[MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not
invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform
various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an
accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in,
accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many
terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they
were, what they were running, etc., along with some random
picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy or the Enterprise), which
was generated by the "name dragon". Use is rare outside
MIT, under Unix and most other operating systems this
would be called a "background demon" or daemon. The
best-known Unix example of a dragon is cron. At SAIL,
they called this sort of thing a "phantom".
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
drag and drop « drag-n-drop « DRAGON « dragon » Dragon Book » DRAGOON » drain
