This glossary contains terms and acronyms used within the FreeBSD community and documentation.
Pseudocode, interpreted by a virtual machine within an ACPI-compliant operating system, providing a layer between the underlying hardware and the documented interface presented to the OS.
The programming language AML is written in.
A specification which provides an abstraction of the interface the hardware presents to the operating system, so that the operating system should need to know nothing about the underlying hardware to make the most of it. ACPI evolves and supercedes the functionality provided previously by APM, PNPBIOS and other technologies, and provides facilities for controlling power consumption, machine suspension, device enabling and disabling, etc.
A set of procedures, protocols and tools that specify the canonical interaction of one or more program parts; how, when and why they do work together, and what data they share or operate on.
A daemon that automatically mounts a filesystem when a file or directory within that filesystem is accessed.
The definition of BIOS depends a bit on the context. Some people refer to it as the ROM chip with a basic set of routines to provide an interface between software and hardware. Others refer to it as the set of routines contained in the chip that help in bootstrapping the system. Some might also refer to it as the screen used to configure the boostrapping process. The BIOS is PC-specific but other systems have something similar.
An implementation of the DNS protocols.
硂琌パ U.C. Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group(CSRG) 匡ㄓ讽┮э▆э筁 AT&T's 32V UNIX® 嘿FreeBSD 玥琌パ CSRG 硂み﹀璴ネㄓ
A phenomenon whereby many people will give an opinion on an uncomplicated topic, whilst a complex topic receives little or no discussion. See the FAQ for the origin of the term.
把ǎ: Carrier Detect
把ǎ: Clear To Send
An RS232C signal indicating that a carrier has been detected.
Also known as the processor. This is the brain of the computer where all calculations take place. There are a number of different architectures with different instruction sets. Among the more well-known are the Intel-x86 and derivatives, Sun SPARC, PowerPC, and Alpha.
An RS232C signal giving the remote system permission to send data.
把ǎ: Debugger
把ǎ: Data Set Ready
The system that converts humanly readable hostnames (i.e., mail.example.net) to Internet addresses and vice versa.
A protocol that dynamically assigns IP addresses to a computer (host) when it requests one from the server. The address assignment is called a ¨lease〃.
把ǎ: Extended COFF
The name of a mutual exclusion mechanism (a sleep mutex) that protects a large set of kernel resources. Although a simple locking mechanism was adequate in the days where a machine might have only a few dozen processes, one networking card, and certainly only one processor, in current times it is an unacceptable performance bottleneck. FreeBSD developers are actively working to replace it with locks that protect individual resources, which will allow a much greater degree of parallelism for both single-processor and multi-processor machines.
A system where the user and computer interact with graphics.
把ǎ: HangUp
The markup language used to create web pages.
把ǎ: Input/Output
把ǎ: IP Firewall
把ǎ: IP Version 4
把ǎ: IP Version 6
The IP protocol version 4, which uses 32 bits for addressing. This version is still the most widely used, but it is slowly being replaced with IPv6.
把ǎ: IP Version 6.
The new IP protocol. Invented because the address space in IPv4 is running out. Uses 128 bits for addressing.
Intelˇs compiler for converting ASL into AML.
The packet transmitting protocol that is the basic protocol on the Internet. Originally developed at the U.S. Department of Defense and an extremly important part of the TCP/IP stack. Without the Internet Protocol, the Internet would not have become what it is today. For more information, see RFC 791.
A company that provides access to the Internet.
Japanese for ¨turtle〃, the term KAME is used in computing circles to refer to the KAME Project, who work on an implementation of IPv6.
A kernel-supported threading system. See the project home page for further details.
Used to measure bandwith (how much data can pass a given point at a specified amount of time). Alternates to the Kilo prefix include Mega, Giga, Tera, and so forth.
A network used on a local area, e.g. office, home, or so forth.
The FreeBSD kernel uses a number of resource locks to arbitrate contention for those resources. A run-time lock diagnostic system found in FreeBSD-CURRENT kernels (but removed for releases), called witness(4), detects the potential for deadlocks due to locking errors. (witness(4) is actually slightly conservative, so it is possible to get false positives.) A true positive report indicates that ¨if you were unlucky, a deadlock would have happened here〃.
True positive LORs tend to get fixed quickly, so check http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current and the LORs Seen page before posting to the mailing lists.
把ǎ: Mail User Agent
An application used to transfer email. An MTA has traditionally been part of the BSD base system. Today Sendmail is included in the base system, but there are many other MTAs, such as postfix, qmail and Exim.
An application used by users to display and write email.
MFC 琌罽糶ウ ¨Merged From -CURRENT〃 硂泊穦 CVS logs い盽ǎ ボ硂琌眖 -CURRENT い俱秈ㄤだや(硄盽琌 -STABLE) patch ┪
To merge functionality or a patch from the Perforce repository to the -CURRENT branch.
