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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.wwa.com!news From: jeverett@wwa.com (John Everett) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: 9 Nov 1996 18:21:08 GMT Organization: WorldWide Access (tm) - Chicagoland Internet Services (http://www.wwa.com) Lines: 38 Message-ID: <562i2k$f3a@kirin.wwa.com> References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <328386bc.112278367@news.ov.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool12-007.wwa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26218 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1450 alt.folklore.computers:124287 In article <328386bc.112278367@news.ov.com>, pete.barber@openv.co.uk says... > >On 8 Nov 1996 14:57:51 GMT, Mark Whetzel <markw@zeus.wg.waii.com> >wrote: > >>I was having a discussion with some of my co-workers on WHY things >>are named as they are in UNIX. Anybody have some of the >>tales behind the odd things that bound in unix history? >> >>One question we had of some students we are training: >> >> Why are system processes called 'daemons'? >> >Daemons are from Greek Mythology and our 'little helpers' that >transport between 'Man' and 'The Gods'. I guess these chaps wern't >powerful enough be gods (i.e. kernel) and slightly more powerful than >'Man' (user process) > It should be pointed out that when UNIX was still a gleam in Ken Thompson's eye the PDP-10 (later to be called DECsystem-10) monitor (later to be called TOPS-10) was running a system program called DAEMON (pronounced deemon, NOT daymon). DAEMON was considered to be a swappable part of the monitor, it performed system functions which were required infrequently enough that it wasn't considered prudent to permanently dedicate memory space. How do I know? In the late '60s and early '70s I was a member of the PDP-10 monitor group and wrote parts of DAEMON. The daemon concept may predate its implementation on the PDP-10, I'm not sure. It's entirely possible it came from either Project MAC or Multics. I know that Tom Hastings and Dennis Ritchie both worked on Multics. Tom rejoined the PDP-10 monitor group after his stint at Multics, and of course Dennis joined Ken at Bell Labs and had a bit to do with the development of UNIX. BTW, the name UNIX is a play on Multics. -- jeverett@wwa.com (John V. Everett)