HP-UX Reference (11i v3 07/02) - 7 Device (Special) Files, 9 General Information, Index (vol 10)

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glossary(9) glossary(9)
superblock
A block on each file system’s mass storage medium which describes the file system. The contents of the
superblock vary between implementations. Refer to the system administrator manuals supplied with your
system for details.
superuser
The HP-UX system administrator. This user has access to all files, and can perform privileged operations.
superuser has a real user ID and effective user ID of 0, and, by convention, the user name of root.
superior directory
See parent directory.
supplementary group ID
A process has up to
sysconf(_SC_NGROUPS_MAX)
supplementary group IDs used in determining file
access permissions, in addition to the effective group ID. The supplementary group IDs of a process are set
to the supplementary group IDs of the parent process when the process is created. Note that the value
returned from
sysconf(_SC_NGROUPS_MAX)
may be larger than the value of NGROUPS_MAX found
in
<limits.h> on certain HP-UX systems.
symbolic link
A type of file that indirectly refers to a path name. See symlink(4).
system
The HP-UX operating system. See also kernel.
system asynchronous I/O
A method of performing I/O whereby a process informs a driver or subsystem that it wants to know when
data has arrived or when it is possible to perform a write request. The driver or subsystem maintains a set
of buffers through which the process performs I/O. See ioctl(2), read(2), select(2), and write(2) for more
information.
system call
An HP-UX operating system kernel function available to the user through a high-level language (such as
FORTRAN, Pascal, or C). Also called an "intrinsic" or a "system intrinsic." The available system calls are
documented in Section 2 of the HP-UX Reference.
system console
A keyboard and display (or terminal) given a unique status by HP-UX and associated with the special file
/dev/console . All boot ROM error messages, HP-UX system error messages, and certain system
status messages are sent to the system console. Under certain conditions (such as the single-user state),
the system console provides the only mechanism for communicating with HP-UX. See the System Adminis-
trator manuals and user guides provided with your system for details on configuration and use of the sys-
tem console.
system process
A system process is a process that runs on behalf of the system. It may have special implementation-
defined characteristics.
terminal
A character special file that obeys the specifications of termio(7).
terminal affiliation
The process by which a process group leader establishes an association between itself and a particular ter-
minal. A terminal becomes affiliated with a process group leader (and subsequently all processes created by
the process group leader, see terminal group) whenever the process group leader executes (either directly
or indirectly) an open(2) or creat(2) system call to open a terminal. Then, if the process which is executing
open(2) or creat(2) is a process group leader, and if that process group leader is not yet affiliated with a ter-
minal, and if the terminal being opened is not yet affiliated with a process group, the affiliation is esta-
blished (however, see open(2) description of O_NOCTTY).
An affiliated terminal keeps track of its process group affiliation by storing the process group’s process
group ID in an internal structure.
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