communicate in a native or computer language.
A special file associated with I/O devices that transfer data byte-by-byte.
A new process created by a pre-existing process.
A directive to perform a particular task.
A program which reads lines of text from standard input (typed at the keyboard or read from a file), and interprets them as requests to execute other programs. A command interpreter for HP-UX is called a shell.
A character other than a graphic character that affects the recording, processing, transmission, or interpretation of text.
A terminal that is associated with a session. Each session can have at most one controlling terminal associated with it, and a controlling terminal is associated with exactly one session.
The unexpected shutdown of a program or system. If the operating system crashes, this is a "system crash" and requires the system to be rebooted.
A process which runs in the background, and which is usually immune to termination instructions from a terminal.
The sequence of directory prefixes that HP-UX commands apply in searching for a file known by a relative path name (that is, a path name not beginning with a slash (/)).
A computer peripheral or an object that appears to an application as such.
A file that provides the mapping between the names of files and their contents, and that is manipulated by the operating system alone.
The data returned when attempting to read past the logical end of a file.
The set of defined shell variables .
The time period beginning at 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on January 1, 1970. Increments quantify the amount of time elapsed from the Epoch to the referenced time.
A type of file. Data written to a FIFO is read on a first-in-first-out basis.
A stream of bytes that can be written to and/or read from.
A characteristic of an open file description that determines whether the described file is open for reading, writing, or both.
Every file in the file hierarchy has a set of access permissions. These permissions are used in determining whether a process can perform a requested operation on the file.
A small, unique, per-process , nonnegative integer identifier that is used to refer to a file opened for reading and/or writing.
The collection of one or more file systems available on a system.
A string of up to 255 bytes used to refer to an ordinary file, special file, or directory.
A collection of files and supporting data structures residing on a mass storage volume.
A command that reads data from the standard input, performs a transformation on the data, and writes it to the standard output.
An HP-UX system call, which, when invoked by an existing process, causes a new process to be created.
A character other than a control character that has a visual representation when hand-written , printed, or displayed.
Associates zero or more users who must all be permitted to access the same set of files.
The directory name given by the value of the environment variable HOME. When you first log in, login(1) automatically sets HOME to your login directory.
An ASCII string of at most 8 characters.
A system process that performs initialization.
An inode is a structure that describes a file and is identified in the system by a file serial number. Every file or directory has an inode associated with it.
The signal sent by SIGINT.
A mechanism provided by the HP-UX shell for changing the source of data for standard input and/or the destination of data for standard output and standard error.
Allows users to selectively stop (suspend) execution of processes and continue (resume) their execution at a later time.
The HP-UX operating system. The kernel is the executable code responsible for managing the computer's resources, such as allocating memory, creating processes, and scheduling programs for execution.
A directory entry. It is an object that associates a file name with any type of file.
The number of directory entries that refer to a particular file.
A standard format for mass storage implemented on many Hewlett-Packard computers to aid in media transportability.
The process of gaining access to HP-UX.
The directory in which a user is placed immediately after logging in. This directory is defined for each user in the /etc/passwd file. The shell variable HOME is set automatically to the user's login directory by login .
The first word of an a.out-format or archive file. This word contains the system ID, which states what machine (hardware) the file will run on and the file type (executable, sharable executable, archive, etc.)
A number used exclusively to create special files that enable I/O to or from specific devices. This number indicates which device driver to use for the device.
A character that has special meaning to the HP-UX shell, as well as to commands.
A number that is an attribute of special files, specified during their creation and used whenever they are accessed, to enable I/O to or from specific devices.
The character with an ASCII value of 10 (line feed) used to separate lines of characters.
A string of up to 31 characters, not including control characters or spaces, that uniquely identifies a node on a Local Area Network (LAN).
A type of HP-UX file containing ASCII text.
A child process that is left behind when a parent process terminates for any reason. The init process inherits all orphan processes.
The owner of a file is usually the creator of that file. However, the ownership of a file can be changed by the superuser or the current owner.
