Raw device

In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was originally developed to write data to sequential I/O devices with no file system of their own, such as devices that use magnetic tape. The archive data sets created by tar contain various file system parameters, such as name, timestamps, ownership, file-access permissions, and directory organization. POSIX abandoned tar in favor of pax, yet tar sees continued widespread use.

tmpfs is a temporary file storage paradigm implemented in many Unix-like operating systems. It is intended to appear as a mounted file system, but data is stored in volatile memory instead of a persistent storage device. A similar construction is a RAM disk, which appears as a virtual disk drive and hosts a disk file system.

In computing, mmap(2) is a POSIX-compliant Unix system call that maps files or devices into memory. It is a method of memory-mapped file I/O. It implements demand paging because file contents are not immediately read from disk and initially use no physical RAM at all. The actual reads from disk are performed after a specific location is accessed, in a lazy manner. After the mapping is no longer needed, the pointers must be unmapped with munmap(2). Protection information—for example, marking mapped regions as executable—can be managed using mprotect(2), and special treatment can be enforced using madvise(2).

File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user or process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file while it's being modified or deleted.

The proc filesystem (procfs) is a special filesystem in Unix-like operating systems that presents information about processes and other system information in a hierarchical file-like structure, providing a more convenient and standardized method for dynamically accessing process data held in the kernel than traditional tracing methods or direct access to kernel memory. Typically, it is mapped to a mount point named /proc at boot time. The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures about running processes in the kernel. In Linux, it can also be used to obtain information about the kernel and to change certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).

In computing, the sticky bit is a user ownership access right flag that can be assigned to files and directories on Unix-like systems.

In computing, ioctl is a system call for device-specific input/output operations and other operations which cannot be expressed by regular file semantics. It takes a parameter specifying a request code; the effect of a call depends completely on the request code. Request codes are often device-specific. For instance, a CD-ROM device driver which can instruct a physical device to eject a disc would provide an ioctl request code to do so. Device-independent request codes are sometimes used to give userspace access to kernel functions which are only used by core system software or still under development.

Slab allocation is a memory management mechanism intended for the efficient memory allocation of objects. In comparison with earlier mechanisms, it reduces fragmentation caused by allocations and deallocations. This technique is used for retaining allocated memory containing a data object of a certain type for reuse upon subsequent allocations of objects of the same type. It is analogous to an object pool, but only applies to memory, not other resources.

sync is a standard system call in the Unix operating system, which commits all data from the kernel filesystem buffers to non-volatile storage, i.e., data which has been scheduled for writing via low-level I/O system calls. Higher-level I/O layers such as stdio may maintain separate buffers of their own.

The Berkeley Packet Filter is a network tap and packet filter which permits computer network packets to be captured and filtered at the operating system level. It provides a raw interface to data link layers, permitting raw link-layer packets to be sent and received, and allows a userspace process to supply a filter program that specifies which packets it wants to receive. For example, a tcpdump process may want to receive only packets that initiate a TCP connection. BPF returns only packets that pass the filter that the process supplies. This avoids copying unwanted packets from the operating system kernel to the process, greatly improving performance. The filter program is in the form of instructions for a virtual machine, which are interpreted, or compiled into machine code by a just-in-time (JIT) mechanism and executed, in the kernel.

In Unix-like operating systems, a device file, device node, or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow an application program to interact with a device by using its device driver via standard input/output system calls. Using standard system calls simplifies many programming tasks, and leads to consistent user-space I/O mechanisms regardless of device features and functions.