GECOS stands for General Electric Comprehensive Operating system. It was later renamed to General Comprehensive Operating system (GCOS) when GE's computer divison was purchased by Honeywell. The General Electric Company, or GE, (NYSE: GE) is a multinational technology and services company. ... GCOS (General Comprehensive Operating System) was originally a quick-and-dirty clone of System/360 disk operating system that emerged from General Electric around 1970. ... Honeywell (NYSE: HON) is a major American multinational corporation that produces electronic control systems and automation equipment. ...
On UNIXOperating Systems, GECOS (or GECOS field) is some personal data stored in the /etc/passwd file. It may for example contain real name and phone number. Rumour has it that the field was named GECOS because Dennis Ritchie needed to interoperate with a GECOS machine and needed somewhere to put the $IDENTcard information. 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, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... Ken Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie (right) Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941- ) is a computer scientist notable for his influence on ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and UNIX. Born in Bronxville, New York, Ritchie graduated from Harvard with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. ...
It was originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System), and was later kludged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing.
Contrary to rumor, GECOS was not cloned from System/360 (unfortunately the on-line "Jargon File" has perpetuated a rumor that this was a "quick and dirty clone of System/360 DOS) - the GE-635 architecture was very different from the IBM 360 and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360.
One of the hallmarks of the true second generation of this OS was its support of Timesharing ("TSS") along with batch.
The "passwd", "gecos", and "shell" fields are tainted when running in taint mode.
Interpretation of the "gecos" field varies between sys- tems, but traditionally holds 4 comma-separated fields containing the user's full name, office location, work phone number, and home phone number.
An "and" in the gecos field should be replaced by the user's properly capital- ized login "name".
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