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In Unix and other computer multitasking operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually instantiated as processes. Typically daemons have names that end with the letter "d"; for example, syslogd is the daemon which handles the system log. Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
In computing, multitasking is a method by which multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is...
An operating system is a special computer program that manages the relationship between application software, the wide variety of hardware that makes up a computer system, and the user of the system. ...
A computer program or software program (usually abbreviated to a program) is a step-by-step list of instructions written for a particular computer architecture in a particular computer programming language. ...
The background, in the context of computer software processes, refers in general to processes that are run with a relatively low priority, require little or no input, and generate a minimum of output. ...
In computing, a process is, roughly speaking, a task being run by a computer, often simultaneously with many other tasks. ...
Systems often start (or "launch") daemons at boot time: they often serve the function of responding to network requests, hardware activity, or other programs by performing some task. Daemons can also configure hardware (like devfsd on some Linux systems), run scheduled tasks (like cron), and perform a variety of other tasks. It has been suggested that System partition and boot partition be merged into this article or section. ...
DEVFS is a special-purpose file system present on many UNIX-like operating systems, including FreeBSD and Linux (though not all Linux systems enable it). ...
Unix systems filiation. ...
Surname redirect crontab ...
Terminology
The programmers of CTSS coined the term by analogy to Maxwell's demon, and all the systems descended from it, including Unix, have inherited the terminology. Daemons are characters in Greek mythology, some of whom handled tasks that the gods couldn't be bothered with, much like computer daemons often handle tasks in the background that the user can't be bothered with. BSD and some of its derivatives have adopted a daemon as its mascot, although this mascot is actually a cute stereotypical depiction of a Christian demon. (The alternative expansion of "daemon" as "disk and execution monitor" is also sometimes used, but it appears to be a backronym.) CTSS, which stood for the Compatible Time-Sharing System, was one of the first time-sharing operating systems; it was developed at Project MAC at MIT. CTSS was first published, as well as operated in a time-sharing environment, in 1961; in addition, it was the system with the first...
Maxwells demon is a character in an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the second law of thermodynamics. ...
Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
The words daemon and daimon, sometimes dæmon, are distinctively Hellenizing or Latinate spellings of δαιμων, used purposefully today to distinguish the daemons of Greek mythology, good or malevolent supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes, from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a...
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the Unix derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley starting in the 1970s. ...
BSD Daemon is the BSD operating systems mascot, named after a daemon, a type of software program common on Unix-like operating systems. ...
The Fuel Cell Bus Club comprises the participants of the projects CUTE, ECTOS and STEP ([1]). They currently operate the largest fleet of fuel cell buses in the world, 33 buses, as part of a two-year Mercedes-Benz Citaro hydrogen fuel cell bus trial with three buses in each...
In modern usage, a stereotype is a simplified mental picture of an individual or group of people who share a certain characteristic (or stereotypical) qualities. ...
The neutrality and factual accuracy of this section are disputed. ...
St. ...
A backronym or bacronym is a type of acronym that is constructed to match the letters of an actual word appropriate in some fashion to the topic at hand. ...
Types of daemons In a strictly technical sense, Unix recognises as a daemon any process that has process number 1 (init) as its parent process. The init process adopts any process whose parent dies without waiting for the child's status, so the common method for launching a daemon involves forking once or twice, and making the parent (and possibly the grandparent) die while the child (or grandchild) process begins performing its normal function. The idiom is sometimes summarized with the phrase "fork off and die". init is the program on Unix and Unix-like systems which spawns all other processes. ...
An idiom is an expression (ie. ...
In common Unix usage a daemon may be any background process, whether a child of init or not. UNIX users sometimes spell daemon as demon, and most usually pronounce the word that way.
In the DOS environment, such programs were written as Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) software. On Microsoft Windows systems, programs called "services" perform the functions of daemons, though the term "daemon" has started to creep into common usage on that platform as well. On the original Mac OS similar systems were known as extensions. Mac OS X, being a unix-like system, has daemons. There are "services" as well, but these are completely different in concept. ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ...
Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) computer programs were the only way to achieve a primitive sort of multitasking (usually just task-switching) using the DOS operating system. ...
Microsoft Windows is a series of popular proprietary operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ...
Mac OS, which stands for Macintosh Operating System, is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh line of computer systems. ...
Extension (Mac OS) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. ...
See also This is a list of the origins of computer-related terms (i. ...
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