Virtual Device
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Virtual Device
A virtual device in Unix is a file such as :/dev/null or :/dev/urandom, that is treated as a device, as far as user level software is concerned, but is generated by the kernel (operating system), kernel without reference to hardware. For instance when /dev/null is written to, the kernel tells the program it wrote everything to it (without actually writing it anywhere), and when read from, the reading program is told that it has reached the end of the file. It is a device file (it can be made with mknod for instance), but does not reference any hardware. DOS-, Microsoft Windows, Windows- and OS/2-like operating systems define the NUL device that performs a similar function (but is implemented as part of the file name processing – no actual file exists by that name). Unix file system technology {{Unix-stub de:Gerätedatei es:Fichero de dispositivo pt:Nó de dispositivo ru:/dev ...
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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 ...
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:/dev/null
In some operating systems, the null device is a device file that discards all data written to it but reports that the write operation succeeded. This device is called /dev/null on Unix and Unix-like systems, NUL: (see TOPS-20) or NUL on CP/M and DOS (internally \DEV\NUL), nul on OS/2 and newer Windows systems (internally \Device\Null on Windows NT), NIL: on Amiga operating systems, and NL: on OpenVMS. In Windows Powershell, the equivalent is $null. It provides no data to any process that reads from it, yielding EOF immediately. In IBM operating systems DOS/360 and successors and also in OS/360 and successors such files would be assigned in JCL to DD DUMMY. In programmer jargon, especially Unix jargon, it may also be called the bit bucket or black hole. History is described as an empty regular file in Version 4 Unix. The Version 5 Unix manual describes a device with modern semantics. Usage The null device is typically used for disposing of unwanted output streams of a proc ...
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:/dev/urandom
In Unix-like operating systems, and are special files that provide random numbers from a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG). The CSPRNG is seeded with entropy (a value that provides randomness) from environmental noise, collected from device drivers and other sources. Users can obtain random numbers from the CSPRNG simply by reading the file. Not all operating systems implement the same methods for and . In older operating systems, typically blocked if there was less entropy available than requested; more recently (see below for the differences between operating systems) it usually blocks at startup until sufficient entropy has been gathered, then unblocks permanently. The device typically was never a blocking device, even if the pseudorandom number generator seed was not fully initialized with entropy since boot. This special file originated in Linux in 1994. It was quickly adopted by other Unix-like operating systems. Linux The Linux kernel p ...
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Kernel (operating System)
A kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system that always has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. A full kernel controls all hardware resources (e.g. I/O, memory, cryptography) via device drivers, arbitrates conflicts between processes concerning such resources, and optimizes the use of common resources, such as CPU, cache, file systems, and network sockets. On most systems, the kernel is one of the first programs loaded on startup (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of startup as well as memory, peripherals, and input/output (I/O) requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. The critical code of the kernel is usua ...
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Mknod
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 systems, k ...
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Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a Server (computing), server and Windows IoT for an embedded system. Windows is sold as either a consumer retail product or licensed to Original equipment manufacturer, third-party hardware manufacturers who sell products Software bundles, bundled with Windows. The first version of Windows, Windows 1.0, was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The name "Windows" is a reference to the windowing system in GUIs. The 1990 release of Windows 3.0 catapulted its market success and led to various other product families ...
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OS/2
OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, intended as a replacement for DOS. The first version was released in 1987. A feud between the two companies beginning in 1990 led to Microsoft’s leaving development solely to IBM, which continued development on its own. OS/2 Warp 4 in 1996 was the last major upgrade, after which IBM slowly halted the product as it failed to compete against Microsoft's Microsoft Windows, Windows; updated versions of OS/2 were released by IBM until 2001. The name stands for "Operating System/2", because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "IBM Personal System/2, Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation PCs. OS/2 was intended as a protected mode, protected-mode successor of IBM PC DOS, PC DOS targeting t ...
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Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of Scheduling (computing), processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computerfrom cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers. , Android (operating system), Android is the most popular operating system with a 46% market share, followed ...
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Unix File System Technology
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 Unix to o ...
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