A

ABI

Application Binary Interface: details the machine language of the CPU family as well as the calls between the application and the operating system. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ACK

/ak/ interj. 1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate response to ping or ENQ. 2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following exclamation point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point (see NAK). Thus, for example, you might cut off an overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now". 4. An affirmative. "Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a Linux box?" "ACK!" There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or during a lull in talk mode to see if the person has gone away (the standard humorous response is of course NAK (sense 1), i.e., "I'm not here"). From Jargon Dictionary

ACPI

(Advanced configuration and Power Interface) is an open industry specification co-developed by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, and Toshiba. ACPI establishes industry-standard interfaces for OS-directed configuration and power management on laptops, desktops, and servers. ACPI evolves the existing collection of power management BIOS code, Advanced Power Management (APM) application programming interfaces (APIs, PNPBIOS APIs, Multiprocessor Specification (MPS) tables and so on into a well-defined power management and configuration interface specification. The specification enables new power management technology to evolve independantly in operating systems and hardware while ensuring that they continue to work together. From ACPI

ADN (Advanced Digital Network)

Usually refers to a 56Kbps leased-line. From Matisse

ADSL

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop is a high-speed Internet access technology that uses a commonly available telephone copper loop. ADSL provides data speeds from 384kbps to 1.5 Mbps, normally using different speeds for the upstream and downstream channel (hence the " Asymmetric" ). ADSL provides a direct, dedicated pipe to an ISP. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ADVENT

/ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames. See also vadding, Zork, and Infocom. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' xyzzy and plugh also derive from this game. Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a `Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance. ADVENT sources are available for FTP at ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z. There is a Colossal Cave Adventure page. From Jargon Dictionary

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard, Rijndael)

The United States encryption standard that replaces the older/weaker DES standard. Contrast: The main impetus behind AES to replace DES is the support for larger key sizes. DES uses 56-bit keys, which can be cracked in just a few minutes (in the year 2001). In contrast, AES supports 128-bit keys (as well as 192-bit and 256-bit). Whereas both DES and AES are fundamentally block-ciphers, AES is also designed to be an efficient stream-cipher and hash algorithm. Whereas DES was designed to be hardware based (software implementations are much slower), AES has been designed to be efficient in both software and hardware. In particular, implementations in ANSI C, Java, and x86 assembly language were important. Another important criteria was the ability for the algorithm to work within smart-cards with slow CPUs and limited memory. Key point: The NIST director in charge of selecting the AES algorithm says: "If Moore's law continues and quantum computing doesn't manifest itself, then I think this system will have a good 30 year run". Misconception: AES does not replace DES. In the 1980s, DES was the most used encryption algorithm. However, due to length of time it took the government to come up with a replacement standard, other encryption algorithms became widely used, such as RC2, RC4, Blowfish, IDEA, and Triple DES. Moreover, crypto has became very "pluggable", with many products supporting numerous simultaneous encryption algorithms. From Hacking-Lexicon

AI

/A-I/ n. Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers. From Jargon Dictionary

ALSA

The ALSA sound driver was originally written as a replacement for the Linux kernel sound for Gravis UltraSound (GUS) cards. As this GUS replacement proved to be a success, the author started the ALSA project for a generic driver for several sound chips, with fully modularized design. It is compatible with the OSS/Free and OSS/Linux sound drivers (the drivers in the kernel), but has its own interface that is even better than the OSS drivers. A list of features can be found at http://www.alsa-project.org/intro.html. The main page of the ALSA project is http://www.alsa-project.org/ From ALSA-HOWTO The ALSA sound drivers have proven to be such a success that they have replaced the OSS drivers in the Linux kernel. From Binh

ALT Linux

LWN distribution survey completed May 3, 2002. ALT Linux got its start as a Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition Spring 2001. Designed to be a universal distribution, suitable for server organization, for user workstations and for software development, ALT Linux has diverged from its roots and split into several projects, all with the same code base. For example, there's Castle, a secured, RSBAC-enabled, server distribution; and ALT Linux Junior, a single-disk distribution for home computers, designed especially for beginners, easy to install and use. The unstable Sisyphus branch changes daily. ALT Linux Master 2.2 was released March 7, 2003. ALT Linux Junior 2.2 (Plum) was released March 26, 2003. From LWN Distribution List

ANSI (American National Standards Institute)

A standards body made up of industry representatives. For infosec purposes, the two interesting areas are the X9 standards for financial/banking, and the X12 standards for EDI (also governing health-care transactions). Contrast: ANSI is the American representative to the ISO. ANSI is made up of industry, whereas NIST specifies standards only for use within government. From Hacking-Lexicon

ANSI /an'see/

1. n. [techspeak] The American National Standards Institute. ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see K&R, Classic C), and promulgates many other important software standards. 2. n. [techspeak] A terminal may be said to be `ANSI' if it meets the ANSI X3.64 standard for terminal control. Unfortunately, this standard was both over-complicated and too permissive. It has been retired and replaced by the ECMA-48 standard, which shares both flaws. 3. n. [BBS jargon] The set of screen-painting codes that most MS-DOS and Amiga computers accept. This comes from the ANSI.SYS device driver that must be loaded on an MS-DOS computer to view such codes. Unfortunately, neither DOS ANSI nor the BBS ANSIs derived from it exactly match the ANSI X3.64 terminal standard. For example, the ESC-[1m code turns on the bold highlight on large machines, but in IBM PC/MS-DOS ANSI, it turns on `intense' (bright) colors. Also, in BBS-land, the term `ANSI' is often used to imply that a particular computer uses or can emulate the IBM high-half character set from MS-DOS. Particular use depends on context. Occasionally, the vanilla ASCII character set is used with the color codes, but on BBSs, ANSI and `IBM characters' tend to go together. From Jargon Dictionary

ANSI C

a revision of C, adding function prototypes, structure passing, structure assignment and standardised library functions. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ANSI standard

/an'see stan'd*rd/ The ANSI standard usage of `ANSI standard' refers to any practice which is typical or broadly done. It can also be applied in a jovial context in which everyone does something in the same way but it is not quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI standard word tripling in names of usenet alt groups. From Jargon Dictionary

APM (Advanced Power Management)

An industry standard for allowing the system processor and various components to enter power-saving modes, including suspend, sleep and off. APM software is especially important for mobile devices, because it saves battery power. From I-gloss

ARJ

A popular file compression/archival tool, available for UNIX/Linux, DOS/Windows, and other operating systems. Files compressed in this manner typically have .arj or .ar extensions. From I-gloss

ARM Linux

ARM Linux is a port of the Linux Operating System to ARM processor based machines mainly by Russell King with contributions from others. From LWN Distribution List

ARMM

n. [acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages. ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer and longer. Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term despew), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also software laser, network meltdown. From Jargon Dictionary

ARP

ARP is a protocol used with TCP/IP to resolve addresses. The TCP/IP stack used to transmit data across the Internet is independent from the Ethernet used to shuttle data between local machines. Thus, when machine needs to send an IP packet to a nearby machine, it broadcasts the IP address on the local Ethernet asking for the corresponding Ethernet address. The machine who owns the address responds, at which point the IP packet in question is sent to that Ethernet address. Key point: By sniffing ARP packets off the wire, you can discover a lot of stuff going on. This is especially true of cable-modem and DSL segments. Since ARP packets are broadcasts, you aren't technically breaking your user's agreement by sniffing. Key point: You can spoof ARP requests and/or responses in order to redirect traffic through your machine. From Hacking-Lexicon

ARP

a TCP/IP protocol used to obtain a station's physical address from its logical IP address. ARP requests are broadcast onto the network. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ARP redirect

A tool that is part of the standard hacker's toolkit, ARP redirect will redirect Internet traffic from a local neighbor through your own machine allowing you to sniff it. From Hacking-Lexicon

ARPAnet

A wide area network (WAN), created in 1969 with funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Undergoing constant research and development in the earls to mid-l970s, ARPAnet served as the testbed for the development of TCP/IP (the protocols that make the Internet possible). A major goal of the ARPAnet project was to increase the military's command and control capability enabling communication across a variety of physically dissimilar media, including satellites. An allied goal was to create a robust network capable of withstanding outages, such as those that might result from a nuclear exchange. ARPAnet met these objectives, but it also surprised its creators: It was found in short order that most ARPAnet users preferred to use the network for communication, such as electronic mail and discussion groups. Initially, the ARPAnet was available only to government research institutes and to universities holding Department of Defense (DoD) research contracts. In 1983, ARPAnet was divided into a high-security military network (Milnet) and an ARPAanet that was recast as a research and development network. From QUECID

ARSIG

ARSIG is a GNU Linux distribution designed especially for diskless routers, where the main (primary) boot-up device is compact-flash card. The goal is to make the "static" part of the operating system lay on the CF card, mounted as readonly. All other parts of the OS that need read-write access are mounted in RAM. ARSIG is based on Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl). Initial Freshmeat announcement, version 1.0_pre01 (PHDS), was released January 4, 2003. From LWN Distribution List

ASCII

/as'kee/ n. [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters -- a major win -- but it did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S or the ae-ligature which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It could be much worse. See EBCDIC to understand how. A history of ASCII and its ancestors is at http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html. Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names -- some formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII characters are collected here. See also individual entries for bang, excl, open, ques, semi, shriek, splat, twiddle, and Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL. The abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close" respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information. ! Common: bang; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; <exclamation mark>. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control. " Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. # Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; <square>, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. $ Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money]. % Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare: [double-oh-seven]. & Common: <ampersand>; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh(1)); pretzel. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?] ' Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation mark>; <acute accent>. ( ) Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear. * Common: star; [splat]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see glob); Nathan Hale. + Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection]. , Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail]. - Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak; bithorpe. Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot]. / Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat]. : Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot]. ; Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid], pit-thwong. < > Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle]. = Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe; [half-mesh]. ? Common: query; <question mark>; ques. Rare: quiz; whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback. @ Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl; [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage; <commercial at>. V Rare: [book]. [ ] Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing bracket>; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U turn/U turn back]. \ Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed virgule; [backslat]. ^ Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal). _ Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare: score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm]. ` Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote; <grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; <opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote. { } Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet]. A balanced pair of these may be called `curlies'. | Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare: <vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from UNIX); [spike]. ~ Common: <tilde>; squiggle; twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)]. The pronunciation of # as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad idea; Commonwealth Hackish has its own, rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace #; thus Britishers sometimes call # on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a # suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over the correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which has led to the ha ha only serious suggestion that it be pronounced `shibboleth' (see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh). The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for underline are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which had these graphics in those character positions rather than the modern punctuation characters. The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare angle brackets). Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The #, $, >, and & characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, # in many assembler-programming cultures, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas Instruments, and & on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See also splat. The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more and more like a serious misfeature as the use of international networks continues to increase (see software rot). Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this is a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a smaller subset common to all those in use. From Jargon Dictionary

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

This is the defacto world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111. From Matisse

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

a standard code used for representing information on computer systems and networks. It uses the printing and non-printing characters that can be generated by the keyboard. Since 7 bits are available to represent each character it is possible to represent a total of 128 different characters. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ASPLinux

ASPLinux is a Russian distribution from a multi-national company based in Singapore. The Red Hat based ASPLinux GNU/Linux distribution, includes all components for creation of a high perfomance Internet/Intranet server or powerful multimedia workstation. ASP 7.3 (vostok) was released August 13, 2002. From LWN Distribution List

AT command set (Hayes command set)

Today's modems are controlled by the old Hayes "AT" command set. In order to dial the phone number 555-1212 using a modem, you simply send the string "ATDT555-1212" to the modem. The "D" following the "AT" means to "Dial", and the "T" means to use "Tone" dialing (rather than "P" for "Pulse" dialing). The command "ATH0" means to hang up the modem. Key point: One of the juvenile tricks people play is to cause people to hang up their own modem. Once the modem connects, it goes into a different mode where it no longer accepts AT commands. However, a user can switch back to the command mode by sending the characters "+++" to the modem. Therefore, if somebody can remotely trick your PC into sending "+++ATH0", then your modem will hang up. One way of doing this is with the ping program that sends and ICMP echo to the victim, which then replies with the same contents. E.g.: ping -p 2b2b2b415448300d victim The most popular exploits for this are spoofed ICMP pings, but it can be exploited in any number of ways. For example, one may include the following in an HTML webpage: <IMG src="http://www.robertgraham.com/images/x.gif?+++ATH0"> From Hacking-Lexicon

ATAPI

AT Attachment Packet Interface - a standard that allows people to connect tape drives and CD-ROMs to Enhanced IDE controllers. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode. High Speed (up to 155 Mbps), high bandwidth, low-delay, transport technology, integrating multiple data types (voice, video, and data), International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has selected ATM as the basis for the future broadband network because of its flexibility and suitability for both transmission and switching. It may be used in the phone and computer networks of the future. It is also a multiplexed information transfer technique of sending data in irregular time intervals using a code such as ASCII. ATM allows most modern computers to communicate with one another easily. From Glossary of Distance Education and Internet Terminology

AUTHORS

List of people who contributed to or wrote a package or document. From Rute-Users-Guide

AVI

Audio Video Interleaved: a proprietary video format developed by Microsoft. It interleaves standard waveform audio and digital video frames (bitmaps) and is a popular format. Popular Linux programs such as xanim support AVI. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

AX.25

a Packet Radio Protocol that offers both connected and connectionless modes of operation, and is used either by itself for point-point links, or to carry other protocols such as TCP/IP and NetRom. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

AbulEdu

AbulEdu is a Mandrake-based distribution for primary schools. It is currently in French but most of the tools can be translated. An AbulEdu server can handle Mac (netatalk), Windows (samba), GNU/Linux and X terminal (with LTSP) clients. The server acts as a central gateway for Web, mail, and printing, and facilitates the management of classes, pupils, and teachers. Everybody can publish Web pages on an intranet using Apache and all administration tasks are performed using a browser. The result is that a teacher who is not a computer specialist can install and manage a school network. Stable version 1.0.7-II was released May 26, 2003. Development version 1.0.11 beta 4 was released October 7, 2002. From LWN Distribution List

Access Control List (access, ACL)

Controlling access not only the system in general, but also resources within the system. For example, firewalls can be configured to allow access to different portions of the network for different users. Likewise, even after you log onto a file server, the server may still block access to certain files. Key point: An Access Control List (ACL) is used to list those accounts that have access to the resource that the list applies to. When talking about firewalls, the ACL implies the list of IP addresses that have access to which ports and systems through the firewall. When talking about WinNT, the ACL implies the list of users that can access a specific file or directory on NTFS. Contrast: Discretionary Access Control is the ability to have fine grained control over who has access to what resources. Misconception: Many people believe that firewall IP address rules or IEEE 802.11 MAC address rules form robust ACLs. However, since neither IP addresses or MAC addresses provide robust authentication, such ACLs provide only a weak form of security. When these so-called ACLs are relied upon for security, they frequently lead to compromises as people spoof their IP or forge their MAC address. From Hacking-Lexicon

