[NTLUG:Discuss] Hosed up my system

[Chris Cox]

bryn konti wrote:
> 
> Question: As a technical point what would the
> difference be between scripts or programs started in
> the background by various runlevels.....they (the
> symbolic links to the programs or scripts)are called
> daemons if they are referenced to the /etc/init.d
> directory or is that incorrect??

I suppose the base level definition of daemon is a long running
process.  In the truest sense, the long running process
also does something (daemon being a spirit-being which does things
invisibly on behalf of another).

Technically, the rc scripts start/stop/manipulate daemons
and most notably when transitions between runlevels are made.
The rc scripts themselves are not supposed to be long
lived processes (shell processes)... and for security, they
probably should never be long running.... but they often start
long running daemons, which again are usually not shell scripts...
but that's not a rule or anything.

Regards,
Chris