The directory one level above a directory in the file hierarchy.
Whenever a new process is created by a currently-existing process, the currently existing process is said to be the parent process of the newly created process.
A new process is created by a currently active process. The parent process ID of a process is the process ID of its creator for the lifetime of the creator.
A string of ASCII characters used to verify the identity of a user.
A sequence of directory names separated by slashes and ending with any file name.
An interprocess I/O channel used to pass data between two processes.
An invocation of a program or the execution of an image. Although all commands and utilities are executed within processes, not all commands or utilities have a one-to-one correspondence with processes. Some commands (such as cd ) execute within a process, but do not create any new processes.
A positive integer less than or equal to PID_MAX by which each active process in the system is uniquely identified during its lifetime.
A sequence of instructions to the computer in the form of binary code.
The characters displayed by the shell on the terminal indicating that the system is ready for a command.
The name given to a disk for which there exists a character special file that allows direct transmission between the disk and the user's read or write buffer. A single read or write call results in exactly one I/O call.
A string of zero or more characters that selects text.
A type of file that is a randomly accessible sequence of bytes, with no further structure imposed by the system.
A path name that does not begin with a slash (/).
The highest level directory of the hierarchical file system.
The mass storage volume which contains the boot area (which contains the HP-UX kernel) and the root directory of the HP-UX file system.
One or more characters that the shell prints on the display, indicating that more input is needed.
A single bit in the mode of every file in the file system. If a file is executed whose set-group-ID bit is set, the effective group ID of the process which executed the file is set equal to the real group ID of the owner of the file.
A single bit in the mode of every file in the file system. If a file is executed whose set-user-ID bit is set, the effective user ID of the process that executed the file is set equal to the real user ID of the owner of the file.
A user interface to the HP-UX operating system. A shell often functions as both a command interpreter and an interpretive programming language.
A sequence of shell commands and shell programming language constructs stored in a file and invoked as a user command (program). No compilation is needed prior to execution because the shell recognizes the commands and constructs that make up the shell programming language.
A software interrupt sent to a process, informing it of special situations or events.
A condition of the HP-UX operating system in which the system console provides the only communication mechanism between the system and its user.
A file associated with an I/O device. Often called a device file.
The destination of error and special messages from a program, intended to be used for diagnostic messages. The standard error output is often called stderr.
The source of input data for a program. The standard input file is often called stdin.
The destination of output data from a program. The standard output file is often called stdout .
A single bit in the mode of every file in the file system. If set on a regular file, the contents of the file stay permanently in memory instead of being swapped back out to disk when the file has finished executing.
A directory that is one or more levels lower in the file system hierarchy than a given directory.
A block on each file system's mass storage medium which describes the file system.
The HP-UX system administrator. This user has access to all files and can perform privileged operations. The superuser has a real user ID and an effective user ID of 0, and, by convention, the user name of root .
A type of file that indirectly refers to a path name.
The HP-UX operating system.
An HP-UX operating system kernel function available to the user through a high-level language.
A keyboard and display (or terminal) given a unique status by HP-UX and associated with the special file /dev/console . All boot ROM error messages, HP-UX system error messages, and certain system status messages are sent to the system console.
A character special file that obeys the specifications of termio .
A file that contains characters organized into one or more lines.
Originally, an abbreviation for teletypewriter; now, generally , a terminal.
Each system user is identified by an integer known as a user ID, which is in the range of zero to UID_MAX , inclusive.
An executable file, which might contain executable object code (that is, a program), or a list of commands to execute in a given order (that is, a shell script).
Part of an address used for devices.
One or more characters which, when displayed, cause a movement of the cursor or print head, but do not result in the display of any visible graphic.
Each process has associated with it the concept of a current working directory. For a shell, this appears as the directory in which you currently "reside."
The name given to a process which terminates for any reason, but whose parent process has not yet waited for it to terminate (via wait(2) ). The process which terminated continues to occupy a slot in the process table until its parent process waits for it.
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