Concepts Glossary 144 Getting Started Guide Daemon Any program that you run on Linux is called a process. You can review the pro- cesses running on your Linux system using the command ps (see man ps). Some programs are started automatically when you boot your Linux system, rather than by a user after logging in. Many of these programs are networking or system maintenance tools that you never see on your screen. A daemon is the UNIX name for a background process that takes care of some- thing (like watching for network connections) but never really shows itself on the screen. It simply runs in the background. Devices Devices on your computer system are mapped to the Linux file system so that they can be accessed by programs using the /dev subdirectory within Linux. For example, as you reviewed the installation of OpenLinux, a table indicated that /dev/hda1 referred to the first partition of the first IDE hard disk. Other devices also use the /dev notation. Instances when you might use this notation are when applications request information such as: • indicating the device used by your mouse (such as /dev/psaux or /dev/ ttyS1, the first serial port) • indicating the port used by your printer (/dev/lp0, the first parallel port) • Indicating the port that your modem is attached to (/dev/ttyS1, the second serial port) DOS Equivalent Commands Although Linux is a very different system from DOS or Windows, many of the commands that you can use at the Linux command line are similar to those in DOS. The following table summarizes a few of the most used: Note that Linux commands are lower case. If you user upper case to enter them, the commands won’t work. DOS Command Linux equivalent COPY cp REN mv (in Linux you “move” a file to a new name) TABLE 6 Common DOS commands and their Linux equivalents