Account Name

Same as Login ID, User ID, or User Name. The name assigned to a user on a UNIX/Linux system. Multiple users can be set up on a system with unique account names, each with varying access (permission) levels. After Linux installation, account names are assigned by the Superuser, or root operator. From I-gloss

Ada

n. A Pascal-descended language that was at one time made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description wss "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, elephantine bulk. From Jargon Dictionary

Adamantix

Adamantix, formerly known as TrustedDebian, aims to create a highly secure but usable Linux platform. To accomplish this, the project will use currently available security solutions for Linux (like kernel patches, compiler patches, security related programs and techniques) and knit these together to a highly secure Linux platform. The initial release, version 0.9, became available March 18, 2003. Version 1.0.1 was released June 12, 2003. A 'secured' distribution. From LWN Distribution List

AfterStep

One of several user interfaces (window managers), AfterStep makes Linux look and feel much like NeXTSTEP, with enhancements. For more on AfterStep, go to www.afterstep.org. (Also, see Enlightenment, GNOME, KDE, and X Window System.) From I-gloss

Agenda-VR

there are two versions of the VR3d. One was released in December 2000 in the U.S., and the "Second Edition" was released in January 2001 in the U.S. and in Germany. Agenda Computing was scheduled to complete development in the spring of 2002, but their website seems to have disappeared [July 22, 2002]. Handhelds/PDA based distribution. From LWN Distribution List

Akkerman, Wichert

one of the key developers of the Debian distribution. Wichert has also written important Linux programs such as strace and APT. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Alcolix

alcolix is a minimal Linux rescue distribution with the goals of being small, compatible, and very usable. It has a cozy shell and a multitude of partition rescue/editing tools, all based on up-to-date releases (e.g., 2.4.x kernel with USB support). It uses cpio.bz2 data disks and has a full GRUB bootloader, memtest86, and more. Version 2.4.20 BETA3 was released June 16, 2003. A 'special purpose/mini' distribution. From LWN Distribution List

Aleph ARMlinux

Aleph One provides well-documented Linux distributions for various ARM-based systems. LWN distribution survey results for February 6, 2000. From LWN Distribution List

Alias

A secondary or symbolic name for a file, a collection of data, or a computer device. In a spreadsheet, a range name, such as Income, is an alias for a range, such as A3..K3. In networks, group aliases provide a handy way to send electronic mailed two or more people simultaneously. From QUECID

Alindis

A comprehensive guide to building a GNU/Linux distribution. Initial version 0.0.1 was released January 2, 2002. Version 0.1.0 was released July 18, 2002. From LWN Distribution List

Allison, Jeremy

one of the lead developers of the Samba Windows file-and-print-sharing software. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Allman, Eric

the creator of sendmail -- one of the most important pieces of software ever created by the OpenSource community. Eric has established Sendmail, Inc., which produces both open-sourced and proprietary versions of sendmail. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Alpha

a family of advanced RISC-based, 64-bit CPUs from Digital (now Compaq). Alpha's were introduced back in 1992. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Anti-Aliasing

a method used to better define higher resolution objects in lower resolution. It is a term often used for fonts. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Apache

Apache is the leading internet web server, with over 60% market share, according to the Netcraft survey. Several key factors have contributed to Apache's success: The Apache license. It is an open source, BSD-like license that allows for both commercial and non-commercial uses of Apache. Talented community of developers with a variety of backgrounds and an open development process based on technical merits. Modular architecture. Apache users can easily add functionality or tailor Apache to their specific enviroment. Portable: Apache runs on nearly all flavors of Unix (and Linux), Windows, BeOs, mainframes... Robustness and security. Many commercial vendors have adopted Apache-based solutions for their products, including Oracle, Red Hat and IBM. In addition, Covalent provides add-on modules and 24x7 support for Apache. The following websites use Apache or derivatives. Chances are that if Apache is good enough for them, it is also good enough for you. Amazon.com Yahoo! W3 Consortium Financial Times Network solutions MP3.com Stanford From the Apache website: The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The Apache project has grown beyond building just a web server into other critical server side technologies like Java or XML. The Apache Software Foundation, described in the next section, serves as an umbrella for these projects. From Apache Overview HOWTO

Append Symbol

The > keyboard character, repeated (i.e., >>). It is often used to send the output from a command to a text file, appending the data to the end of the file, rather than replacing the existing content. For example, ls -a >> output.txt sends the current directory list to a file called output.txt, and adds it to the end of the file. Repeating the command will continue to add new data to the end of the file. (Also, see Piping Symbol and Redirection Symbol.) From I-gloss

Applet

A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page. Applets differ from full-fledged Java applications in that they are not allowed to access certain resources on the local computer, such as files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a network. The common rule is that an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer from which the applet was sent. From Matisse

Application Program Interface (API)

System software that provides a complete set of functions and resources on which programmers can draw to create interface features, such as pull down menus, command names, dialog boxes, keyboard commands, and windows. In network systems, an API establishes how programes use various network features. From QUECID

Arabeyes Project

Arabeyes is a Meta project that is aimed at fully supporting the Arabic language in the Unix/Linux environment. It is designed to be a central location to standardize the Arabization process. Arabeyes relies on voluntary contributions by computer professionals and enthusiasts all over the world. From LWN Distribution List

Arcangeli, Andrea

employed by SuSE as a kernel developer, Andrea has created the IKD kernel debugging tool and the workaround for a famous TCP incompatibility between Solaris and Linux. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

Arch Linux

Arch Linux is an i686-optimized Linux distribution. It is lightweight and contains the latest stable versions of software. Packages are in .tar.gz format and are tracked by a package manager that is designed to allow easy package upgrades. Arch is designed to be streamlined while allowing for a customized configuration, with newer features such as reiserfs/ext3 and devfs. The inital version, 0.1, was released March 11, 2002. Arch 0.4 (Dragon) was released December 18, 2002. Arch Linux released Pacman 2.1 (package manager) on August 22, 2002. From LWN Distribution List

Archie

A tool (software) for finding files stored on anonymous FTP sites. You need to know the exact file name or a substring of it. By 1999 Archie had been almost completely replaced by web-based search engines. Back when FTP was the main way people moved files over the Internet archie was quite popular. From Matisse

Archive

A single large file containing multiple files, usually compressed to save storage space. Often created to facilitate transferring between computers. Popular archival formats include ARJ, TAR, ZIP and ZOO. Also, to create such an archive file. From I-gloss

Argument

Words, phrases or numbers that you enter on the same command line as a command or a statement to expand or modify how that command or statement operates. From QUECID

Ark Linux

Ark Linux is a Linux distribution designed especially for desktop use, primarily for people without prior Linux experience. Its main goal is ease of use, and the inclusion of many tools end users will need. Ark Linux is based on Red Hat 7.3 / 8.0, with KDE. Initial Freshmeat version 1.0-0.alpha7.1 was released March 14, 2003. From LWN Distribution List

Assembler

A program that transforms assembly language program into machine language so the computer can execute the program. From QUECID

Astaro Security Linux

A firewall and VPN product based on the 2.4 Linux kernel. Available for free download but not completely open source. There are several branches. Version 3.200 (beta) was released June 4, 2002. A stable 3.217 (for i386) was released April 8, 2003. Beta version 3.391 was released January 30, 2003. The stable 2.x tree is at version 2.031, released November 15, 2002. There is also a version 2.027 for Sun Cobalt was released July 3, 2002. Stable version 4.008 was released June 12, 2003. A 'secured' distribution. From LWN Distribution List

Asynchronous

A lack of synchronization. A method of transmitting data over a network using a start bit at the beginning of a character and a stop bit at the end. The time intervak between characters may be varying lengths. In video, a signal is asynchronous when its timing differs from that of the system reference signal. From Glossary of Distance Education and Internet Terminology

At

Run a command once at some future time. From Rute-Users-Guide

Audio Bookshelf

Including the Enigma Audio Bookshelf could be stretching the definition of a Linux distribution more than a little. But this is a bootable CD product, which contains enough of a Linux operating system to turn a PC into a book reader. Any PC meeting the requirements can be turned into a Linux based book reader, regardless of the OS installed on the hard drive. Read the book yourself, or have the computer read to you. A 'special purpose/mini' distribution. From LWN Distribution List

Aurora Sparc Project

This Sparc Linux distribution is based on Red Hat 7.3. Build 0.2 was announced on December 4, 2001. Build 0.4 (Titanium) was released September 26, 2002. Build 0.42 (Douglas) was released October 4, 2002. From LWN Distribution List

Aurox Linux

Aurox Linux is an international distribution, hailing from Poland. It is available in several european countries, in different language versions, including Polish, Czech, German, French and Spanish. Aurox is based on Red Hat, with Aurox 9.0 the most recent offering. Added to list June 11, 2003. From LWN Distribution List

Authoritative for a Domain

I have emphasized that name servers only hold information for their own domains. Any other information they may have about another domain is cached, temporary data that has an expiration date attached to it. The domain that a name server has information about is said to be the domain that a name server is authoritative for. Alternatively we say: ``a name server is authoritative for the domain.'' For instance, the server ns2.cranzgot.co.za is authoritative for the domain cranzgot.co.za. Hence, lookups from anywhere on the Internet having the domain cranzgot.co.za ultimately are the responsibility of ns2.cranzgot.co.za, and originate (albeit through a long series of caches) from the host ns2.cranzgot.co.za. From Rute-Users-Guide

Awk (Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan)

A programming language useful for its patternmatching syntax, and often used for data retrieval and data transformation. A GNU version is called Gawk. From I-gloss

a-Linux

a-Linux is an x86 floppy-based mini-distribution, where assembly code meets Linux kernel. It contains only programs written in assembly language. It is extemely small, yet functional, and provides HTTP and FTP services out-of-the-box. Initial version 0.17 was released August 17, 2002. A floppy-based distribution. From LWN Distribution List

a2p

Awk to Perl translator From whatis

a2ps

GNU a2ps 'Anything to PostScript' converter and pretty-printer a2ps converts files into PostScript for printing or viewing. It uses a nice default format, usually two pages on each physical page, borders surrounding pages, headers with useful information (page number, printing date, file name or supplied header), line numbering, symbol substitution as well as pretty printing for a wide range of programming languages. Historically, a2ps started as a text to PostScript converter, but thanks to powerful delegations it is able to let you use it for any kind of files, ie it can also digest manual pages, dvi files, texinfo, .... Among the other most noticeable features of a2ps are: - various encodings (all the Latins and others), - various fonts (automatic font down loading), - various medias, - various printer interfaces, - various output styles, - various programming languages, - various helping applications, - and various spoken languages. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

a2ps

The a2ps filter converts text and other types of files to PostScript format. A2ps has pretty-printing capabilities and includes support for a wide number of programming languages, encodings (ISO Latins, Cyrillic, etc.), and media. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

a52dec

Utilities to extract and decode ATCS A/52 streams Utilities to extract and decode ATCS A/52 streams. The A/52 standard is used in a variety of applications, including digital television and DVD. It is also known as AC-3. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aa3d

An ASCII art stereogram generator This program generates the well known and popular random dot stereograms in ASCII art. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aalib-bin

sample programs using aalib AAlib is a portable ascii art graphics library. Internally, it works like a graphics display, but the output is rendered into gorgeous platform independent ascii graphics. This package contains a few sample programs that use aalib. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aatv

A program to watch TV in a text-based console aatv is a program which allows you to watch TV in a text-based console, i.e. in a virtual console or in an xterm. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abc2ps

Translates ABC music description files to PostScript This is the Debian port of the abc2ps program by Michael Methfessel. The program translates tunes written in the ABC format to PostScript, which can then be viewed using Ghostview et al. or printed on a PostScript printer or through Ghostscript. It supports various semi-standard extensions to the ABC standard, such as multiple voices and staves. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abcde

A Better CD Encoder A frontend program to cdparanoia, wget, cd-discid, id3, and your favorite Ogg or MP3 encoder (defaults to oggenc). Grabs an entire CD and converts each track to Ogg or MP3, then comments or ID3-tags each file, with one command. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abcmidi

A converter from ABC to MIDI format and back This package contains the programs `abc2midi' and `midi2abc', which convert from the abc musical notation format to standard MIDI format and vice-versa. They can generate accompaniment from guitar chords in the abc file, as well as insert various MIDI events; the MIDI-to-abc translation tries to figure out bars, triplets and accidentals on its own. The package also contains `abc2abc' (an abc prettyprinter/transposer) and `mftext' (a program that will dump a MIDI file as text). The programs in this package are based on the `midifilelib' distribution available from http://www.harmony-central.com/MIDI/. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abcmidi-yaps

Yet another ABC to PostScript converter This program translates tunes written in the ABC format to PostScript, which can then be viewed on screen or printed. It is essentially a (non-exclusive) alternative to abc2ps, being based on the abc2ps PostScript code together with the ABC parser from the abcmidi package. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abicheck

binary compatibility checking tool ABIcheck is a tool for checking an application's compliance with a library's defined Application Binary Interface (ABI). It relies on ABI definition information contained in the library. Example definitions are given for GNOME and glibc. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abiword

WYSIWYG word processor AbiWord is the first application of a complete, open source office suite. The upstream source includes cross-platform support for Win32, BeOS, and QNX as well as GTK+ on Unix. AbiWord is still being developed. It's quite usable but not yet full- featured or polished. For many applications, however, it should prove effective and efficient. This program includes support for reading Microsoft Word files, RTF files, and many other foreign file formats. Natively, it uses a custom XML-based file format. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

abook

A text-based ncurses address book application. abook is a text-based ncurses address book application. It provides many different fields of user info. abook is designed for use with mutt, but can be used independently. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

absolute pathname

A pathname that explicitly identifies all directories from the root directory to an individual file. For example, pathname /home/linus/kernel/test refers to a file named test in directory kernel, which belongs to directory linus, which belongs to directory home, which belongs to the root directory /. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

abuse

Crack dot Com's Abuse action game. Abuse is a side scrolling shoot-em-up action game from Crack dot Com. This package contains the Abuse game engine, in X and full screen svga versions. It requires a mouse. This package is obsolete and will be removed later (if you still need it, contact the maintainer). Please use abuse-sdl instead. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

access

check user's permissions for a file From whatis

access

determine whether a file can be accessed From whatis

access control (access)