把ǎ: Perforce.
In the normal course of FreeBSD development, a change will be committed to the -CURRENT branch for testing before being merged to -STABLE. On rare occasions, a change will go into -STABLE first and then be merged to -CURRENT.
This term is also used when a patch is merged from -STABLE to a security branch.
把ǎ: Merge From Current.
A message, usually shown on login, often used to distribute information to users of the system.
把ǎ: Project Evil
A filesystem developed by Microsoft and available in its ¨New Technology〃 operating systems, such as Windows® 2000, Windows NT® and Windows XP.
把ǎ: Operating System
A set of programs, libraries and tools that provide access to the hardware resources of a computer. Operating systems range today from simplistic designs that support only one program running at a time, accessing only one device to fully multi-user, multi-tasking and multi-process systems that can serve thousands of users simultaneously, each of them running dozens of different applications.
Indicates a suggested change (such as a Problem Report or a feature request) which is no longer relevant or applicable due to such things as later changes to FreeBSD, changes in networking standards, the affected hardware having since become obsolete, and so forth.
把ǎ: Perforce
把ǎ: Process ID
把ǎ: PPP over ATM
把ǎ: Problem Report
A source code control product made by Perforce Software which is more advanced than CVS. Although not open source, it use is free of charge to open-source projects such as FreeBSD.
Some FreeBSD developers use a Perforce repository as a staging area for code that is considered too experimental for the -CURRENT branch.
A method of enabling access to up to 64 GB of RAM on systems which only physically have a 32-bit wide address space (and would therefore be limited to 4 GB without PAE).
A mythical piece of headgear, much like a dunce cap, awarded to any FreeBSD committer who breaks the build, makes revision numbers go backwards, or creates any other kind of havoc in the source base. Any committer worth his or her salt will soon accumulate a large collection. The usage is (almost always?) humorous.
FreeBSD 祇甶筁祘いヴэ跑碩常ぃ赣琵ㄏノ策篋稰ぃ続 羭ㄒㄓ弧璝ヴ種秸笆 /etc/defaults/rc.conf い╰参币笆抖 碞琌笻璉 POLA 玥弘ヴ秨祇常赣暗э跑玡 琌穦籔 POLA 玥Τ┮笻璉
A description of some kind of problem that has been found in either the FreeBSD source or documentation. See Writing FreeBSD Problem Reports.
A number, unique to a particular process on a system, which identifies it and allows actions to be taken against it.
The working title for the NDISulator, written by Bill Paul, who named it referring to how awful it is (from a philosophical standpoint) to need to have something like this in the first place. The NDISulator is a special compatibility module to allow Microsoft Windows™ NDIS miniport network drivers to be used with FreeBSD/i386. This is usually the only way to use cards where the driver is closed-source. See src/sys/compat/ndis/subr_ndis.c.
把ǎ: Received Data
把ǎ: Request To Send
A standard for communications between serial devices.
把ǎ: Repository Copy
repocopy(¨repository copy〃 罽糶) 碞琌钡眖 CVS repository い狡籹郎
璝ぃノ repocopy よΑê或璝璶 repository ず狡籹簿笆郎杠 committer 碞ゲ斗磅︽ cvs add ㄓр郎穝竚 临璶磅︽ cvs rm ㄓ埃侣郎
量硂贺よΑ翴赣郎ぇ玡闽魁 (ゑ CVS logs い闽兜ヘ)ぃ穦繦ぇτ狡籹穝よ τ FreeBSD 璸购い粄硂ㄇ菌癘魁常琌讽Τノ ┮穦竒盽蹦ノ repository copy よΑ 硂碞琌 repository 恨瞶穦钡 repository ず狡籹郎よΑ τ獶蹦 cvs(1) 祘Αㄓ秈︽ cvs add cvs rmぇ摸笆
A set of documents defining Internet standards, protocols, and so forth. See www.rfc-editor.org.
Also used as a general term when someone has a suggested change and wants feedback.
把ǎ: Signal Ground
把ǎ: Secure Shell
把ǎ: Suspend To RAM
An RS232 pin or wire that is the ground reference for the signal.
把ǎ: Transmitted Data
把ǎ: Trivial FTP
A profiling counter internal to modern Pentium® processors that counts core frequency clock ticks.
A protocol that sits on top of (e.g.) the IP protocol and guarantees that packets are delivered in a reliable, ordered, fashion.
The term for the combination of the TCP protocol running over the IP protocol. Much of the Internet runs over TCP/IP.
把ǎ: User ID
A unique number assigned to each user of a computer, by which the resources and permissions assigned to that user can be identified.
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