daemon

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daemon in ancient Greek belief, a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans; an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force. The word is recorded from the mid 16th century, and until the 19th century represented the common spelling of demon.

Daemon was the term used by Rudyard Kipling for his authorial inspiration. More recently, in the His Dark Materials (1996–2001) fantasy trilogy of Philip Pullman (1946– ), it is the name given to the animal form taken by the externalized spirit of a person.

daemon A program that is executed on a computer but lies dormant until some condition occurs which it has been programmed to act upon. For example, the WEB SERVER daemon HTTPD lies dormant until a BROWSER communicates with the server asking for a WEB PAGE. When this communication occurs the daemon wakes up, finds the page requested by the browser, and sends it back to the CLIENT running the browser. See also HTTP DAEMON.

daemon A background program on UNIX systems that performs housekeeping and maintenance functions automatically.

daemon(ic) see DEMON, DEMONIC.

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