Newer names

Vitali Malicky vitali_malicky at yahoo.com.au
Tue Sep 2 04:41:28 PDT 2003


> Vitali Malicky wrote:
> > OK, Hendrik! On monday I'll take "A Student's
Guide To UNIX(C)" by
Harley
> > Hann which I began with 5 years ago, and I'll
quote for you and for all
dear
> > All the whole paragraph where it's explained.
> >
> > Deal?
> Why not? :) But I was more interested what the
single letters in dragon
> mean, because you already explained a dragon itself.
I don't think this
> is a right place to share bookchapters.

It's not a chapter :)

>
> Hendrik

-------------------------------------

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Daemons and Dragons

Although the name is pronounced "dee-mon", it is
correctly spelled "daemon".
Nobody knows if the name used to be an acronym or why
we use a British
variation of the spelling. (In Celtic mythology, a
daemon is usually good or
neutral, merely a spirit or inspiration. A demon,
however, is always an evil
spirit entity.)

You may occasionally read that the name stands for
"Disk and Executing
Monitor", a term from old DEC 10 and 20 computers.
However, this explanation
was made up after the fact.

The name "daemon" was first used by MIT programmers
who worked in CTSS (the
Compatible Time-Sharing System), developed in 1963.
They coined the name to
refer to what were called DRAGONS by other programmers
who worked on ITS
(the Incompatible Time-Sharing System).

(CTSS and ITS were both ancestors of UNIX. ITS was an
important, but
strange, operationg system that developed a cult
following at MIT. To this
day, ITS is still revered among aging east-coast
hackers.)

Strictly speaking, a dragon is a daemon that is not
invoked explicitly but
is always there, waiting in the background to perfofrm
some task. The cron
daemon, for example, might be called a dragon.
Although many Unix users have
heard of daemons, very few people know about dragons.
(But now you do.)

Harley Hahn
"A Student's Guide To UNIX"
ISBN 0-07-025511-3

(page 286)

-------------------------------------


Vitali Malicky
Zone3000 TechSupport
http://www.geocities.com/vitali_malicky


>



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