M-N

MAC address

A media access control address of a networked machine used in the second layer (Data Link layer) to identify the network connection. It's also called physical address or hardware address. A MAC address on an Ethernet network is called an Ethernet address.

man

A command, an abbreviation for "manual," used to access information about the UNIX commands on your system. You can use this command to learn more about other commands.

manpages

The information database accessed by the man command is popularly called manpages.

metadevice

An SVM term used to refer to a set of physical disk slices that appears to the system as a single logical device; also called virtual device.

mount point

The location (directory) on a partition on the hard drive where a mounted file system's directory hierarchy starts. You can access the file system by using the mount point.

mirroring

The process of designating a disk drive as a duplicate (mirror) of another disk drive; both disks are attached to the same disk controller. When the OS writes data to one disk drive, the same data also gets written to the mirror disk.

mkdir

A command used to create a directory.

mount

A command used to mount a file system as well as remote resources.

mountall

A command used to mount all file systems that are specified in the /etc/vfstab file. This command runs automatically when the system enters the multiuser mode.

mounting

The process of attaching a file system to the directory tree of the system to make it available to users.

mv

A command used to move files or directories from one location to another.

network

A group of computers connected together to share resources such as printers and data.

Network File System

A file system that makes the location of the machine on which the file system exists transparent to the users and the applications. Using NFS, a user can mount a file system that exists on a remote NFS server, and use it as if it exists on the local machine.

Network Information Service

A service that manages the information specific to a network such as information about machine names, user names, network services, and so forth. The focus of NIS is to make network administration easier by providing central management for distributed information.

Network Information Service Plus

A service used to manage network information about machine addresses, mail, network interfaces, network service, and security. It is similar to NIS in terms of what it manages and how it manages such as central management for distributed information. However, it is not an extension to NIS. Unlike NIS, it is hierarchical, more dynamic (can conform to the requirements of an organization), and offers more features such as security.

newfs

A command used to create a UFS file system.

NFS

See Network File System.

NIS

See Network Information Service.

NIS maps

The databases used to store the NIS namespace information. These maps were designed to replace the /etc files and other configuration files.

NIS+

See Network Information Service Plus.

Non-Volatile Random Access Memory

A term that refers to the chip on which OpenBoot system configuration variables are stored.

NVRAM

See Non-Volatile Random Access Memory.