Access control refers to controlling access by a user to a computer system, or data on that system. In formal terms, a "subject" (e.g. a user) attempts to access the "object" (e.g. system or data). An access control system will evaluate the security levels of the subject and object in order to see if access is permitted. Example: A simple example is the case where you enter a username and password in order to log onto the computer. Contrast: mandatory access control The system gives users "clearance levels", and assigns sensitivity levels to information. Therefore, if you only have "secret" clearance level, you cannot access "top-secret" information, but you can access "secret" or "confidential" information. See: Bell-LaPadula Model for more information. discretionary access control This system assigns subjects (users) to one or more groups. An object (system or file) contains a DACL (discretionary access control list) enumeration which users and groups may access the object. See: Access Control List for more information. Key point: There are different kinds of access. Read access means that somebody can read information, whereas write access implies that that somebody can change the data. For example, you can get a copy of your credit report and read it, but you can't necessarily change the data. From Hacking-Lexicon

access permissions

a set of permissions associated with every file and directory that determine who can read it, write to it, or execute it. Only the owner of the file (or the super-user) can change these permissions. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

accessdb

dumps the content of a man-db database in a human readable format. From whatis

account

a cominbation of login and password which is normally created by the system administrator. The creation of an account includes the assignment of a home directory. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

acct

The GNU Accounting utilities. The GNU Accounting utilities `ac', `accton', `last', `lastcomm', and `sa' add login and process accounting support to Debian Linux. "Login accounting" provides summaries of system resource usage based on connect time, and "process accounting" provides summaries based on the commands executed on the system. The 'last' command is provided by the Debian sysvinit package and not included here. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ace-of-penguins

Solitaire-games with penguin-look. From the author's intro.html: "The Ace of Penguins is a set of Unix/X solitaire games based on the ones available for Windows(tm) but with a number of enhancements that make my wife like my versions better :-)" The package consists of the games Pegged, Minesweeper, Solitaire, Taipei (together with a level editor), Golf, Mastermind, Merlin and Freecell. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acfax

Receive faxes using your radio and sound card acfax allows you to receive faxes using your sound card. Typically you might use it to decode faxes sent over HF radio or from satellites. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

achilles

An artificial life and evolution simulator Achilles is an artificial life and evolution simulator that uses Hebbian neural networks and OpenGL/SDL to simulate life in a simplified environment. It is based on Larry Yaeger's PolyWorld. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acidlab

Analysis Console for Intrusion Databases The Analysis Console for Intrusion Databases (ACID) is a PHP-based analysis engine to search and process a database of security events generated by various IDSes, firewalls, and network monitoring tools. The features currently include: o Query-builder and search interface for finding alerts matching on alert meta information (e.g. signature, detection time) as well as the underlying network evidence (e.g. source/destination address, ports, payload, or flags). o Packet viewer (decoder) will graphically display the layer-3 and layer-4 packet information of logged alerts o Alert management by providing constructs to logically group alerts to create incidents (alert groups), deleting the handled alerts or false positives, exporting to email for collaboration, or archiving of alerts to transfer them between alert databases. o Chart and statistic generation based on time, sensor, signature, protocol, IP address, TCP/UDP ports, or classification ACID has the ability to analyze a wide variety of events which are post-processed into its database. Tools exist for the following formats: o using Snort (www.snort.org) - Snort alerts - tcpdump binary logs o using logsnorter (www.snort.org/downloads/logsnorter-0.2.tar.gz) - Cisco PIX - ipchains - iptables - ipfw From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acidwarp

This is a linux port of the popular dos program Acidwarp. Acidwarp is a program that makes neat looking pictures and rotates the palette. Its only use is for entertainment, but it is neat. I stumbled upon source code for Acidwarp on the net one day, and decided that it was high time someone ported it to linux. So, here it is. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ack

Kanji code converter ACK is a highly versatile Kanji code converter. ACK can do reciprocal conversion among Japanese EUC, Shift-JIS and 7bit JIS. JIS Kata-kana(SJIS Han-kaku Kana) is also supported. Kanji code can be automatically detected even if the input stream contains Kata-kana characters. Besides, ACK can be used as a Kanji code checker with very high detection rate. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acl

Access control list utilities This package contains the getfacl and setfacl utilities needed for manipulating access control lists. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aclocal

automatically generate aclocal.m4 from configure.in From whatis

acm4

A multi-player aerial combat simulation. acm is an air combat simulator that runs under the X window system. Up to eight players can engage in simultaneous air combat. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acorn-fdisk

Partition editor for Acorn/RISC OS machines Acorn-fdisk allows you to edit disk partitions on Acorn machines. It understands a variety of the partition tables formats used under RISC OS, including Filecore, ICS-IDE, EESOX and Powertec. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acpid

Utilities for using ACPI Modern computers support the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) to allow intelligent power management on your system and to query battery and configuration status. This package contains acpid, which is the user-space daemon needed in order to make the Linux ACPI support completely functional. In order to use this package you need a recent Kernel (=>2.4.7). This can be one including the patches on http://acpid.sourceforge.net or a non patched one. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

acronym

an abbreviation. Examples of Linux related acronyms are KDE, ELF and GNU. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

acs

Al's Circuit Simulator -- dummy package acs, Al's Circuit Simulator, has been renamed GNUCAP. This is a dummy package to force an upgrade to the new package name. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

activate

read/write flags marking active boot partition From whatis

adacgi

Ada CGI interface This package lets you build CGI applications in Ada. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

adapter

a device that allows one system to connect to and work with another. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

adaptive compression

a data compression technique that dynamically adjusts the algorithm used based on the content of the data being compressed. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

adbbs

ad! BBS. A perl based bbs or easy menu system. aD! BBS was basically written to provide a nice, easy to use menu / bbs interface, currently it doesn't handle special permissions, group permissions, etc. but they are in the 'todo' list. Supports ANSI Color. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

addgroup

add a user or group to the system From whatis

addr2line

convert addresses into file names and line numbers. From whatis

addressbook

Tk personal address manager Addressbook is an address manager meant to replace your old paper rolodex. It stores addresses, phone and fax numbers and can interact with some additional programs (i.e., for dialing) It has a nice user interface written in Tcl/Tk. The additional suggested software will enable additional functionality, such as automatic dialing, faxing, printing, etc. The program is still fully functional without any of the suggested software. Author: Clemens Durka <[email protected]> Homepage: http://home.pages.de/~addressbook/ From Debian 3.0r0 APT

adduser

Add and remove users and groups This package includes the adduser and deluser commands for creating and removing users. o Adduser can create new users and groups and add existing users to existing groups. o Deluser can remove users and groups and remove users from a given group. Adding users with adduser is much easier than adding them by hand. Adduser will choose appropriate UID and GID values, create a home directory, copy skeletal user configuration, allow you to set an initial password and the GECOS field. Deluser can optionally remove and backup the user's home directory and mail spool or all files on the system owned by him. Optionally a custom script can be executed after each of the commands. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

adjtimex

Utility to display or set the kernel time variables This program gives you raw access to the kernel time variables. For a machine connected to the Internet, or equipped with a precision oscillator or radio clock, the best way to keep the system clock correct is with xntpd. However, for a standalone or intermittently connected machine, you may use adjtimex instead to at least correct for systematic drift. adjtimex can optionally adjust the system clock using the CMOS clock as a reference, and can log times for long-term estimation of drift rates. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

admesh

processing triangulated solid meshes Currently, ADMesh only reads the STL file format that is used for rapid prototyping applications, although it can write STL, VRML, OFF, and DXF files. Some features of admesh are: Fill holes in the mesh by adding facets. Repair facets by connecting nearby facets. Repair normal directions (i.e. facets should be CCW) Remove degenerate facets (i.e. facets with 2 or more vertices equal) Web site: http://www.varlog.com/products/admesh/ From Debian 3.0r0 APT

admin

/ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). Compare postmaster, sysop, system mangler. From Jargon Dictionary

admin

short for administrator, referring to the systems person responsible for the maintenance of a computer. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

admwebuser

Manage Squid or Web users using a Web browser This utility allows you to manage Squid or Web users using only a simple Web browser. All the management tasks, including creating, changing, removing, enabling and disabling users can be performed through an easy-to-use Web interface. This package is also know as admuser but it was agreed that admwebuser would be a better package name to be used instead. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

advi

a DVI previewer and presenter written in Objective Caml Active-DVI is a DVI previewer and presenter written in Objective Caml (http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/) with some eye candy effects for presentation, support for interactive demonstrations, and embedding of arbitrary applications within the presentation (hence the Active adjective of the presenter :). Active-DVI does not (yet) support postscript fonts (see the README.Debian for more details). Active-DVI also has the ability to run embedded commands, which may cause security problems when viewing untrusted DVI files. make sure to read the README.Debian for more information From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aee

An easy to use screen-based editor aee (advanced easy editor) is intended to be an easy to use screen-based editor that requires no instruction to use. Its interface is highlighted by simple pop-up menus, which makes it easy for the users to carry out tasks without remembering the commands. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aegis

Advanced software management tool. Aegis integrates standard software tools such as gcc and cvs into an easy to use, extensible software management system. Aegis simplifies the problems associated with multiple developers and development trees using a transaction-based approach to version control, along with a web-browsable repository and an integrated testing mechanism. See aegis-doc for documentation, aegis-tk for a TK based user interface, and aegis-web for a web based user interface. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aeromail

Web-based e-mail client. AeroMail is a web-based e-mail client noted for its elegant interface. Other highlights include: - attachments - images - cookie-free http authentication. It is written in PHP using PHP's built in IMAP functions. Details at http://cushman.net/projects/aeromail/index.php From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aethera

Email and PIM application for KDE Aethera is a pim application, i.e. it handles all kinds of personal information: email, contacts, notes, tasks, todos, journals. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aewm

a minimalist window manager for X11 aewm is a minimalist window manager for X11. It has no nifty features, but is light on resources and extremely simple in appearance. It should eventually make a good reference implementation of the ICCCM. A few separate programs are included to handle running programs, switching between windows, etc. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aewm++

minimal window manager written in C++ aewm++ is a minimal window manager for X11, based on aewm. It keeps aewm's minimalist look and feel but is written in C++, and adds some modern features like virtual desktops and partial GNOME support. Also included with this package: * appbar: a small application launcher * aewm++_fspanel: a very small panel * setrootimage: draws a gradient on the X root window * aewm++_xsession: keeps an X session alive From Debian 3.0r0 APT

af

An Emacs-like mail reader and composer. Af is a standalone mail reader which has an Emacs-like interface by default. It has good facilities for handling folders, and commands for handling groups of messages in a single operation. Af is aimed primarily at Emacs users and people who deal with large amounts of mail daily, but other people have found it useful too. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

afbackup

Client-Server Backup System (Server side) This is a client-server backup system offering several workstations a centralized backup to a special backup server. Backing up only one computer is easily possible, too. Any streaming device can be used for writing the data to it, usually this will be a tape device. Writing backups is normally done sequentially: The next writing to tape goes to the end of the previous write no matter where you have restored from in the meantime. Features: - Authentication of the client is performed before it can take over control - Access restriction for the streamer device -> security - Client-side per-file compression -> reliability - Data stream is written to tape in pieces -> fast finding of files - Tape position logging for each file - Tape capacity is fully used - Full / incremental backups - Raw partitions can be backed up - Client and Server buffering for maximal throughput is done Note: Tk is required if you want to use the graphical configuration tool instead of the text configuration tool. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

affiche

application to "stick" little notes on the desktop. Affiche is a little application that allows people to "stick" little notes on their computer desktop. It was made for the GNUstep environment. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

afio

Archive file manipulation program. Afio manipulates groups of files, copying them within or between filesystems and an afio archive. Afio archives are portable as they contain only ASCII-formatted header information. Afio makes cpio-format archives. Afio deals somewhat gracefully with input data corruption. Afio supports multi-volume archives during interactive operation. Afio can make compressed archives that are much safer than compressed tar or cpio archives. Afio is best used as an `archive engine' in a backup script. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

afm2tfm

convert Adobe font metrics to TeX font metrics From whatis

afterstep

A window manager with the NEXTSTEP look and feel. AfterStep is a window manager based on FVWM which attempts to emulate the NEXTSTEP look and feel, while retaining the configurability of its predecessor. Note that this window manager makes extensive use of the color palette. If you have only an 8-bit color display, it will run as packaged, but you may want to modify the configuration to use fewer colors. AfterStep is a continuation of the BowMan window manager project, but the name was changed to reflect the desire that it do more than simply emulate and become a valuable window manager in its own right. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

agbrowser

The KDE2 frontend to the AudioGalaxy Linux client. AGBrowser is a program to complement the official satellite program for Linux from AudioGalaxy. By using AGBrowser, every dependency on another program to search for, download, share, and manage mp3s has been satisfied. AGBrowser requires the use of the non-open, non-free AudioGalaxy Satellite software. The installer is available as a Debian package, agsatellite. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aggregate

CIDR network aggregation and filtering aggregate is a tool for aggregating CIDR networks. Input is read from stdin and output is written to stdout. It understands IPv4 networks represented as network/prefix, network/netmask and start_address - end_address. It is able to read input in any one of these formats and output in the same or a different format. It is also able to limit the maximum and minimum prefix length that will be output. This can be used to filter, for instance ignoring all networks with a prefix longer than 24 bits. That is all networks smaller than a traditional Class C. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

agsatellite

Audiogalaxy Satellite (installer) The Audiogalaxy Satellite is a small and simple program that allows you to share your music with friends and other users on Audiogalaxy. Audiogalaxy does not allow redistribution of their software. Therefore, this package requires the user to fetch the Audiogalaxy Satellite separately from their web site. When you install this package you will be guided through that process. This package installs the file AGSatellite0520-glibc21.tar.gz from the www.audiogalaxy.com website (look for "Download Satellite"). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aide

Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment AIDE creates a database from the regular expression rules that it finds from the config file. Once this database is initialized it can be used to verify the integrity of the files. It has several message digest algorithms (md5,sha1,rmd160,tiger,haval,etc.) that are used to check the integrity of the file. More algorithms can be added with relative ease. All of the usual file attributes can also be checked for inconsistencies. You will almost certainly want to tweak the configuration file in /etc/aide/aide.conf. See manual.html for information on this file. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aime

Advanced Interactive Mudding Environment A MUD/Multi-user participatory environment server with a built-in builder port for straight-forward world creation, an online interpreted scripting engine for game logic, and an extremely flexible track-based level/quest/profession system. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

airsnort

WLAN sniffer A wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which cracks encryption keys on 802.11b WEP networks. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aish

ish/base64/uuencoded_file converter Aish is a file converter, which can encode binary files to ascii text as ish/base64/uuencoded_file. Aish can also decode them. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alamin-client

Alamin GSM SMS Gateway client Client part of the Alamin GSM SMS Gateway. Used to send commands local or remotely to the gateway server (send a message, query a queue status, etc.). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alamin-server

Alamin GSM SMS Gateway server Server part of the Alamin GSM SMS Gateway. This gateway allows you to send SMS messages over a GSM network, and receive SMS messages and run a program (called input message processor, IMP) to process the incoming message. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alarmd

KDE Alarm daemon. From whatis

alchemist

The alchemist is a back-end configuration architecture. Alchemist provides multi-sourced configuration at the data level, postponing translation to native format until the last stage. It uses XML for intermediary data encoding, and can be extended to arbitrarily large configuration scenarios. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

alcovebook-sgml

Alcove customisation of the DocBook DTD and stylesheets This includes the AlcoveBook DTD (generic, still to be refined into several other DTDs), and the Alcove DSSSL stylesheets, which currently include: - a generic extension over Norman Walsh's modular stylesheets - a book-like style for article - an improved article style (still somewhat experimental) It integrates smoothly within the sgml2x framework. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aleph

