PDF Linux Dictionary - Linux Documentation Project

[Pages:1761]Linux Dictionary

Version 0.16

Author: Binh Nguyen

2004-08-16

This document is designed to be a resource for those Linux users wishing to seek clarification on Linux/UNIX/POSIX related terms and jargon. At approximately 24000 definitions and two thousand pages it is one of the largest Linux related dictionaries currently available. Due to the rapid rate at which new terms are being created it has been decided that this will be an active project. We welcome input into the content of this document. At this moment in time half yearly updates are being envisaged.

Please note that if you wish to find a 'Computer Dictionary' then see the 'Computer Dictionary Project' at

Searchable databases exist at locations such as:



(SWP) Sun Wah-PearL Linux Training and Development Centre is a centre of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, established in 2000. Presently SWP is delivering professional grade Linux and related Open Source Software (OSS) technology training and consultant service in Hong Kong. SWP has an ambitious aim to promote the use of Linux and related Open Source Software (OSS) and Standards. The vendor independent positioning of SWP has been very well perceived by the market. Throughout the last couple of years, SWP becomes the Top Leading OSS training and service provider in Hong Kong.



Geona, operated by Gold Vision Communications, is a new powerful search engine and internet directory, delivering quick and relevant results on almost any topic or subject you can imagine. The term "Geona" is an Italian and Hebrew name, meaning wisdom, exaltation, pride or majesty. We use our own database of spidered web sites and the Open Directory database, the same database which powers the core directory services for the Web's largest and most popular search engines and portals. Geona is spidering all domains listed in the non-adult part of the Open Directory and millions of additional sites of general interest to maintain a fulltext index of highly relevant web sites.



, "Yours News and Resource Site", was started in May 2001 as a hobby site with the original intention of getting the RFC's online and becoming an Open Source software link/download site. But since that time the site has evolved to become a RFC distribution site, linux news site and a locally written technology news site (with bad grammer :)) with focus on Linux while also containing articles about anything and everything we find interesting in the computer world. contains about 20,000 documents and this number is growing everyday!



Each month more than 20 million people visit . Whether it be home repair and decorating ideas, recipes, movie trailers, or car buying tips, our Guides offer practical advice and solutions for every day life. Wherever you land on the new , you'll find other content that is relevant to your interests. If you're looking for "How To" advice on planning to re-finish your deck, we'll also show you the tools you need to get the job done. If you've been to About before, we'll show you the latest updates, so you don't see the same thing twice. No matter where you are on , or how you got here, you'll always find content that is relevant to your needs.

Should you wish to possess your own localised searcheable version please make use of the available "dict", version at the Linux Documentation Project home page, The author has decided to leave it up to readers to determine how to install and run it on their specific systems.

An alternative form of the dictionary is available at:



Fultus Corporation helps writers and companies to publish, promote, market, and sell books and eBooks. Fultus combines traditional self-publishing practices with modern technology to produce paperback and hardcover print-on-demand (POD) books and electronic books (eBooks). Fultus publishes works (fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, mystery, ...) by both published and unpublished authors. We enable you to self-publish easily and cost-effectively, creating your book as a print-ready paperback or hardcover POD book or as an electronic book (eBook) in multiple eBook's formats. You retain all rights to your work. We provide distribution to bookstores worldwide. And all at a fraction of the cost of traditional publishing. We also offer corporate publishing solutions that enable businesses to produce and deliver manuals and documentation more efficiently and economically. Our use of electronic delivery and print-on-demand technologies reduces printed inventory and saves time.

Please inform the author as to whether you would like to create a database or an alternative form of the dictionary so that he can include you in this list. Also note that the author considers breaches of copyright to be extremely serious. He will pursue all claims to the fullest extent of the law.

Copyright 2003 Binh Nguyen

Trademarks are owned by their owners.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Linux Dictionary

Table of Contents

Source and pre-formatted versions available..................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Linux Dictionary..............................................................................................................................2 Punctuation..........................................................................................................................................................3 A........................................................................................................................................................................204 B........................................................................................................................................................................295 C........................................................................................................................................................................355 D........................................................................................................................................................................453 E........................................................................................................................................................................547 F........................................................................................................................................................................597 G.......................................................................................................................................................................655 H.......................................................................................................................................................................736 I.........................................................................................................................................................................770 J.........................................................................................................................................................................841 K.......................................................................................................................................................................859 L........................................................................................................................................................................896 M.......................................................................................................................................................................973 N......................................................................................................................................................................1066 O.....................................................................................................................................................................1120 P......................................................................................................................................................................1157 Q.....................................................................................................................................................................1266 R......................................................................................................................................................................1275 S......................................................................................................................................................................1341 T......................................................................................................................................................................1489

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Linux Dictionary

Table of Contents

U......................................................................................................................................................................1566 V......................................................................................................................................................................1597 W.....................................................................................................................................................................1631 X......................................................................................................................................................................1671 Y......................................................................................................................................................................1727 Z......................................................................................................................................................................1733 Appendix A. About the Author....................................................................................................................1740 Appendix B. Contributors............................................................................................................................1741 Appendix C. Disclaimer................................................................................................................................1742 Appendix D. Donations.................................................................................................................................1743 Appendix E. Feedback..................................................................................................................................1744 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................................1745 Appendix F. GNU Free Documentation License........................................................................................1752

