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Everything Is A File
"Everything is a file" is an approach to interface design in Unix derivatives. While this turn of phrase does not as such figure as a Unix design principle or philosophy, it is a common way to analyse designs, and informs the design of new interfaces in a way that prefers, in rough order of import: # representing objects as file descriptors in favour of alternatives like abstract handles or names, # operating on the objects with standard input/output operations returning byte streams to be interpreted by applications (rather than explicitly structured data), and # allowing the usage or creation of objects by opening or creating files in the global filesystem name space. The lines between the common interpretations of "file" and "file descriptor" are often blurred when analysing Unix, and nameability of ''files'' is the least important part of this principle; thus, it is sometimes described as "Everything is a file descriptor". This approach is interpreted differently with time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Initially intended for use inside the Bell System, AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties in the late 1970s, leading to a variety of both academic and commercial Unix variants from vendors including University of California, Berkeley ( BSD), Microsoft (Xenix), Sun Microsystems ( SunOS/ Solaris), HP/ HPE ( HP-UX), and IBM ( AIX). The early versions of Unix—which are retrospectively referred to as " Research Unix"—ran on computers such as the PDP-11 and VAX; Unix was commonly used on minicomputers and mainframes from the 1970s onwards. It distinguished itself from its predecessors as the first portable operating system: almost the entire operating system is written in the C programming language (in 1973), which allows U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Open Group
The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing " open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has 900+ member organizations and provides a number of services, including strategy, management, innovation and research, standards, certification, and test development. It was established in 1996 when X/Open merged with the Open Software Foundation. The Open Group is the certifying body for the UNIX trademark, and publishes the Single UNIX Specification technical standard, which extends the POSIX standards. The Open Group also develops and manages the TOGAF standard, which is an industry standard enterprise architecture framework. Members The 900+ members include a range of technology vendors and buyers as well as government agencies, including, for example, Capgemini, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Orbus Software, IBM, Huawei, the United States Department of Defense and NASA. There is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Device File
In Unix-like operating systems, a device file, device node, or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow an application program to interact with a device by using its device driver via standard input/output system calls. Using standard system calls simplifies many programming tasks, and leads to consistent user-space I/O mechanisms regardless of device features and functions. Overview Device files usually provide simple interfaces to standard devices (such as printers and serial ports), but can also be used to access specific unique resources on those devices, such as disk partitions. Additionally, device files are useful for accessing system resources that have no connection with any actual device, such as data sinks and random number generators. There are two general kinds of device files in Unix-like operating syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and library (computing), libraries—most of which are provided by third parties—to create a complete operating system, designed as a clone of Unix and released under the copyleft GPL license. List of Linux distributions, Thousands of Linux distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian, Fedora Linux, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, and Ubuntu, while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and ChromeOS. Linux distributions are frequently used in server platforms. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Select (Unix)
is a system call and application programming interface (API) in Unix-like and POSIX-compliant operating systems for examining the status of file descriptors of open input/output channels. The select system call is similar to the ' facility introduced in UNIX System V and later operating systems. However, with the c10k problem, both select and poll have been superseded by the likes of kqueue, epoll, /dev/poll and I/O completion ports. One common use of select outside of its stated use of waiting on filehandles is to implement a portable sub-second sleep. This can be achieved by passing NULL for all three fd_set arguments, and the duration of the desired sleep as the timeout argument. In the C programming language, the select system call is declared in the header file sys/select.h or unistd.h, and has the following syntax: int select(int nfds, fd_set *readfds, fd_set *writefds, fd_set *errorfds, struct timeval *timeout); fd_set type arguments may be manipulated with fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poll (Unix)
is a POSIX system call to wait for one or more file descriptors to become ready for use. On *BSD and macOS, it has been largely superseded by kqueue in high performance applications. On Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ..., it has been superseded by and . See also * kqueue * epoll * inotify * select References External links * * C POSIX library Events (computing) System calls Unix {{compu-prog-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exec()