The Aleph programming language - runtime Aleph is a multi-threaded functional programming language with dynamic symbol bindings that support the object oriented paradigm. Aleph has a rich set of features providing runtime compatibility with C++. The engine runs on both 32 bits and 64 bits platforms. It is designed to be portable across platforms. This package contains the runtime binaries & libraries. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alevt

X11 Teletext/Videotext browser AleVT is an X11 program for browsing and searching Teletext/Videotext pages received by a compatible decoder (at the moment, bttv). Features include: * Multiple windows * Page cache * Regular expression searching * Built-in manual Additional command line utilities can * receive the time from Teletext/Videotext * capture pages and write them to disk Teletext/Videotext is used by TV channels to transmit textual information pages (it's transmitted via non-visible scan lines). Bttv is a driver for frame grabber cards using the Bt848 family of video decoder chips. It is included in the Linux kernel starting with version 2.2 or available separately from http://bytesex.org/bttv/ Homepage: http://www.goron.de/~froese/ From Debian 3.0r0 APT

algorithm

A predefined set of instructions for completing a task. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

algorithm

A series of rules/procedures for solving a mathematical or logical problem. From an infosec point of few, the most interesting mathematical problems are those of cryptography. Cryptographic algorithms of interest are those for encrypting messages or generating unique hashes. Analogy: An cookbook recipe is an algorithm. Key point: Different algorithms have different levels of complexity. For example, consider the ancient parable (Babylonian?) about a king and a wise subject who did a favor for him. The subject asked for one piece of grain to be placed on the first square of a chess board, two grains on the second, four grains on the third, and so on, doubling the amount of grain for each successive square. This problem demonstrates an algorithm of exponential complexity. For the first 10 squares of the chess board, the series is: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512. Thus, for the first 10 squares, roughly a thousand grains must be paid out. However, the series continues (using K=1024): 1k 2k 4k 8k 32k 64k 128k 256k 512k. Thus, for the first 20 squares, roughly a million grains must be paid out. After 30 squares, roughly a billion grains must be paid out. For 40 squares, roughly a trillion grains must be paid out. This is directly related to such things as key size. A 41-bit key is twice as hard to crack as a 40-bit key. A 50-bit key is a thousand times harder. A 60-bit key is a million times harder. This is why the 128-bit vs. 40-bit encryption debate is so important: 128-bit keys are a trillion trillion times harder to crack (via brute force) than 40-bit keys. Key point: Most algorithms are public, meaning that somebody trying to decrypt your message knows all the details of the algorithm. Consequently, the message is protected solely by the key. Many people try to add additional protection by making the details of the algorithm secret as well. Experience so far has led to the belief that this actually leads to weaker security for two reasons. First, such secrets always get discovered eventually, so if security depends upon this secret, it will eventually be broken. Secondly, human intelligence is such that someone cannot create a secure algorithm on his/her own. Therefore, only by working with a community of experts over many years can humans create a secure algorithm. To date, only two such communities exist: the entire world of cryptography experts publishing the details of their work and trying to break other people's work, and the tightly knit community of cryptography experts working in secret for the NSA. From Hacking-Lexicon

alias

An alternate name, or abbreviation, used in place of a command or a sequence of commands in the C shell and the Korn shell. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

alias

The word alias is used for many different things within infosec. In all its definitions, it generally means somesort of alternate name for something. Some definitions used for alias are: e-mail alias

alicq

Flexible ICQ client in pure Tcl/Tk Alicq is pure Tcl/Tk implementation of ICQ client with flexible modularized architecture, support for ICQ2000/Oscar protocol, and ability to pick up Licq configuration files and user database. Why would you use it? It is small, about 2500 lines as of release 0.6. It is modular and extendable in best tradition of the Tcl scripting language. New modules are easy to write, and dozen lines Tcl module can do a lot. It is crossplatfrom: works on Unix, Windows, Macintosh, and on any other system supported by Tcl/Tk. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alien

install non-native packages with dpkg Alien allows you to convert LSB, Red Hat, Stampede and Slackware Packages into Debian packages, which can be installed with dpkg. It can also generate packages of any of the other formats. This is a tool only suitable for binary packages. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

allcm

force the most important Computer-Modern-fonts to be calculated From whatis

allec

force the most important Computer-Modern-fonts to be calculated From whatis

allegro-demo

cool game, demonstrating power of the Allegro library This game is distributed with the Allegro library and shows a new Allegro programmer the power of this lib. But it is more than an usual feature demo, it is fully playable and may make some fun... From Debian 3.0r0 APT

allneeded

force the calculation of all fonts now needed From whatis

allow_null_glob_expansion

If set, bash allows pathname patterns which match no files (see Pathname Expansion below) to expand to a null string, rather than themselves. From Rute-Users-Guide

alml

This package provides a SGML typesetting system. Alml is a SGML typesetting system developed for a big italian document: "Appunti di informatica libera". Alml is made for very big documentation projects, and can generate PDF, PostScript, HTML and pure text output. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alpha software

The term used to describe an early release of software that will have many bugs and features missing. See beta software. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

alsaconf

ALSA configurator This is configurator for ALSA driver. Run it, if you need configure your sound card. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alsaplayer

PCM player designed for ALSA Alsaplayer is a PCM player designed specifically for use with ALSA, but works great with OSS or EsounD. It's heavily threaded which cuts down on skipping, offers optional and even simultaneous visual scopes, plays mp3, mp2, ogg, cdda, audiofs, and lots more. This empty package provides an easy transition to either the gtk or text frontends; it may be safely removed once all its dependencies are installed. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

alt

/awlt/ 1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or clone keyboard; see bucky bits, sense 2 (though typical PC usage does not simply set the 0200 bit). 2. n. The `option' key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also feature key, which is sometimes incorrectly called `alt'). 3. n.,obs. [PDP-10; often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some older terminals; also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character was almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in TECO, or under TOPS-10 -- always alt, as in "Type alt alt to end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This usage probably arose because alt is more convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by another alt or a character (or another alt and a character, for that matter). 4. The alt hierarchy on Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by users without a formal vote and approval procedure. There is a myth, not entirely implausible, that alt is acronymic for "anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists"; but in fact it is simply short for "alternative". From Jargon Dictionary

alt bit

/awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See meta bit. From Jargon Dictionary

altgcc

Alternate gcc package for the libc5 environment. This special gcc package works with the libc5-altdev package to build binaries for the old libc5/ld-linux.so.1 environment. It can coexist with the standard libc6 development packages. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

althea

IMAP email client for GTK+ The designers of Althea felt that there wasn't a stable, easy to use, GUI, IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) e-mail client for X Windows. The design goal was a stable e-mail client with the richness of usability of Microsoft's Outlook, Qualcomm's Eudora, and Cyrusoft's Mulberry. This package was built without SSL support. If you want SSL support, use the althea-ssl package, which is available in non-US, instead. Check the documentation at /usr/share/doc/althea/help.html before filing a bug report. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

am-utils

The 4.4BSD automounter. Amd is an automounter--it mounts file systems "on demand" when they are first referenced and unmounts them after a period of inactivity. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amanda-client

Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Client) Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many computers on a network to a single large-capacity tape drive. This package is suitable for large amounts of data to backup. For smaller solutions take a look at afbackup, tob, taper, ... Features: * will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk, blasting finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can write files to tape. For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s interface to a host with a large holding disk can be filled by Amanda in under 4 hours. * built on top of standard backup software: Unix dump/restore, and later GNU Tar and others. * does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape. * supports tape changers via a generic interface. Easily customizable to any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that can be controlled via the unix command line. * for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the proper backup image on the tape for you. * recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines. * reports results, including all errors in detail, in email to operators. * will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within constraints: no more juggling by hand when adding disks and computers to network. * includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks on both the tape server host and all the client hosts (in parallel), and will send an e-mail report of any problems that could cause the backups to fail. * can compress dumps before sending or after sending over the net, with either compress or gzip. * can optionally synchronize with external backups, for those large timesharing computers where you want to do full dumps when the system is down in single-user mode (since BSD dump is not reliable on active filesystems): Amanda will still do your daily dumps. * lots of other options; Amanda is very configurable. THIS PACKAGE RELIES ON A RUNNING AMANDA SERVER IN YOUR NETWORK. For a quick start read the README.client.debian in /usr/share/doc/amanda-client. Explanation of suggested programs: - awk and gnuplot are needed for plotting statistics of backups From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amanda-common

Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Libs) This package contains libraries required by the amanda client and server packages. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amanda-server

Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Server) Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many computers on a network to a single large-capacity tape drive. This package is suitable for large amounts of data to backup. For smaller solutions take a look at afbackup, tob, taper, ... Features: * will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk, blasting finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can write files to tape. For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s interface to a host with a large holding disk can be filled by Amanda in under 4 hours. * built on top of standard backup software: Unix dump/restore, and later GNU Tar and others. * does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape. * supports tape changers via a generic interface. Easily customizable to any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that can be controlled via the unix command line. * for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the proper backup image on the tape for you. * recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines. * reports results, including all errors in detail, in email to operators. * will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within constraints: no more juggling by hand when adding disks and computers to network. * includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks on both the tape server host and all the client hosts (in parallel), and will send an e-mail report of any problems that could cause the backups to fail. * can compress dumps before sending or after sending over the net, with either compress or gzip. * can optionally synchronize with external backups, for those large timesharing computers where you want to do full dumps when the system is down in single-user mode (since BSD dump is not reliable on active filesystems): Amanda will still do your daily dumps. * lots of other options; Amanda is very configurable. For a quick start read the README.server.debian in /usr/share/doc/amanda. Explanation of suggested programs: - perl is needed for some non essential server utilities - awk and gnuplot are needed for plotting statistics of backups - to backup the tape server, you need to install the client too - /usr/bin/Mail from mailx is used by amcheck to mail info about which tape is needed next, etc From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amap

Networt protocol probing tool Amap allows you to probe IP ports for running protocols, ignoring the port number. It does this by sending probe packets to the port and analyzing the responses. This will allow you to find services running on non-standard ports. Having nmap installed is suggested, since amap cannot scan for open ports (but there is an option to import nmap's output). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amaterus

GTK+ based window manager AMATERUS is a GTK+ based Window Manager. It has some interesting features like: * It is written with GTK * You can make "window group" and manipulate windows which belong to the group together. * You can edit the title bar strings. * Configuration file has an XML syntax (implementation is not so stable nor complete, though). * You can apply the GTK+ theme to the window manager. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amavis-postfix

Interface between MTA and virus scanner. AMaViS is a script that interfaces a mail transport agent (MTA) with one or more virus scanners. AMaViS supports MTAs are exim, qmail, postfix, and sendmail, although this version has been built with only postfix support. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amaya

Graphical HTML Editor from w3.org Amaya is a WYSIWYG HTML Editor, based on the thot toolkit developed at INRIA. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ame

hosts. These tools will provide you with the IP addresses for given host names, as well as other information about registered domains and network addresses.You should install bind-utils if you need to get information from DNS nameservers. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

ami

An X input method server for Korean text input Ami is an X input method server for Korean text input. Hangul or Hanja Korean text can be input with Ami, which responds the requests from XIM compliant applications. In this package, Ami has been built as a standalone version and a WindowMaker dock. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amor

a KDE creature for your desktop AMOR stands for Amusing Misuse Of Resources. It provides several different characters who prance around your X screen doing tricks and giving you tips. This package is part of the official KDE toys module. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amphetamine

jump'n run game that offers some unique visual effects Amphetamine is an exciting Jump'n run game that offers some unique visual effects like colored lighting, fogging and coronas. You must fight eleven evil monsters with your magic weapons. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

amplifier

Any type of system on the network that can be used to amplify (increase) the the size of traffic is known as an amplifier. Example: The classic example is the smurf amplifier. An attacker spoofs the address of a victim and sends directed broadcasts to the amplifier, which then sends hundreds of replies back to the victim. Thus, it only costs the attacker a single packet to send many packets to the victim. Example: A more subtle attack is the use of DNS. The DNS response packet can be much larger than the request. This allows an attacker to flood the victim with large packets at the cost of small packets. From Hacking-Lexicon

amstex

structured text formatting and typesetting From whatis

an

Very fast anagram generator. Generates anagrams for a phrase supplied by the user, the words used in the anagram are taken from a specified dictionary which should contain one word per line (default:/usr/share/dict/words). Appears to be up to 10 times faster than wordplay, especially for longer phrases. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

anacron

Anacron (like `anac(h)ronistic') is a periodic command scheduler. It executes commands at intervals specified in days. Unlike cron, it does not assume that the system is running continuously. It can therefore be used to control the execution of daily, weekly, and monthly jobs (or anything with a period of n days), on systems that do not run 24 hours a day. When installed and configured properly, Anacron will make sure that the commands are run at the specifiedintervals as closely as machine-uptime permits. This package is pre-configured to execute the daily jobs of the RedHat Linux system. You should install this program if your system is not powered on 24 hours a day to make sure the maintenance jobs ofother Red Hat Linux packages are executed periodically. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

anacron

a cron-like program that doesn't go by time Anacron (like `anac(h)ronistic') is a periodic command scheduler. It executes commands at intervals specified in days. Unlike cron, it does not assume that the system is running continuously. It can therefore be used to control the execution of daily, weekly and monthly jobs (or anything with a period of n days), on systems that don't run 24 hours a day. When installed and configured properly, Anacron will make sure that the commands are run at the specified intervals as closely as machine-uptime permits. This package is pre-configured to execute the daily jobs of the Debian system. You should install this program if your system isn't powered on 24 hours a day to make sure the maintenance jobs of other Debian packages are executed each day. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

analog

analyzes logfiles from web servers Analog is a fast logfile processor that generates usage statistic reports for your web server. Features: * It's fast. Very fast. It can process millions of lines per minute. * It's very scalable. * It's very flexible. The default output will be satisfactory for most people, but there are hundreds of options producing 32 different reports for those who want to do things differently. * It can output in many different languages, and 4 output formats. * It produces attractive output that complies with the HTML spec (and so can be read on any browser). * It can read logfiles in almost any format. * It can be run at the command line or from a web form interface. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

anarchism

An exhaustive exploration of Anarchist theory and practice. The Anarchist FAQ is an excellent source of information regarding Anarchist (libertarian socialist) theory and practice. It covers all major topics, from the basics of Anarchism to very specific discussions of politics, social organization, and economics. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

and

Auto Nice Daemon The auto nice daemon activates itself in certain intervals and renices jobs according to their priority and CPU usage. Jobs owned by root are left alone. Jobs are never increased in their priority. The renice intervals can be adjusted as well as the default nice level and the activation intervals. A priority database stores user/group/job tuples along with their renice values for three CPU usage time ranges. Negative nice levels are interpreted as signals to be sent to a process, triggered by CPU usage; this way, Netscapes going berserk can be killed automatically. The strategy for searching the priority database can be configured. AND also provides network-wide configuration files with host-specific sections, as well as wildcard/regexp support for commands in the priority database. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

angle brackets

n. Either of the characters < (ASCII 0111100) and > (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). Typographers in the Real World use angle brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the ISO `Bra' and `Ket' characters), or significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs. See broket, ASCII. From Jargon Dictionary

animals

Traditional AI animal guessing engine using a binary tree DB You think of an animal, and this package tries to guess it... when it's wrong, you teach it about your animal. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

anjuta

A GNOME development IDE, for C/C++. Anjuta is a GNOME development IDE and can be used to create either GNOME/Gtk+ applications with glade or glade-gnome or can be used for creating generic applications. It is designed for use with C/C++ and therefore features an easy to use debugger and compilation environment. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

anonymous FTP

A method of file transfer that allows you to log in to an FTP server as a guest. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

anonymous FTP

Access to FTP servers with an account name of "anonymous" or "ftp" (or sometimes "guest"). When you access FTP URLs with your web browser, it will automatically use anonymous FTP. This means that conceptually, anonymous FTP provides access similar to standard HTTP. However, there is a slight difference. Anonymous FTP servers are frequently misconfigured to allow for anonymous write access to the same directories as read access. Hackers regularly scan the Internet looking for anonymous FTP servers that they can use as drop-off spots for porn and warez. From Hacking-Lexicon

ant

Java based build tool like make A system independent (i.e. not shell based) build tool that uses XML files as "Makefiles". For more information see http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/index.html. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

antiword

Converts MS Word files to text and ps Antiword is a free MS Word reader. It converts the binary files from MS Word 6, 7, 97 and 2000 to text and Postscript. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ao40tlmview

