Glossary

administrator

Also known as a system administrator. The administrator of a UNIX system performs the tasks associated with installing, configuring, managing, and monitoring a UNIX system. See also superuser and root

AdvFS

Advanced File System. A journaled, local file system that provides higher availability and greater flexibility than traditional UNIX file systems. Using transaction journaling, AdvFS recovers file system integrity in seconds, rather than minutes, after an unexpected restart such as a power failure.

AdvFS journaling also provides increased file system integrity. AdvFS provides greater flexibility by allowing filesets (file systems) to share a single storage pool and enabling hard and soft fileset quotas in addition to user and group quotas.

CAA

Cluster Application Administration. Provides continuous availability of applications and services to users in a cluster. With CAA, you can configure a single instance of an application on one cluster member, that will relocate to another cluster member to provide high availability of that application within a cluster environment. See also cluster and cluster member

case sensitive

Able to distinguish between upper case and lower case letters. A case sensitive device or program considers ABC and abc to be different. UNIX commands and programs are case sensitive.

CDE

Common Desktop Environment. The graphical user interface running on the desktop. CDE is compatible with the X Window System.

CDE front panel

A centrally located window on the CDE desktop containing controls for accessing applications and utilities including workspaces. The Front Panel occupies all workspaces. See also CDE

cluster

A loosely coupled collection of servers that share storage and other resources that make applications and data highly available. A cluster consists of communications media, member systems, peripheral devices, and applications. The systems communicate over a high-performance interconnect. See also cluster member

cluster member

The basic computing resource in a cluster. A member system physically must be connected to a cluster interconnect and at least one shared SCSI bus. The connection manager dynamically determines cluster membership based on communications among cluster members. See also cluster

DOP

Division of Privileges. A set of tools that lets a system administrator configure privileges for users or groups who usually would not have those privileges. After privileges are configured, the dop command lets a user or group execute an administrative action after proper authentication. See also privilege

FDDI

Fiber distributed data interface. A set of ANSI/ISO standards that define a high-bandwidth (100 Mb/s) general-purpose local area network (LAN). It provides synchronous and asynchronous services between computers and peripheral equipment in a timed-token passing, dual ring of trees configuration. See also LAN

file system

The collection of files and file management structures on a physical or logical mass storage device.

LAN

Local Area Network. A group of two or more computer systems (hosts) connected by a transmission medium, such as an Ethernet cable, token ring, or FDDI. Each host is connected to the transmission medium by a hardware interface. A LAN is a data communications network that spans a physically limited area, such as a single office building. It usually is owned by the organization it services and provides high-bandwidth communication over inexpensive media. See also FDDI and network

mount

(1) A process that attaches the file system to an existing directory to make the file system available for use. (2) Determines whether a file system is present on the device. Contrast with umount.

network

Two or more computing systems that are linked for the purpose of exchanging information and sharing resources.

permissions

The constraints placed on a file to control what the owner, other users, or other groups have permission read, write, or execute. There are three sets of file permissions: those applied to the owner of the file, those applied to the group, and those applied to everyone else, called other. You can change the permissions of files you own by using the chmod command.

privilege

A privilege is associated with users or groups who have been granted the right to execute an action usually reserved for the root user. See also right and DOP

right

Authorizes a user to perform an action on the system. Rights apply to the system as a whole and are different from permissions, which apply to specific objects. See also permissions, privilege, and DOP

root

(1) The login name for the system administrator (superuser). (2) The name applied to the topmost directory in the UNIX system's tree-like file structure; hence, the beginning of an absolute pathname. The root directory is represented in pathnames by an initial slash (/); a reference to the root directory itself consists of a single slash. See also superuser

SAN

Storage Area Network. A group of two or more shared storage devices connected by a high speed transmission medium such as Fibre Channel. A SAN serves as a subnetwork to a larger computer network, for example, a LAN. The storage devices are available to every server on the larger computer network, making the data easily accessible without consuming the network's resources. See also network and LAN.

SAN appliance

A management device dedicated to configuring and controlling Fibre Channel storage controllers. This device also allows for higher level functions to be performed on devices provided by the storage controllers. Some of these functions can include backup, disaster recovery, volume expansion, and resource monitoring. See also SAN.

superuser

A user possessing privileges to override the usual restrictions on file access, process control, and so forth. See also root and administrator

SysMan Menu

A menu of system management tasks organized in a tree-like hierarchy with branches of general functionality, and leaves for actual tasks. Selecting a leaf invokes a task, which opens a dialog box for performing the task. Depending on the user's display device, the SysMan Menu provides either a graphical or text-based interface. The SysMan Menu is invoked from the command line by entering /usr/sbin/sysman or from the CDE Application Manager if your system is running the CDE desktop.

umount

A command used to announce to the system that a file system previously mounted on a specified directory is to be removed. Only the superuser or the person who mounted the particular file system can unmount it. A file system is unmounted with the umount command. Contrast with mount. See also file system

wildcard

The operating system shells provide characters called wildcards that match character patterns. These characters include * (asterisk), ? (question mark), [ ] (brackets), and ! (exclamation point). A description of each wildcard follows:

* matches any string, including the null string. For example, th* matches th, theodore, and theresa.

? matches any single character. For example, 304?b matches 304Tb, 3045b, 304Bb, or any other string that begins with 304, ends with b, and has one character in between.

[...] matches any one of the characters enclosed in the brackets. For example, [AGX]* matches all file names in the current directory that begin with A, G, or X.

[.-.] matches any character that falls within the specified range, as defined by the current locale. For example, [T-W]* matches all file names in the current directory that begin with T, U, V, or W.

[!...] matches any single character except those enclosed in the brackets. For example, [!abyz]* matches all file names in the current directory that begin with any character except a, b, y, or z.