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Glossary
This glossary explains how terms are used in this book. There are additional specific glossaries in System Architecture and Photon Programmer's Guide.
Bootstrap Protocol - an Internet protocol that enables a workstation to boot without requiring a hard or floppy disk drive.
See BOOTP
Common Internet File System - a protocol, formerly known as SMB, that allows a client workstation to perform transparent file access over a network to a Windows 98 or NT system or a UNIX system running an SMB server. Client file access calls are converted to CIFS protocol requests and are sent to the server over the network. The server receives the request, performs the actual filesystem operation, and then sends a response back to the client. CIFS runs on top of TCP/IP and uses DNS. The CIFS protocol does not conform to POSIX.
A daemon is a process that runs in the background acting only at predefined times or in response to specified events. Print spoolers, mail handlers, and schedulers such as cron are typical daemons.
Device drivers are programs that control devices such as a printers, disk drives, and terminals. Generally, each device has its own driver: the driver translates generic information understood by the OS into specialized information understood by the device and vice versa.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - a protocol for assigning dynamic IP addresses to network devices. Dynamic addressing allows an IP address to be automatically assigned to a network device when it connects to the network. DHCP is an extension of BOOTP.
See DNS
Domain Name Service - an Internet protocol used to convert ASCII domain names into IP addresses.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
See DHCP
In the QNX filesystem, regular files and directory files are stored as a sequence of extents. An extent is a contiguous sequence of blocks on disk.
Second Extended File System - the current de facto standard filesystem type for Linux.
Fully qualified nodename - a unique name that identifies a QNX 6 node on a network. The FQNN consists of the nodename plus the node domain tacked together.
[Author's Comments: (@@how do I find the nodename and domain for a node?--getconf CS_HOSTNAME; getconf CS_DOMAIN)]
See FQNN
A Photon application for viewing online documentation.
Initial Program Loader - the software component that either takes control at the processor's reset vector (e.g. location 0xFFFFFFF0 on the x86), or is a BIOS extension. This component is responsible for setting up the machine into a usable state, such that the startup program can then perform further initialization. The IPL is written in assembler and C. See also BIOS extension signature and startup code.
Industry Standard Architecture - a type of bus used in PCs.
Media Access Control address - a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network
The location in the pathname space where a resource manager has registered itself. E.g. the serial port resource manager registers mountpoints for each serial device (/dev/ser1, /dev/ser2, etc.), and a CD-ROM filesystem may register a single mountpoint of /cdrom.
The process by which the QNX 6 network manager, Qnet, converts an FQNN to a list of destination addresses that the transport layer knows how to get to.
Program code that attempts to convert an FQNN to a destination address.
Node Discovery Protocol - proprietary QNX protocol, intended for a LAN only, that uses a broadcast for name resolution.
A directory in the pathname space that's implemented by the QNX 6 network manager, Qnet.
Network File System - a protocol allowing a computer to access files stored on remote computers in a network and treat those files as if they were on its own local disks.
See NDP
A node domain is a character string tacked onto the nodename by the QNX 6 network manager, Qnet, to form an FQNN.
A nodename is a unique character string that identifies a node on a network.
Peripheral Component Interconnect - a type of bus used in PCs
Applications that are run in Photon.
Process identification number - used by commands and system calls to identify a target process; PIDs are assigned dynamically whenever a process starts.
A Photon application that emulates a character-mode terminal in a Photon window.
Quality of Service - a specification describing the methods used to connect nodes.
See QoS
This term describes a place in the RTP filesystem where a package may be installed or archived. A package holds files and installation instructions. The RTP filesystem on your machine contains installation repositories in the /pkgs directory.
In QNX 6, a resource manager is a user-level server program that accepts messages from other programs and, optionally, communicates with hardware.
Root is a term used to denote both the highest level in the file system and the user with the most rights and privileges. RTP uses a standard inverted-tree directory structure; the highest directory level (denoted with a / sign) is called root. RTP is a multi-user OS and each user is allowed to access the system according to a particular set of rights and privileges; one user (called the superuser) has the right to access and change anything in the system: this user is called root.
A shared object is a block of library code that is linked to calling programs when it is loaded or run rather than when the programs are compiled. This process, called dynamic linking, allows any number of application programs to have access to large blocks of commonly used library code without having to include the code in the program, making application programs smaller and more efficient. In RTP, shared objects can be identified by their .so filename suffix. Shared objects are also known as DLLs (Dynamically Linked Libraries).
In Photon, a shelf is a graphical container used as an organizer to group items together. A shelf may contain other shelves, drawers, groups, and separators.
An Internet protocol for handling TCP traffic through a proxy server.
Server Message Block - a client/server protocol providing file and printer sharing between computers.
Simple Network Management Protocol - a set of protocols for managing networks. SNMP sends protocol data units (PDUs) over IP using TCP/IP's UDP connectionless transport protocol. SNMP is often used for finding information about hosts on a network.
TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol and IP for Internet Protocol. Together, they form a standard programming interface that enables applications running under different operating systems, using different hardware, on different networks, to swap data.
Trivial File Transfer Protocol - a form of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) with no security features.
One standard layer in the set of TCP/IP protocols.
Trivial File Transfer Protocol
See TFTP
User Datagram Protocol - a connectionless protocol that runs on top of IP networks. UDP uses datagrams for packet-switched computer communication. It is considered unreliable because it offers few error recovery services, but it provides a fast and direct alternative transportation method when the reliability and complexity of TCP is not required.
The encoding for Unicode characters, where each character is represented by one, two, or three bytes.
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