Decoder and Viewer for AO-40 Telemetry AO40tlmview decodes the binary telemetry transmitted by the AMSAT OSCAR 40 satellite. It provides an ncurses-based (i.e., text-mode) interface for browsing through the telemetry blocks. The telemetry blocks can either be read from a file (e.g., downloaded from the AMSAT telemetry archive), or received live through a TCP or UDP connection to a demodulator. Furthermore, it can produce simple graphs of the telemetry, either through gnuplot if running in a graphical (X11) environment, or as a crude ASCII graph when running in a text-only environment. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aolserver

AOL Web Server This is the web engine that powers the mighty America On-Line. It is capable of serving a tremendous number of users, and can publish hundreds of virtual servers within the same process at the same time. It is similar in many respects to Zope, except based largely on Tcl. It is multi-threaded, and has a C API that can be used to extend its functionality. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apache

Versatile, high-performance HTTP server The most popular server in the world, Apache features a modular design and supports dynamic selection of extension modules at runtime. Some of its strong points are its range of possible customization, dynamic adjustment of the number of server processes, and a whole range of available modules including many authentication mechanisms, server-parsed HTML, server-side includes, access control, CERN httpd metafiles emulation, proxy caching, etc. Apache also supports multiple virtual homing. Separate Debian packages are available for PHP3, mod_perl, Java Servlet support, Apache-SSL, and other common extensions. More information is available at http://www.apache.org/. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apcalc

Arbitrary precision calculator (original name: calc) Calc is an arbitrary precision arithmetic system that uses a C-like language. Calc is useful as a calculator, an algorithm prototyper and as a mathematical research tool. More importantly, calc provides one with a machine independent means of computation. Calc comes with a rich set of builtin mathematical and programmatic functions. Calc is built on top of the library libcalc that represents numeric values as fractions reduced to their lowest terms. This library can also be used to add arbitrary precision capabilities to your own programs and is available in the Debian package `apcalc-dev'. The original name of this package is `calc', but it had to be changed to `apcalc' for Debian, because there's already another package called `calc' in Debian. Nevertheless, the binary and manpage installed by this package are still named `calc'. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apcd

APC Smart UPS daemon This daemon monitors an APC UPS either as master, with the serial cable attached to it, or as a slave, with a network connection to the master. The daemon constantly gathers information from the UPS (battery load, Temperature, workload, etc.) and logs them to a file. It shuts down the system cleanly after a certain period of constant power failure or if the battery load falls below a certain level. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apcupsd

APC UPS Power Management Controls / monitors the status of an APC UPS under Linux. Allows your computer or server to run for a specified length of time on UPS power, and then executes a controlled shutdown in the case of an extended power failure. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apel

Portable Emacs Library APEL stands for A Portable Emacs Library poe.el emulation module mainly for basic functions and special forms/macros of latest emacsen poem.el provide basic functions to write portable MULE programs mcharset.el provide MIME charset related features broken.el provide information of broken facilities of Emacs. pccl.el utility to write portable CCL program and some utilities. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apg

Automated Password Generator - Standalone version APG (Automated Password Generator) is the tool set for random password generation. It generates some random words of required type and prints them to standard output. This binary package contains only the standalone version of apg. This is the first version that can be compiled without SHA, which _should_ make it ok for main. This upload went to non-US nevertheless because I want to have a second opinion. Advantages: * Built-in ANSI X9.17 RNG (Random Number Generator)(CAST/SHA1) * Built-in password quality checking system (now it has support for Bloom filter for faster access --[ BETA ]--) * Two Password Generation Algorithms: 1. Pronounceable Password Generation Algorithm (according to NIST FIPS 181) 2. Random Character Password Generation Algorithm with 35 configurable modes of operation * Configurable password length parameters * Configurable amount of generated passwords * Ability to initialize RNG with user string * Support for /dev/random * Ability to crypt() generated passwords and print them as additional output. * Special parameters to use APG in script * Ability to log password generation requests for network version * Ability to control APG service access using tcpd * Ability to use password generation service from any type of box (Mac, WinXX, etc.) that connected to network * Ability to enforce remote users to use only allowed type of password generation The client/server version of apg has been deliberately omitted. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apmd

APMD is a set of programs for controlling the Advanced Power Management daemon and utilities found in most modern laptop computers. APMD can watch your notebook's battery and warnusers when the battery is low. APMD is also capable of shutting down the PCMCIA sockets before a suspend. Install the apmd package if you need to control the APM system on your laptop. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

apmd

Utilities for Advanced Power Management (APM) On laptop computers, the Advanced Power Management (APM) support provides access to battery status information and may help you to conserve battery power, depending on your laptop and the APM implementation. The apmd program also lets you run arbitrary programs when APM events happen (for example, you can eject PCMCIA devices when you suspend, or change hard drive timeouts when you connect the battery). This package contains apmd(8), a daemon for logging and acting on APM events; and apm(1), a client that prints the information in /proc/apm in a readable format. apmd is notified of APM events by the APM driver in the kernel. Recent Debian kernels are built with APM support but it is disabled by default. You need to boot the kernel with the "apm=on" option if you want to enable the driver. (You may need to add this option to your lilo command line.) From Debian 3.0r0 APT

app

/ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is often a self-contained environment for performing some well-defined task such as `word processing'; hackers tend to prefer more general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose tool, operating system. From Jargon Dictionary

append

To place after, or at the end of, a character, a line, or a file. In the vi editor, certain commands let you append text in a document. In the Bourne and C shells, the symbol >> allows you to append output to an existing file (or create a new file if the file does not yet exist). From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

append mode

In vi, the mode that allows you to type new text after existing text in a file; terminate this mode by pressing ESC. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

apple2

Apple ][ Emulator This is a fully-functional 100% Apple ][ emulator for the Linux console. It is partly written in 386 (AT&T) assembler and partly in C. You can switch diskettes using a diskette database through an intuitive interface. Furthermore, it is possible to trim the speed of the emulator and it runs in full speed (approximately) twice as fast as an standard Apple II+ on a 486DX-50. It uses the svgalib's key scancodes and implements the undocumented 6502 instructions (required by at least two games: Bug Attack and MS Pacman). Because the Apple ROMs are copyrighted, they are not included here. You will have to make copies of them from your old Apple computer. If you don't want to mess around with this, you can find a copy at: http://geta.life.uiuc.edu/~badger/files/apple_II.rom http://geta.life.uiuc.edu/~badger/files/slot6.rom Transferring your old Apple disks is a bit of work, but you can save yourself the trouble of digging up your old masters by seeing if some kind soul has already done the work for you at: ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/ Remember, you can only use these ROMs and images _legally_ if you already own the original. Have fun! (Ahhh.... What memories!) From Debian 3.0r0 APT

appres

list X application resource database From whatis

appunti-informatica-libera

Italian documentation about free software This package contains the HTML version of "Appunti di Informatica Libera" written by Daniele Giacomini <[email protected]>. The entire book is in Italian and there are no translations into other languages. The book can be downloaded in other formats from ftp://a2.swlibero.org/a2/. Questo pacchetto contiene la version HTML di "Appunti di Informatica Libera" di Daniele Giacomini <[email protected]>. L'intera opera h in Italiano e non esistono traduzioni in altre lingue. L'opera pur essere scaricata in altri formati da ftp://a2.swlibero.org/a2/. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apropos

search the manual page names and descriptions From whatis

aprsd

Internet Gateway for the Automatic Position Reporting System aprsd is an internet to RF gateway (igate) for the APRS Automatic Position Reporting System. It allows hams on the Internet to send text messages to hams on RF, especially when linked to the worldwide APRServe network (www.aprs.net). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aprsdigi

Digipeater for APRS aprsdigi is a repeater for the Automatic Position Reporting System, APRS. It also includes aprsmon, a one-way gateway to APRS on TCP/IP. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apsfilter

Magic print filter with automatic file type recognition apsfilter makes printing many file formats much easier. It features on-the-fly decompression and conversion, and works on both PostScript and non-PostScript (via Ghostscript) graphical printers. Among the supported formats are: gzip, bzip2, compress, freeze, pack, ASCII, BMP, data (PCL, etc.), DVI, FBM, FIG, FITS, GIF, Group 3 fax, HTML, IFF ILBM, JPEG, Kodak Photo CD, MGR, MIFF, PBM/PGM/PNM/PPM, PDF, PNG, PostScript, RLE, SGI, Sketch, Sun raster, Targa, TIFF, troff, WPG, X pixmap, XCF. Note that actual support depends on the installed filter programs. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt

Advanced front-end for dpkg This is Debian's next generation front-end for the dpkg package manager. It provides the apt-get utility and APT dselect method that provides a simpler, safer way to install and upgrade packages. APT features complete installation ordering, multiple source capability and several other unique features, see the Users Guide in /usr/share/doc/apt/guide.text.gz From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-cache

APT package handling utility - cache manipulator From whatis

apt-cdrom

APT CDROM managment utility From whatis

apt-config

APT Configuration Query program From whatis

apt-dpkg-ref

APT, Dpkg Quick Reference sheet A quick lookup chart with various APT and dpkg options for handy reference, for those who haven't quite memorized the most commonly used commands. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-extracttemplates

Utility to extract DebConf config and templates from Debian packages From whatis

apt-file

APT package searching utility -- command-line interface apt-file is a command line tool for searching packages for the APT packaging system. Unlike apt-cache, you can search in which package a file is included or list the contents of a package without installing or fetching it. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-ftparchive

Utility to generate index files From whatis

apt-get

APT package handling utility - command-line interface From whatis

apt-listchanges

Display new Debian changelog entries from .deb archives apt-listchanges is a tool to show what has been changed in a new version of a Debian package, as compared to the version currently installed on the system. It does this by extracting the relevant entries from the Debian changelog file, usually found in /usr/share/doc/package/changelog.Debian.gz It can be run on several .deb archives at a time to get a list of all of the changes that would be effected by installing or upgrading a group of packages. It can be configured to do this automatically during upgrades using apt. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-move

Move cache of Debian packages into a mirror hierarchy apt-move is used to move a collection of Debian package files into a proper archive hierarchy of the form debian/dists/... It is intended as a tool to help manage the apt-get(8) file cache, but could be configured to work with any collection of Debian packages. Running apt-move periodically will assist in managing the resulting partial mirror by optionally removing obsolete packages, and creating valid local Packages.gz files. It can also optionally employ rsync(1) to build a partial or complete local mirror of a Debian binary distribution (including an ``installed-packages only'' mirror). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-proxy

Debian archive proxy and partial mirror builder apt-proxy automatically builds a Debian HTTP mirror based on requests which pass through the proxy. It's great for multiple Debian machines on the same network with a slower internet link. The archive is automatically kept up to date using http, ftp or rsync. Cache cleaning of unused and old versions is configurable. You can also import the contents of your apt cache into the archive using apt-proxy-import. For more information, see the apt-proxy homepage at http://apt-proxy.sourceforge.net The suggested packages are needed for the following features: wget for http/ftp backend support, rsync for rsyncd backends, dpkg-dev for apt-proxy-import and stat for improved apt-proxy performance. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-setup

add apt download sources From whatis

apt-show-source

Shows source-package information This program parses the APT lists for source packages and the dpkg status file and then lists every package with a different version number than the one installed. It's very useful if your deb-src sources.list entries point to unstable and your deb entries point to stable. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-show-versions

Lists available package versions with distribution apt-show-versions parses the dpkg status file and the APT lists for the installed and available package versions and distribution and shows upgrade options within the specific distribution of the selected package. This is really useful if you have a mixed stable/testing environment and want to list all packages which are from testing and can be upgraded in testing. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-sortpkgs

Utility to sort package index files From whatis

apt-spy

writes a sources.list file based on bandwidth tests. Downloads from debian.org a list of current mirrors and tests each of the mirrors for bandwidth. Writes a /etc/apt/sources.list file based on the responses it gets. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-utils

APT utility programs This package contains some infrequently used APT utility programs such as apt-ftparchive, apt-sortpkgs and apt-extracttemplates. apt-extracttemplates is used by debconf to prompt for configuration questions before installation. apt-ftparchive is used to create Package and other index files. apt-sortpkgs is a Package/Source file normalizer. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

apt-zip

Update a non-networked computer using apt and removable media These scripts simplify the process of using dselect and apt on a non-networked Debian box, using removable media like ZIP floppies. One generates a `fetch' script (supporting backends such as wget and lftp, in a modular, extensible way) to be run on a host with better connectivity, check space constraints of your removable media, and then install the package on your Debian box. Note on current version: space-checking is not done and spanning multiple disks is not yet supported. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aptitude

curses-based apt frontend aptitude is a curses-based apt frontend with a number of useful extended features, including: a mutt-like syntax for matching packages in a flexible manner, dselect-like persistence of user actions, the ability to retrieve and display the Debian changelog of most packages, and extreme flexibility and customization. aptitude is also Y2K-compliant, non-fattening, naturally cleansing, and housebroken. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ar

create, modify, and extract from archives From whatis

aranym

Atari Running on Any Machine aranym is a 32bit Atari ST/TT/Falcon software layer (read as virtual machine) for Atari applications. NOTE: For proper use you will need image of Atari Falcon ROM or you can use open source ROM image from EmuTOS project at http://emutos.sf.net From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arbortext-catalog