In computing, exec is a functionality of an operating system that runs an executable file in the context of an already existing process, replacing the previous executable. This act is also referred to as an overlay. It is especially important in Unix-like systems, although it also exists elsewhere. As no new process is created, the process identifier (PID) does not change, but the machine code, data, heap, and stack of the process are replaced by those of the new program. The ''exec'' call or some variant is available for many programming languages including compiled languages and some scripting languages. In command interpreters, the built-in command replaces the shell process with the specified program. Nomenclature Interfaces to ''exec'' and its implementations vary. Depending on programming language it may be accessible via one or more functions, and depending on operating system it may be represented with one or more actual system calls. For this reason, ''exec'' is so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inetd
inetd (internet service daemon) is a super-server Daemon (computer software), daemon on many Unix systems that provides Internet services. For each configured service, it listens for requests from connecting clients. Requests are served by spawning a process which runs the appropriate executable, but simple services such as ''echo'' are served by inetd itself. External executables, which are run on request, can be single- or multi-threaded. First appearing in BSD, 4.3BSD, it is generally located at /usr/sbin/inetd. inetd is based on the (service) activator pattern Function Often called a super-server, inetd listens on designated TCP and UDP port, ports used by Internet services such as File Transfer Protocol, FTP, POP3, and telnet. When a Transmission Control Protocol, TCP packet or User Datagram Protocol, UDP packet arrives with a particular destination port number, inetd launches the appropriate server program to handle the connection. For services that are not expected to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Gateway Interface
file:Common Gateway Interface logo.svg, The official CGI logo from the spec announcement In computing, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an interface specification that enables web servers to execute an external program to process HTTP or HTTPS user requests. Such programs are often written in a scripting language and are commonly referred to as ''CGI scripts'', but they may include compiler, compiled programs. A typical use case occurs when a web user submits a web form on a web page that uses CGI. The form's data is sent to the web server within a HTTP request with a URL denoting a CGI script. The web server then launches the CGI script in a new computer process, passing the form data to it. The CGI script passes its output, usually in the form of HTML, to the Web server, and the server relays it back to the browser as its HTTP response, response to the browser's request. Developed in the early 1990s, CGI was the earliest common method available that allowed a web page to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super-server
A super-server, sometimes called a service dispatcher, is a type of Daemon (computer software), daemon run generally on Unix-like systems. Usage A super-server starts other Server (computing), servers when needed, normally with access to them checked by a TCP Wrapper, TCP wrapper. It uses very few resources when in idle state. This can be ideal for workstations used for local web development, client/server development or low-traffic daemons with occasional usage (such as ident protocol, ident and Secure Shell, SSH). Performance The creation of an Process (computing), operating system process embodying the sub-daemon is deferred until an incoming connection for the sub-daemon arrives. This results in a delay to the handling of the connection (in comparison to a connection handled by an already-running process). Whether this delay is incurred repeatedly for every incoming connection depends on the design of the particular sub-daemon; simple daemons usually require a separate s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Streams
In computer programming, standard streams are preconnected input and output communication channels between a computer program and its environment when it begins execution. The three input/output (I/O) connections are called standard input (stdin), standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr). Originally I/O happened via a physically connected system console (input via keyboard, output via monitor), but standard streams abstract this. When a command is executed via an interactive shell, the streams are typically connected to the text terminal on which the shell is running, but can be changed with redirection or a pipeline. More generally, a child process inherits the standard streams of its parent process. Application Users generally know standard streams as input and output channels that handle data coming from an input device, or that write data from the application. The data may be text with any encoding, or binary data. When a program is run as a daemon, its stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fork()
In computing, particularly in the context of the Unix operating system and its workalikes, fork is an operation whereby a process creates a copy of itself. It is an interface which is required for compliance with the POSIX and Single UNIX Specification standards. It is usually implemented as a C standard library wrapper to the fork, clone, or other system calls of the kernel. Fork is the primary method of process creation on Unix-like operating systems. Overview In multitasking operating systems, processes (running programs) need a way to create new processes, e.g. to run other programs. Fork and its variants are typically the only way of doing so in Unix-like systems. For a process to start the execution of a different program, it first forks to create a copy of itself. Then, the copy, called the "child process", makes any environment changes the child will need and then calls the exec system call to overlay itself with the new program: it ceases execution of its former progr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