F.1. PREAMBLE...............................................................................................................................1752 F.2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS...................................................................................1752 F.3. VERBATIM COPYING.............................................................................................................1753 F.4. COPYING IN QUANTITY........................................................................................................1754 F.5. MODIFICATIONS.....................................................................................................................1754 F.6. COMBINING DOCUMENTS...................................................................................................1755 F.7. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS.........................................................................................1756 F.8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS................................................................1756 F.9. TRANSLATION........................................................................................................................1756 F.10. TERMINATION.......................................................................................................................1757 F.11. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE...........................................................................1757 F.12. ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents..................................................1757

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Source and pre-formatted versions available

The source code and other machine readable formats of this book can be found on the Internet at the Linux Documentation Project home page The latest version of this document can be found at

Source and pre-formatted versions available

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Chapter 1. Linux Dictionary

Chapter 1. Linux Dictionary

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Punctuation

$BASH environment variable Expands to the full pathname used to invoke this instance of bash. From Rute-Users-Guide

$BASH_VERSION environment variable Expands to the version number of this instance of bash. From Rute-Users-Guide

$CDPATH environment variable The search path for the cd command. This is a colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for destination directories specified by the cd command. A sample value is ``.:~:/usr''. From Rute-Users-Guide

$ENV environment variable If this parameter is set when bash is executing a shell script, its value is interpreted as a filename containing commands to initialize the shell, as in .bashrc. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a pathname. PATH is not used to search for the resultant pathname. From Rute-Users-Guide

$FIGNORE environment variable A colon-separated list of suffixes to ignore when performing filename completion (see READLINE below). A filename whose suffix matches one of the entries in FIGNORE is excluded from the list of matched filenames. A sample value is ``.o:~''. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HISTCMD environment variable The history number, or index in the history list, of the current command. If HISTCMD is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HISTCONTROL environment variable If set to a value of ignorespace, lines which begin with a space character are not entered on the history list. If set to a value of ignoredups, lines matching the last history line are not entered. A value of ignoreboth combines the two options. If unset, or if set to any other value than those above, all lines read by the parser are saved on the history list. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HISTFILE environment variable The name of the file in which command history is saved. (See HISTORY below.) The default value is ~/.bash_history. If unset, the command history is not saved when an interactive shell exits. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HISTFILESIZE environment variable The maximum number of lines contained in the history file. When this variable is assigned a value, the history file is truncated, if necessary, to contain no more than that number of lines. The default value is 500. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HISTSIZE environment variable The number of commands to remember in the command history (see HISTORY below). The default value is 500. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HOME environment variable The home directory of the current user; the default argument for the cd builtin command. From Rute-Users-Guide

$HOSTFILE Contains the name of a file in the same format as /etc/hosts that should be read when the shell needs to complete a hostname. The file may be changed interactively; the next time hostname completion is

Punctuation

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Linux Dictionary

attempted bash adds the contents of the new file to the already existing database. From Rute-Users-Guide $HOSTTYPE Automatically set to a string that uniquely describes the type of machine on which bash is executing. The default is system-dependent. From Rute-Users-Guide $IFS In UNIX, the $IFS variable separates commands. It is usually conigured to be the semicolon (;) and newline characters. However, it can be reconfigured to be other characters as well. Data-driven attacks will sometimes seek to reset the IFS variable (e.g. IFS=x), then cause execution within the data field wihtout having to insert shell metacharacters. Tidbit: On Linux, the $FF variable may also be used like $IFS. From Hacking-Lexicon $IFS The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split lines into words with the read builtin command. The default value is ``''. From Rute-Users-Guide $IGNOREEOF Controls the action of the shell on receipt of an EOF character as the sole input. If set, the value is the number of consecutive EOF characters typed as the first characters on an input line before bash exits. If the variable exists but does not have a numeric value, or has no value, the default value is 10. If it does not exist, EOF signifies the end of input to the shell. This is only in effect for interactive shells. From Rute-Users-Guide $INPUTRC environment variable The filename for the readline startup file, overriding the default of ~/.inputrc (see READLINE below). From Rute-Users-Guide $LINENO Each time this parameter is referenced, the shell substitutes a decimal number representing the current sequential line number (starting with 1) within a script or function. When not in a script or function, the value substituted is not guaranteed to be meaningful. When in a function, the value is not the number of the source line that the command appears on (that information has been lost by the time the function is executed), but is an approximation of the number of simple commands executed in the current function. If LINENO is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset. From Rute-Users-Guide $MAIL If this parameter is set to a filename and the MAILPATH variable is not set, bash informs the user of the arrival of mail in the specified file. From Rute-Users-Guide $MAILCHECK Specifies how often (in seconds) bash checks for mail. The default is 60 seconds. When it is time to check for mail, the shell does so before prompting. If this variable is unset, the shell disables mail checking. From Rute-Users-Guide $MAILPATH A colon-separated list of pathnames to be checked for mail. The message to be printed may be specified by separating the pathname from the message with a `?'. $_ stands for the name of the current mailfile. Example: MAILPATH='/usr/spool/mail/bfox?"You have mail":~/shell-mail?"$_ has mail!"' Bash supplies a default value for this variable, but the location of the user mail files that it uses is system dependent (e.g., /usr/spool/mail/$USER). From Rute-Users-Guide $MAIL_WARNING

Punctuation

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