Catalog support classes and parsing tools These Java classes implement the OASIS Entity Management Catalog format for resolving XML public identifiers into accessible files or resources on a user's system or throughout the Web. These definitions can easily be incorporated into most Java-based XML processors, thereby giving the users of these processors all the benefits of public identifier use. Two sample applications for parsing catalogs and resolving entities are included. Related tools that provide catalog support for the Saxon and XT xslt processors are available in the saxon-catalog and xt-catalog packages. Author: Norman Walsh <[email protected]> Homepage: http://www.arbortext.com/customer_support/updates_and_technical_notes/catalogs/docs/README.htm From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arch

print machine architecture From whatis

arch

revision control system arch is a revision control system with features that are ideal for projects characterized by widely distributed development, concurrent support of multiple releases, and substantial amounts of development on branches. It is intended to replace CVS and corrects many mis-features of that system. Highlights: - distributed databases - fancy merging - renames handling - web interface From Debian 3.0r0 APT

archivemail

archive and compress your old email Archivemail moves old mail out of a mailbox (in Maildir, MH, or mbox-format) and archives it in a compressed mbox-format mailbox file. It is well suited to be run from cron for automatic archiving of your old mail. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arena

n. [common; Unix] The area of memory attached to a process by brk(2) and sbrk(2) and used by malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So named from a malloc: corrupt arena message emitted when some early versions detected an impossible value in the free block list. See overrun screw, aliasing bug, memory leak, memory smash, smash the stack. From Jargon Dictionary

arg

/arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare param, parm, var. From Jargon Dictionary

argante

A new virtual operating system A new Polish (complete!) virtual operating system - written to be secure and stable - and, by the way, very efficient. Argante supports Hierarchical Access Control (HAC) and OSI architecture and also DISTRIBUTED NETWORKING. So every software written for Argante can be divided into some parts, each of them running on diferrent computer (the software is platform independent, so one of modules can run on Linux, the other one - on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS/Solaris or IRIX). Compiled without SSL support because of restrictions in some countries - but you can use ssh tunnelling to get secure rIPC connections. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

argument

a mathematical term that refers to a number, character or word which changes the action of the command it is applied to. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

argus-client

IP network transaction auditing tool argus is a network transaction auditing tool that allows the user to easily classify connections using tcpdump(1) compliant expressions. Argus runs as an application level daemon, promiscuously reading network datagrams from a specified interface, and generates network traffic audit records for the network activity that it encounters. Auditing records can be used to ensure that access control policies are being enforced, identify network problems such as denial of service attacks and more. This package contains the client programs for the argus server. Please see the package argus-server for the appropriate server. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

argus-server

IP network transaction auditing tool argus is a network transaction auditing tool that allows the user to easily classify connections using tcpdump(1) compliant expressions. Argus runs as an application level daemon, promiscuously reading network datagrams from a specified interface, and generates network traffic audit records for the network activity that it encounters. Auditing records can be used to ensure that access control policies are being enforced, identify network problems such as denial of service attacks and more. This package contains the binaries required for the argus server. Please see the package argus-client for appropriate clients. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ari-yahoo

Text based simple Yahoo Messenger client Simple Yahoo messenger client that requires no windowing system. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aria

a download tool similar to Reget or GetRight Aria is a download tool similar to Reget or GetRight. It downloads files from Internet via HTTP or FTP. The transfer can be paused, resumed, queued and saved. It has very friendly GTK based GUI, and useful log consoles. Program supports CRC checking, HTTP proxy server, cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, and can define specific file retrieving procedure for particular web servers. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aribas

interpreter for arithmetic ARIBAS is an interactive interpreter suitable for big integer arithmetic and multiprecision floating point arithmetic. It has a syntax similar to Pascal or Modula-2, but contains also features from other programming languages like C, Lisp, Oberon. The Aribas home page is http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~forster/sw/aribas.html From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aris-extractor

Scan system logs for security incidents and report them to ARIS The Attack Registry and Intelligence Service (ARIS) is a free, user-integrated attack-trending system hosted by SecurityFocus that allows administrators and operators of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) to track, evaluate and respond to security alerts and attacks in a proactive manner. As an integral piece of the ARIS Analzyer service, SecurityFocus's open-source ARIS Extractor utility distills data provided by IDS attack-list logs to build client portfolios that provide meaningful, graphical analysis of potentially malicious network incidents. By filtering out insignificant or benign data and converting it to a common format (xml), ARIS Extractor streamlines incident reporting for both security professionals and home users in a way that allows IDS operators to focus only on relevant attacks and incidents. Additionally, ARIS Extractor ensures client confidentiality through secure file-transfer protocols and optional IP address suppression. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ark

An archiver for KDE An archiver for KDE Supports: zip, tar, tar + compression (lzop, gzip, bzip2, bzip, compress) lha, zoo, rar, ar, etc... From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ark

Ark is a KDE tool for handling archive files. It supports the following file formats: zip, plain tar and tar with compression, gzip, bzip2, bzip, compress, lha, zoo, single files compressed with compressors, lzop, gzip, bzip2, bzip, compress rar and ar From Redhat 8.0 RPM

ark

KDE archive tool. From whatis

arla

A free client for the AFS distributed network filesystem This is a free, mostly independently written, implementation of the client side of the Andrew File System. AFS is a distributed network file system. AFS presents a unified directory hierarchy /afs containing all volumes from any site. The default configuration includes many sites including KTH, MIT, CMU and others. For authentication AFS uses Kerberos. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arla-modules-source

Source to generate arla-modules This package provides the source code xfs kernel module which is actually a generic user-space filesystem interface. Arlad communicates with it over a character device and handles all file system requests. Xfs caches some lookups but doesn't implement any of the AFS protocol. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

armagetron

A 3D Tron-like high speed game. A 3D Tron-like high speed game. The rules are simple: you ride a light cycle (a kind of motorbike that can only turn 90 degrees at a time, leaves a wall behind and cannot be stopped) and have to avoid running into walls while at the same time you have to try to get your opponent to run into them. The idea is based on the Disney movie from 1982 called "Tron". If you ever wanted to take a try at one of those speed demons features in the movie, this is your chance. Of all the Tron clones out there, I think one is the one that comes closest to the feeling the movie tries to express. This is in part thanks to the sophisticated camera motions, in part to the superb modelling work and in part to the fabulous sound effects. To add some extra fascination into the game, unlike to other Tron clones, in armagetron you can accelerate. Alas, there's no accelerate button. If you want to drive fast, you have to drive good -- and really really close to the walls. Armagetron can be played against AI opponents, against other humans over the network, or a mixture of both. Still not convinced? http://pluto.spaceports.com/~zman/armagetron/ From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arp

Linux ARP kernel module. From whatis

arp

manipulate the system ARP cache From whatis

arpack++

object-oriented version of the ARPACK package. ARPACK++ is an object-oriented version of the ARPACK package. It consists a collection of classes that offers c++ programmers an interface to ARPACK. It preserves the full capability, performance, accuracy and low memory requirements of the FORTRAN package, but takes advantage of the c++ object-oriented programming environment. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arpack2

Fortran77 subroutines to solve large scale eigenvalue problems. ARPACK software is capable of solving large scale symmetric, nonsymmetric, and generalized eigenproblems from significant application areas. The software is designed to compute a few (k) eigenvalues with user specified features such as those of largest real part or largest magnitude. Storage requirements are on the order of n*k locations. No auxiliary storage is required. A set of Schur basis vectors for the desired k-dimensional eigen-space is computed which is numerically orthogonal to working precision. Numerically accurate eigenvectors are available on request. Important Features: o Reverse Communication Interface. o Single and Double Precision Real Arithmetic Versions for Symmetric, Non-symmetric, o Standard or Generalized Problems. o Single and Double Precision Complex Arithmetic Versions for Standard or Generalized Problems. o Routines for Banded Matrices - Standard or Generalized Problems. o Routines for The Singular Value Decomposition. o Example driver routines that may be used as templates to implement numerous Shift-Invert strategies for all problem types, data types and precision. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arpd

A user-space ARP daemon The ARP daemon moves the management of the ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) table from kernel to user space. It is useful for sites with LARGE network segments (256+ systems per segment), because the kernel hash tables are not optimized to handle this situation. To use the ARP daemon your kernel needs to have ARPD and NETLINK support enabled. The standard kernels of Debian GNU/Linux lack this support. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arping

sends IP and/or ARP pings (to the MAC address) The arping utility sends ARP and/or ICMP requests to the specified host and displays the replies. The host may be specified by its hostname, its IP address, or its MAC address. This program is only able to run as root. Make it setuid if you like. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arpwatch

Ethernet/FDDI station activity monitor. Arpwatch maintains a database of Ethernet MAC addresses seen on the network, with their associated IP pairs. Alerts the system administrator via e-mail if any change happens, such as new station/activity, flip-flops, changed and re-used old addresses. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

artist

Emacs Lisp drawing package Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines, rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. Note: Artist does not work with XEmacs From Debian 3.0r0 APT

arts

aRts (Analog Real-Time Synthesizer) is a sound system for KDE.aRts creates and processes sound using small modules that do certain tasks. aRts modules can create waveforms (oscillators), playsamples, filter data, add signals, perform effects like delay/flanger/chorus, or output the data to a soundcard. By connecting all of the modules together, you can perform complex tasks like simulating a mixer, generating an instrument, or playing a wave file with effects. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

artsbuilder

Arts synthesizer designer This is the analog real-time synthesizer graphical design tool. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

as

the portable GNU assembler. From whatis

as86

Assembler for 8086..80386 processors From whatis

ascd

CD player and mixer AScd is a small CD player and mixer that can be "docked" with AfterStep and WindowMaker window managers. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ascdc

AfterStep CD changer ascdc is a small CD changer. It follows the look and feel of the AfterStep window manager and is ideally suited to be run within AfterStep's Wharf module. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ascii

Prints aliases and tables for ASCII character. A programmer's utility that recognizes different ways of naming ASCII characters (hex, octal, binary, decimal, C escape, ISO character table pair, slang names, and others) and prints out all equivalent aliases. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ascii-xfr

upload/download files using the ASCII protocol From whatis

asclassic

X11 window manager, AfterStep Classic (forked from v1.1) AfterStep Classic is a window manager based on AfterStep v1.1 which attempts to retain and improve on AfterStep's well-tested stability and configurability. Note that this window manager makes extensive use of the color palette. If you have only an 8-bit color display, it will run as packaged, but you may want to modify the configuration to use fewer colors. AfterStep is a continuation of the BowMan window manager project, but the name was changed to reflect the desire that it do more than simply emulate and become a valuable window manager in its own right. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asclock

A clock designed with the NeXTStep look This little application displays the time of the day (digital, either 12 or 24 hour format), and the date. It provides three alternatives: one suitable for low color systems, one with "real" NeXTStep colors, and the third one is somewhat in between. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ascpu

This is an AfterStep look & feel CPU statistics monitor tool. ascpu is a neat 54x54 applet that displays instantaneous and average system, nice and user CPU time. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asd4

Advanced Sound Daemon asd is a full featured esound-replacement. In the final version it will implement everything esound (http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/EsounD.html) does, plus many features. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ash

A shell is a basic system program that interprets keyboard and mousecommands. The ash shell is a clone of Berkeley's Bourne shell(sh). Ash supports all of the standard sh shell commands, but is considerably smaller than sh. The ash shell lacks some Bourne shell features (for example, command-line histories), but uses considerably less memory. You should install ash if you need a lightweight shell with many of the same capabilities as the sh shell. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

ash

NetBSD /bin/sh "ash" is a POSIX compliant shell that is much smaller than "bash". We take advantage of that by making it the shell on the installation root floppy, where space is at a premium. It can be usefully installed as /bin/sh (because it executes scripts somewhat faster than "bash"), or as the default shell either of root or of a second user with a userid of 0 (because it depends on fewer libraries, and is therefore less likely to be affected by an upgrade problem or a disk failure). It is also useful for checking that a script uses only POSIX syntax. "bash" is a better shell for most users, since it has some nice features absent from "ash", and is a required part of the system. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asis-programs

Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) example programs ASIS (Ada Semantic Interface Specification) lets you develop applications to walk through the sources of your Ada programs and examine the semantic constructs. This package contains four programs (asistant, display_source, gnatelim and gnatstub) which are useful to understand or optimize Ada programs. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmail

AfterStep mail monitor asmail is a small mail monitor similar to xbiff. It follows the AfterStep window manager's look and feel and is ideally suited to be run within AfterStep's Wharf module. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmem

This is an AfterStep look & feel memory utilization monitor. asmem displays memory (user/system, buffer and cache) and swap usage in a small 54x54 X window. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmix

The tool displays a volume knob. The volume knob adjusts the master volume of your sound card. Just grab the knob with the left button of your mouse and drag it around. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmixer

AfterStep audio mixer asmixer is a small audio mixer. It follows the look and feel of the AfterStep window manager and is ideally suited to be run within AfterStep's Wharf module. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmodem

AfterStep modem monitor asmodem is a hack of asmail that checks a modem lock file instead of your mail. You just pass it a lock (like /var/lock/LCK..ttyS1) using the -m parameter and off it goes. For best results, use the -s and have wharf Swallow it. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmon

A system resource monitor dockapp for Afterstep and WindowMaker Asmon is a wharfable/dockable application for that displays meters detailing CPU, memory, swap, and X mem usage. Also included the exact numbers for load average, mem, swap, and X. Developed to use very little CPU time itself. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asmounter

monitoring mount points tool asmounter monitors different mount points and facilitates the mounting/unmounting of these mount points. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asnparser

ASN.1 to C/C++ converter This console application helps to convert your ASN.1 description files to C/C++ applications. For more information on asnparser visit the development homepage http://www.openh323.org/ From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asp

Discovers present ip-address of dynamically connected hosts. Asp discovers the present ip address of a host that has a dynamically assigned ip-address. This is useful when you want to connect to dynamic hosts, or to help others find you (in which case you run asp as a server). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aspell

A more intelligent replacement for the ispell spell checker Aspell is an interactive spell checker that is designed to eventually replace ispell. It does a much better job of coming up with possible suggestions than ispell (and in some cases even Microsoft Word 97's spell checker). It also has run time support for other non English languages. aspell can learn from users misspellings. Aspell is designed to be a drop-in replacement for ispell. This package comes with a minimal man page. If you want more detailed documentation you should install the aspell-doc package and read the documentation in /usr/share/doc/aspell-doc/. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aspell

Aspell is a spelling checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. Aspell's primary advantage (over Ispell) is greater ability tosuggesting correct spellings. Aspell includes both compile-time and run-time support for non-English languages and can spellcheck (La)TeXand HTML files. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

aspell

GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a much better job of coming up with possible suggestions than just about any other spell checker out there for the Englishlanguage, including Ispell and Microsoft Word. It also has many other technical enhancements over Ispell such as using shared memory for dictionaries and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one Aspell processis open at once. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

asr-manpages

alt.sysadmin.recovery manual pages A set of humorous manual pages developed on alt.sysadmin.recovery (don't treat them seriously!). They document a set of really useful tools that for some strange reason are not included in any implementation of Unix. This includes such famous commands as lart, sysadmin, luser, bosskill and others. The authors recommend these man pages should be installed on every system. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

assembler

a program which converts assembly language into machine code. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

assign

To give a value to a variable in a programming or configuration statement. For example, in the Bourne shell statement TERM=vt100, you assign the value vt100 to the environmental variable TERM, which identifies your terminal type (VT100) to Linux. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

asterisk

Open Source Private Branch Exchange (PBX) Asterisk is an Open Source Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and telephony development platform that can both replace a conventional PBX and act as a platform for developing custom telephony applications for delivering dynamic content over a telephone similarly to how one can deliver dynamic content through a web browser using CGI and a web server. Asterisk talks to a variety of telephony hardware including BRI, PRI, POTS, and IP telephony clients using the Inter-Asterisk eXchange protocol (e.g. gnophone or miniphone). For more information and a current list of supported hardware, see http://www.asteriskpbx.com. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

astyle

Source code indenter for C++/C/Java source code Artistic Style is a reindenter and reformatter of C++, C and Java source code. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

asynchronous

It describes a communications strategy where start and stop bits are used to indicate the beginning and end of a character. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

at

At and batch read commands from standard input or from a specified file.At allows you to specify that a command will be run at a particular time(now or a specified time in the future). Batch will execute commands when the system load levels drop to a particular level. Both commands use /bin/sh to run the commands. You should install the at package if you need a utility that will dotime-oriented job control. Note: you should use crontab instead, if it is a recurring job that will need to be repeated at the same time everyday/week/etc. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

at

Delayed job execution and batch processing At and batch read shell commands from standard input storing them as a job to be scheduled for execution in the future. Use at to run the job at a specified time batch to run the job when system load levels permit From Debian 3.0r0 APT

at

queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution From whatis

atari-fdisk-cross

Partition editor for Atari (running on non-Atari) Atari-fdisk allows you to create and edit the partition table of a disk partitioned in Atari format. It supports both the AHDI 5.0 and ICD variations of the Atari format. It is an interactive tool with a menu similar to PC fdisk, and also supports most options of PC fdisk. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atari800

Atari emulator for svgalib/X/curses This is an Atari emulator that can use SVGALIB, X, or plain curses. It can emulate the Atari 800, 800XL, 130XE, and 5200 systems. The Atari Operating System ROMs are not available with this package, due to copyright. You'll have to either make copies of them from an old Atari computer, or see README.Debian for other ways to obtain them. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atd

run jobs queued for later execution From whatis

aterm

Afterstep XVT - a VT102 emulator for the X window system Aterm is a colour vt102 terminal emulator, based on rxvt 2.4.8 with some additions of fast transparency, intended as an xterm replacement for users who do not require features such as Tektronix 4014 emulation and toolkit-style configurability. As a result, aterm uses much less swap space -- a significant advantage on a machine serving many X sessions. It was created with AfterStep Window Manager users in mind, but is not tied to any libraries, and can be used anywhere. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atfs

The Attributed File System (AtFS). AtFS is a storage system supporting multiple versions of files and associating an arbitrary number of application defined attributes of the form "name=value" with each version. AtFS comes as a function library that is meant as an extension to the UNIX file system. It does this without the need for kernel modifications and without imposing any restrictions to existing file system applications. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atftp

Advanced TFTP client. Interactive client for the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP). Its usage is mainly for testing and debugging a TFTP server since a client is usually implemented in BIOS' for boot from LAN setups. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atftpd

Advanced TFTP server. Multithreaded TFTP server implementing all options specified in RFCs 1350, 2090, 2347, 2348, 2349 (multicast not implemented yet). The server currently supports being started from inetd(8) only. The server then handles new connections directly by starting new threads and kills itself after 5 minutes of inactivity. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atime

Unix jargon for "the time a file was last accessed". (cf. ctime, mtime). From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

atk

The ATK library provides a set of interfaces for adding accessibility support to applications and graphical user interface toolkits. By supporting the ATK interfaces, an application or toolkit can be used with tools such as screen readers, magnifiers, and alternative inputdevices. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

atlas2

Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software,generic shared ATLAS is an approach for the automatic generation and optimization of numerical software for processors with deep memory hierarchies and pipelined functional units. The production of such software for machines ranging from desktop workstations to embedded processors can be a tedious and time consuming task. ATLAS has been designed to automate much of this process. We concentrate our efforts on the widely used linear algebra kernels called the Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines (BLAS). These libraries are built without any processor extension instructions, and should run on all processors of this general architecture, albeit less than optimally. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atm-tools

Base programs for ATM in Linux, the net-tools for ATM. All the basic programs for setting up, monitoring, and tuning ATM networks. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atobm

bitmap editor and converter utilities for the X Window System From whatis

atokx

Kana-Kanji translation system ATOKX for Linux (Installer) This package is installer to install "ATOKX for Linux" to Debian system, ATOKX is released by JUSTSYSTEM Corporation. It is commercial software and does not allow redistribution. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atool

A script for managing file archives of various types atool is a script for managing file archives of various types (tar, tar+gzip, zip etc). The main command is probably aunpack, extracting files from an archive. It overcomes the dreaded "multiple files in archive root" problem by first extracting to a unique subdirectory, and then moving back the files if possible. aunpack also prevents local files from being overwritten by mistake. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atp

a text to PostScript converter with some C syntax highlighting atp is a text to postscript converter. It supports a special "gaudy" output mode, uses user-selectable number of columns and margins in the output, supports nroff's bold and italic conventions, and has some syntax highlighting for C and C++ sources. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

atq

queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution From whatis

atrm

queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution From whatis

atrun

run jobs queued for later execution From whatis

atsar

system activity reporter monitor system resources such as cpu & disk, record data for later analysis From Debian 3.0r0 APT

attr

A set of tools for manipulating extended attributes on filesystem objects, in particular getfattr(1) and setfattr(1). An attr(1) command is also provided which is largely compatible with the SGI IRIX tool of the same name. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

attr

Utilities for manipulating filesystem extended attributes A set of tools for manipulating extended attributes on filesystem objects, in particular getfattr(1) and setfattr(1). An attr(1) command is also provided which is largely compatible with the SGI IRIX tool of the same name. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aub

Assembles binary files from USENET AUB automatically assembles the pieces of multi-part Usenet postings and decodes them. A user-supplied configuration file tells which newsgroups AUB should monitor. The user can also supply a "hook" program, which tests each subject header and determines whether that particular file should be downloaded or not. Resumed development resuming after 10 years of inactivity has given AUB the better documentation and the new abilities to decode Base64 files, perform NNTP authentication as well as a good deal of additional functionality. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

auctex

An integrated environment for writing TeX/LaTeX documents. AUC TeX can indent your text as you write it, let you run TeX/LaTeX and other LaTeX-related tools (such as a output filter or post processor) from within Emacs, and includes a wide range of Emacs macros to allow both easy insertions of LaTeX commands, and easy compilation, previewing, and printing of your TeX documents. AUC TeX also lets you browse through compiling errors TeX reports, while it moves the cursor directly to the reported error and displays documentation for that particular error. This will even work when the document is spread over several files. Currently XEmacs ships with its own AUC TeX, so this package should only be used with GNU/Emacs. (I.e., you don't need to install this package if your site uses only XEmacs.) From Debian 3.0r0 APT

audacity

A fast, cross-platform audio editor Audacity is an innovative graphical audio editor. Its main goals are speed and being cross-platform (it uses the cross-platform toolkit wxWindows, and is fully supported on Linux, Windows, Mac OS 9 and X, and FreeBSD). It is very fast. Due to its file format and internal data representation, undo and redo are constant-time operations. It also supports an unlimited number of tracks, and can import and export a number of different formats including WAV, AIFF, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

audiofile

The Audio File library is an implementation of SGI's Audio File Library, which provides an API for accessing audio file formats likeAIFF/AIFF-C, WAVE, and NeXT/Sun .snd/.au files. This library is used by the EsounD daemon.Install audio file if you are installing EsounD or you need an API forany of the sound file formats it can handle. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

audiooss

transparent OSS emulation over NAS This is a compatibility utility that allows programs written for the popular Open Sound System (OSS) interface to run using the Network Audio System (NAS) instead. It works by preloading a library to intercept and manipulate critical system calls such as open(), read(), and write(). The emulation is not yet complete, but it already works for many programs. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

audit

The word audit has two meanings. The first is the security audit, whereby a consulting firm comes in and validates a companies security profile. This is similar to how accounting firms review a company's books. The second term is infosec specific, and means an "auditing" subsystem that monitors actions within the system. For example, it may keep a record of everyone who logs onto a system. Such a record is known as an audit trail. From Hacking-Lexicon

august

Tcl/Tk HTML editor. August is a Tcl/Tk HTML editor with interesting features. It is not WYSIWYG but is very useful for developing HTML pages. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aumix

Aumix is a tty-based, interactive method of controlling a sound card mixer. It lets you adjust the input levels from the CD, microphone, and board synthesizers, as well as the output volume. Aumix can adjust audio mixers from the command line, from a script, or interactively at the console or terminal with an ncurses-based interface. The aumix-X11 package provides a GTK+ interface for using aumix with the X Window System. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

aumix

Simple text-based mixer control program aumix is a small, easy-to-use program to control the mixer of your sound card. It runs in text mode using the ncurses library, or from the command line (non-interactively). It can read default settings from a file. A wrapper script xaumix is provided that finds and invokes xterm or a replacement. This is primarily for creating the best sized terminal window. If you want a true graphical interface, install aumix-gtk instead. That has the same functionality as this one in addition to offering a nice X11 GUI. The old companion package aumix-alsa, which did take advantage of the extra facilities in the ALSA sound driver, is no longer available. This package should work fine with the ALSA driver. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

aumix

This is a program for adjusting audio mixers from the command line or scripts, or interactively at the console or a terminal with a full-screen, ncurses-based interface or a GTK-based X interface. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

authbind

Allows non-root programs to bind() to low ports This package allows a package to be started as non-root but still bind to low ports, without any changes to the application. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

authconfig

Authconfig is a terminal mode program which can configure a workstation to use shadow passwords. Authconfig can also configure asystem to be a client for certain networked user information and authentication schemes. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

authentication

In infosec, authentication is the process of identifying an individual or data. The goal of authentication is to confirm the identification of an individual, message, file, or other data. The two primary areas of authentication are user authentication (proving that Bob is who he says he is) and message authentication (proving that your nuclear missile launch orders weren't forged or corrupted). The antonym of authentication is forgery. Contrast: Authentication will identify who an individual is; authorization will identify what the individual is allowed to do. Example: When you log in with your username and give the password, you are authenticating yourself to the system. You are proving that you are you because, in theory, only you know your password. Contrast: Abstractly, anything that combats forgery is called authentication. For example, IPsec includes an Authentication Header (AH) that proves that a packet hasn't been modified in transit. However, this feature overlaps with the abstract concept of integrity: both are checked at the same time. Examples: biometrics Signature (handwriting), facial features, fingerprint, etc. smart-card A card with an on-board microprocessor that can run crypto algorithms. For example, it may store a private-key, and be able to encrypt/decrypto tokens with that key. passwords digital certificates A small file containing public or private keys. SecureID A commercial product that uses a key and the current timestamp to generate a stream of random numbers that can be verified by a server. A user has roughly 10 seconds to enter the current number displayed on the card. Contrast: Three things used for authentication: physical (what you have) car keys, subway tokens, driver's license, passport, credit cards, ID cards, smart cards knowledge (what you know) PINs, usernames/passwords, account numbers, mother's maiden name biometrics (who you are) written signature, fingerprint, what you look like, etc. See also: Authentication is often mentioned along with other key security concepts such as integrity, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. From Hacking-Lexicon

authentication

the verification of the identity of a person or process. In a communication system, authentication verifies that messages really come from their stated source, like the signature on a (paper) letter From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

authenticity

In infosec, authenticity is about making sure that the message received is the same as the message that was sent. In law, authenticity is about validating that evidence has been gathered correctly by a reliable source and hasn't been tampered with. Contrast: The terms integrity and authenticity are widely used to mean the same thing. In other situations, they have subtly different meanings (especially law). The term integrity generally describes defending against malicious change of a message once it has been sent, whereas authenticity implies some sort of validation of the sender of the message to protect against forgeries. Contrast: The terms authentication and authenticity are widely used to mean the same thing. The subtle difference is that authentication is about someone proving who they say they are, whereas authenticity is about proving that message was sent by a certain person. From Hacking-Lexicon

authorization

In infosec, the concept of authorization validates that someone has the rights to access something. For example, you are authorized to read files from my webserver, but I don't authorize you to change anything. Contrast: The first stage of authorization is generally authentication. Before you decide what an individual is allowed to do, you must first establish who they are. In some cases, authorization is independent from authentication, such as not allowing anybody to logon after midnight. From Hacking-Lexicon

auto-apt

package search by file and on-demand package installation tool auto-apt checks the file access of programs running within its environments, and if a program tries to access a file known to belong in an uninstalled package, auto-apt will install that package using apt-get. This feature requires apt and sudo to work. It also provides simple database to search which package contains a requesting file. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

auto-pgp

PGP tools for command-line and Emacs use This package provides the shell commands pgp-auto, pgp-decrypt, and pgp-pixie. It also integrates PGP into your Emacs mailreader. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

auto_resume

This variable controls how the shell interacts with the user and job control. If this variable is set, single word simple commands without redirections are treated as candidates for resumption of an existing stopped job. There is no ambiguity allowed; if there is more than one job beginning with the string typed, the job most recently accessed is selected. The name of a stopped job, in this context, is the command line used to start it. If set to the value exact, the string supplied must match the name of a stopped job exactly; if set to substring, the string supplied needs to match a substring of the name of a stopped job. The substring value provides functionality analogous to the %? job id (see JOB CONTROL below). If set to any other value, the supplied string must be a prefix of a stopped job's name; this provides functionality analogous to the % job id. From Rute-Users-Guide

autoclass

automatic classification or clustering AutoClass solves the problem of automatic discovery of classes in data (sometimes called clustering, or unsupervised learning), as distinct from the generation of class descriptions from labeled examples (called supervised learning). It aims to discover the "natural" classes in the data. AutoClass is applicable to observations of things that can be described by a set of attributes, without referring to other things. The data values corresponding to each attribute are limited to be either numbers or the elements of a fixed set of symbols. With numeric data, a measurement error must be provided. For more information, see http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayes-group/autoclass/. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoconf

GNU's Autoconf is a tool for configuring source code and Makefiles. Using Autoconf, programmers can create portable and configurable packages, since the person building the package is allowed to specify various configuration options. You should install Autoconf if you are developing software and you would like to use it to create shell scripts that will configure yoursource code packages. If you are installing Autoconf, you will alsoneed to install the GNU m4 package. Note that the Autoconf package is not required for the end-user whomay be configuring software with an Autoconf-generated script; Autoconf is only required for the generation of the scripts, not their use. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

autoconf

GNU's Autoconf is a tool for configuring source code and Makefiles.Using Autoconf, programmers can create portable and configurable packages, since the person building the package is allowed to specify various configuration options. You should install Autoconf if you are developing software and you'd like to use it to create shell scripts which will configure yoursource code packages. If you are installing Autoconf, you will also need to install the GNU m4 package. Note that the Autoconf package is not required for the end user who may be configuring software with an Autoconf-generated script; Autoconf is only required for the generation of the scripts, not their use.-- PLEASE NOTICE ---> this version is meant to coexist with autoconf-2.5x;to that end, the various binaries are actually linked to a script which decides which version to execute. It tries to be clever and will execute2.5x if `configure.ac' is present, or if `configure.in' contains AC_PREREQand the value's 3 first letters are stringwise greater than '2.1'. Ifanything fails, you can manually select 2.13 by providing the environmentvariable WANT_AUTOCONF_2_1 set to `1' (use WANT_AUTOCONF_2_5 if you wantthe 2.5x version). From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

autoconf

automatic configure script builder The standard for FSF source packages. This is only useful if you write your own programs or if you extensively modify other people's programs. This version of autoconf contains many changes from the previous release, version 2.13. For now, it depends on autoconf2.13 to provide compatibility. This will eventually go away, so please upgrade your autoconfiscations. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoconf

creates scripts to configure source code packages using templates From whatis

autodns-dhcp

Automatic DNS updates for DHCP autodns-dhcp uses bind 8's dynamic update features to update a zonefile with hostnames from the dhcp leases file, this is done just once for each hostname as the IP, MAC address and name are settled on the dhcp configuration to have an static zone. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autofs

A kernel-based automounter for Linux. The kernel automounter implements an almost complete SunOS style automounter under Linux. The automounter is supported by Linux kernels 2.0.31 and higher or the 2.1.X series. Automounter support must be activated while compiling the kernel. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autofs

Autofs controls the operation of the automount daemons. The automount daemons automatically mount filesystems when you use them and unmount them after a period of inactivity. Filesystems can include network filesystems, CD-ROMs, floppies, and other media. Install this package if you want a program for automatically mounting and unmounting filesystems. If your Red Hat Linux machine is on anetwork, you should install autofs. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

autogen

an automated text file generator AutoGen is a tool designed for generating program files that contain repetitive text with varied substitutions. This is especially valuable if there are several blocks of such text that must be kept synchronized. Included with AutoGen is a tool that virtually eliminates the hassle of processing options, keeping usage text up to date and so on. This tool allows you to specify several program attributes, innumerable options and option attributes, then it produces all the code necessary to parse and handle the command line and initialization file options. This package contains the development tools. libopts9-dev contains the static libraries and header files. libopts9 contains the shared libraries. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoheader

creates a template file of C #define's for use by configure. From whatis

autoinstall

Progeny Debian auto-installation system This package contains the Progeny Debian auto-installation system. This system makes it possible to install a complete Debian system with no user interaction from a set of configuration files. The basic model is that of cloning an existing system; after installing and configuring a Debian system to taste, the configuration is "dumped" to the configuration files, along with some extra information. It currently supports flexible constraints for partitioning differently-sized disks in a logical fashion, hardware auto-configuration with discover (including configuration of X, if appropriate), network configuration via DHCP or a database based on MAC addresses, and a cross-platform design making it possible for install media for any platform to be created on any other platform. Platform-specific files are not included in this package; install the "autoinstall-<arch>" packages to install support for <arch>. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autolog

Terminates connections for idle users Autolog terminates connections considered to be idle based on a large variety of parameters. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

automake

A tool for generating GNU Standards-compliant Makefiles. Automake is a tool for automatically generating `Makefile.in's from files called `Makefile.am'. The goal of Automake is to remove the burden of Makefile maintenance from the back of the individual GNU maintainer (and put it on the back of the Automake maintainer). The `Makefile.am' is basically a series of `make' macro definitions (with rules being thrown in occasionally). The generated `Makefile.in's are compliant with the GNU Makefile standards. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

automake

Automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefiles compliant with the GNU Coding Standards.You should install Automake if you are developing software and would like touse its capabilities of automatically generating GNU standard Makefiles. If you install Automake, you will also need to install GNU's Autoconf package. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

automake

Automake is an experimental Makefile generator. Automake was inspiredby the 4.4BSD make and include files, but aims to be portable and toconform to the GNU standards for Makefile variables and targets. You should install Automake if you are developing software and wouldlike to use its ability to automatically generate GNU standard Makefiles. If you install Automake, you will also need to install GNU's Autoconf package. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

automake

automatically create Makefile.in's from Makefile.am's From whatis

automount

Automounting is the process where mounting and unmounting of certain filesystems is done automatically by a daemon. If the filesystem is unmounted, and a user attempts to access it, it will be automatically (re)mounted. This is especially useful in large networked environments and for crossmounting filesystems between a few machines (especially ones which are not always online). It may also be very useful for removable devices, or a few other uses, such as easy switching between a forced-on ascii conversion mount of a dos filesystem and a forced-off ascii conversion mount of the same dos fs. If you are new to Linux and dont understand what mounting and deamons are, then refer to some documentation regarding this. There are two types of automounters in linux; AMD and autofs. AMD is the automount daemon, and supposedly works like the SunOS AMD. It is implemented in user space, meaning it's not part of the kernel. It's not necessary for the kernel to understand automounting if you NFS mount to the local host, through the AMD daemon, which routes all automount filesystem traffic through the NFS system. Autofs is a newer system assisted by the kernel, meaning that the kernel's filesystem code knows where the automount mount points are on an otherwise normal underlying fs, and the automount program takes it from there. Only autofs will be described in this mini-howto. From Automount-miniHOWTO

autopilot

Monitor the DTR line of /dev/palm and run a command to start sync AutoPilot monitors the DTR line of /dev/palm, waiting for it to go from LOW to HIGH, which is used to activate a command automatically to make syncing easier. It can be used to boot up your favourite Palm syncer. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoproject

create a skeleton source package for a new program autoproject interviews the user, then creates a source package for a new program which follows the GNU programming standards. The new package uses autoconf to configure itself, and automake to create the Makefile. `make distcheck' succeeds. The idea is that you execute autoproject just once when you start a new project. It will ask a few questions, then create a new directory and populate it with standard files, customized for the new project. Optionally, the new package will use a command line parser generator. Currently, autoproject supports two parser generators: clig by Harald Kirsch <[email protected]> (see http://wsd.iitb.fhg.de/software/), and autogen by Bruce Korb <[email protected]> (see ftp://autogen.linuxbox.com/pub/). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoreconf

update configure scripts From whatis

autorespond

email autoresponder for qmail autorespond sends an automatically generated response to emails for given address(es). It catches simple situations such as mail from a mailer-daemon, empty envelope sender, bulk precedence headers, etc. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autorun

The autorun utility recognizes all of the CD-ROM drives on yoursystem, mounts the drive when a CD-ROM is inserted, and executes an autorun executable (if one exists) on the CD. If you want to giveusers (instead of just root) the autorun ability, you will need to adduser, exec options to the CD-ROM line in /etc/fstab. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

autoscan

help to create a configure.ac file for a software package From whatis

autotrace

Bitmap to vector graphics converter AutoTrace is a program for converting bitmaps to vector graphics. The aim of the AutoTrace project is the development of a freely-available application similar to CorelTrace or Adobe Streamline. In some aspects it is already better. Originally created as a plugin for the GIMP, AutoTrace is now a standalone program. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

autoupdate

updates an old configure.in file to version 2 From whatis

ava

Algebraical Virtual Assembler for Atmel's AVR MCUs AVA is an advanced assembler and linker for Atmel's family of 8-bit AVR microcontrollers. It offers a C-like preprocessor, powerful segments, and virtual symbols. This assembler is not compatible with Atmel's assembler syntax. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

availability

In infosec, availability describes the need that resources must be continuously available. For example, in the Kosovo war, the European forces bombed power plants in order to destroy the availability of electricity. Another example is in February of the year 2000, when massive DDoS attacks brought down major websites (making them "unavailable"). Controversy: Availability is one of the key sticking points in security. It is easy to secure things simply by making them unavailable: if a computer is turned off, nobody can hack into it. The trick to infosec is making things both available and secure. Examples of this problem are: account lockouts In order to prevent password grinding, computers will lock out accounts when too many bad passwords have been attempted. However, this means that hackers can purposely lock out accounts. firewalls and IDS Some IDSs will reconfigure firewalls, therefore spoofing attacks can cause the firewall to shut people out. fail-close/fail-open So called "proper" security will shut things down when things start to fail; for example, if the firewall crashes, it should shutdown all communication until the firewall is restarted rather than allowin traffic through unchecked. However, web-sites that demand 99.99% uptime are therefore unable to use traditional firewalls. Antonym: The opposite of the infosec term "availability" is the hacking term "DoS". See also: Availability is often mentioned along with other key security concepts such as integrity, authentication, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. From Hacking-Lexicon

avatar

A graphical representation of you acting as an identification on 3D chat worlds. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

aview

A high quality ASCII art image viewer and video player aview is a high quality ASCII art image viewer and video player. It is especially useful with a text-based browser such as lynx, links or w3m. It supports the pnm, pgm, pbm and ppm image formats, as well as the FLI and FLC video formats. It also supports output via stdio, (n)curses and slang and even has support for gpm. Features * High quality ASCII art rendering * Portable * Save into many formats (HTML, text, ANSI, more/less etc...) * Contrast, Bright, Gamma control * Image zooming/unzooming * Three dithering modes * Hidden "bonus" features :) * Inversion * Support for bright, dim, inverse attributes/extended character set From Debian 3.0r0 APT

avr-libc

Standard C library for Atmel AVR development Standard library used to the development of C programs for the Atmel AVR micro controllers. This package contains static libraries as well as the header files needed. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

avra

Assembler for Atmel AVR microcontrollers Avra is an assembler for the Atmel's family of AVR 8-bit RISC microcontrollers. It is is mostly compatible with Atmel's own assembler, but adds new features such as better macro support and additional preprocessor directives. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

avrp

Programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers Avrp is a FLASH/EEPROM programmer for Atmel's family of AVR 8-bit RISC microcontrollers. It can also program the Atmel AT89 series microcontrollers. It supports at least four different programming devices including Atmel's own AVR development board and in-circuit programming. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

avrprog

Programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers Programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers that uses PC parallel port to program the device in serial mode. The device can be programmed "in-system". It comes with a schematic of the hardware required. The hardware was designed to be efficient and inexpensive. For more information, see http://avrprog.sourceforge.net From Debian 3.0r0 APT

awe-drv

Linux AWE32 driver source and utilities Linux supports the Sound Blaster 32, and Sound Blaster AWE32, through the use of a driver written by Takashi Iwai <[email protected]>. These utilities are the package of AWE32 utilities for use with this driver, which manipulate patch files. They are required to load the vital '.SBK', or '.SF2' files, which will have been installed with your AWE32 DOS or Win95 software in \SB16\SFBANK or \Windows\System. This also includes 'gusload', for loading GUS-format patches to the AWE32 driver. This package installs the source for the AWE32 driver into /usr/src/awedrv. In order to use the awe32 driver, you must recompile your kernel, after using the install script found in this package to patch these sources into your kernel source tree (they can alternatively be manually installed into the kernel source or into a separate copy of the sound driver). There are also some converters between different patch file formats for the AWE32, and the 'sfxtest' program for testing the AWE32 driver, which are installed in /usr/lib/awe. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

awk

/awk/ 1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name derives from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also Perl. 2. n. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal regexp facilities (for example, one containing a newline). 3. vt. To process data using awk(1). From Jargon Dictionary

awk

An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name derives from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

awk

pattern scanning and text processing language From whatis

awstats

A powerful and featureful web server log analyzer Advanced Web Statistics (AWStats) is a powerful web server logfile analyzer written in perl that shows you all your web statistics including visits, unique visitors, pages, hits, rush hours, search engines, keywords used to find your site, robots, broken links and more. Gives more detailed information and better graphical charts than webalizer, and is easier to use. Works with several web server log format as a CGI and/or from command line. Supports multiple languages (English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Greek...). From Debian 3.0r0 APT

axel

A light download accelerator - Console version This program tries to accelerate the downloading process by using multiple connections for one file. Starting from version 0.97, the program can use multiple mirrors for one download as well. The program tries to be as light as possible (25-30k in binary form), so it might be useful as a wget clone on byte-critical systems. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

axkit

An XML Delivery Toolkit for Apache AxKit is an XML Application Server for Apache. It provides on-the-fly conversion from XML to any format, such as HTML, WAP or text using either W3C standard techniques, or flexible custom code. AxKit also uses a built-in Perl interpreter to provide some amazingly powerful techniques for XML transformation. The emphasis with AxKit is on separation of content from presentation. The pipelining technique that AxKit uses allows content to be converted to a presentable format in stages, allowing certain platforms to see data differently to others. AxKit allows web designers to focus on web site design, content developers to work on a purely content basis, and webmasters to focus on their core competencies. AxKit is based on plugin components. This allows the web site developer to create a completely custom XML Application Server based around the AxKit API. AxKit can either automatically provide caching facilities, or you can create your own cache handler, so that XML transformations (which can be time consuming) only happen when required. The toolkit also provides ability to build component based web sites, and dynamic content. Database integration is fully supported, allowing either deliver of XML from a database, or XML generation from a database query. Dynamic web components can be built using the Perl language, making the possibilities as infinite as CGI scripts, without the potential mess that CGI programming can cause. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

axyftp-gtk

A graphical ftp program with GTK interface AxY FTP is a ftp program with a nice, wsftp like interface. Current major features are: * user-friendly, intuitive interface * passive data transfers * convenient session manager window * on-line help system * recursive downloads with resume option * recursive uploads * multiple delete You need Netscape or Lynx and the axyftp-doc package to use the help system. With other browsers, just read /usr/doc/axyftp-doc/html/index.html The GTK version of axyftp is Debian's preferred version of axyftp, but there is also the axyftp-lesstif package, which is the same program using the lesstif widget set. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

axyftp-lesstif

A graphical ftp program with Lesstif interface axyftp is a ftp program with a nice, wsftp like interface. Current major features are: * user-friendly, intuitive interface * passive data transfers * convenient session manager window * on-line help system * recursive downloads with resume option * recursive uploads * multiple delete You need Netscape or Lynx and the axyftp-doc package to use the help system. With other browsers, just read /usr/doc/axyftp-doc/html/index.html From Debian 3.0r0 APT

ayuda

Help for spanish-speakers This package contains a help program called 'ayuda' useful for users that speak spanish, and are new to the world of Debian GNU/Linux. The help provided covers many topics from administration to daily use. From Debian 3.0r0 APT