7. Glossary

alias

Pseudonym, substitute name. Aliases allow multiple names to be given to the same entity. It is a concept frequently used in computer science. For example, we speak of an alias when we point several email addresses to the same inbox, or when we define a new name for a command. — Wiktionary

API

Application Programming Interface, an interface intended to be used not by a human being but by a software. It is generally composed of a set of functions that a software can use remotely. — Wikipedia

CLI

Command Line Interface, an interface in command line, based on a textual display. It is used through a terminal window. The CLI is very interesting because it can be used by humans as well as by software. — Wikipedia

client

Piece of software that accesses a service made available by a server. It usually has a graphical interface, intended to be used directly by a human. — Wikipedia

computer network

Set of computers linked together in order for them to exchange data. — Wikipedia

Debian

Community operating system based on Linux, almost exclusively composed of free software that comply with the POSIX standards. — Wikipedia, Website

See also

The journal article: Migration de Ubuntu à Debian (Phase 1) (in French)

domain name

Internet domain identifier, easy for a human to read and remember.

For example: club1.fr, impots.gouv.fr, and fr are domain names.

In the DNS, a domain allows to associate information with a name. Among this information, the most important is the IP address of the computer associated with this domain. A domain name is therefore often used as an alias for an IP address.

In addition to this information, a domain can also have subdomains. — Wikipedia

dynamic website

Web site whose display may vary “from itself”, hence the name “dynamic” (distinguishing it from a static website). It contains code that will be “executed” to generate HTML. — Wikipedia

free software

Refers to software that respects the freedom of users. In particular, users have the freedom to run, copy, study, modify and improve these software, and especially to reshare, modified or not. — Wikipedia

GitHub

Web service providing hosting for software development and version control using Git.

Warning

Unlike most of the projects that can be found there, GitHub is neither free, nor open source and belongs to Microsoft.

— Wikipedia

group

In a POSIX system, groups are used to gather users in order to assign them common rights. A user belongs to one or more groups.

Tip

It is possible to find out who is a member of a group on the server from an SSH access with the following command:

members GROUP

By replacing GROUP with the desired group. Example: members sudo or members home.

— Wikipedia

hidden file

hidden folder

In most operating systems, it is possible to hide files or folders. This is often used to hide parameters that are not very useful in everyday life. In a POSIX system, hidden files begin with a dot ..

In file explorers they may be hidden by default. It is possible to activate their display if necessary, often with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + H. — Wikipedia

HTML

(Hypertext Markup Language) Markup language designed to represent Web pages. — Wikipedia, MDN web docs

instance

Copy of software or a computer object having its own existence and state.

For example, we speak of an instance each time a software is executed with different data. On the CLUB1 server, there are notably several instances of PHP: at least one for each member. — Wiktionary

Internet

Publicly accessible global computer network. The Internet is actually the interconnection of a set of networks around the world. As the name suggests, “inter” “net” = “between networks”. It is therefore a “network of networks”. — Wikipedia

IP address

Identification number of a computer connected to a computer network.

The IP protocol (originally created for Internet) is used to transport data between a source computer and its destination. For this, it needs IP addresses in order to identify these two computers.

Currently, two versions of IP addresses are used: Version 4 which is written as numbers separated by periods (e.g. 87.91.4.64 for the CLUB1 server). And version 6 which uses much larger numbers and is written in hexadecimal (e.g. 2001:861:38c4:18a0::3 for the CLUB1 server). — Wikipedia

Linux

Free POSIX operating system kernel. The kernel is the core of the system, it is the interface between user software and hardware.

By extention, Linux often refers to any operating system based on this kernel. — Wikipedia

log

Originally refers to the logbook of a ship. In computing it is a journal containing a history of events, usually in the form of a plain text file. — Wikipedia

Markdown

Lightweight markup language for creating formatted text. Documents written in Markdown are usually intended to be converted to HTML, in order to make it a Web page. Its main advantage over HTML is its sleek syntax, which makes it more pleasant to read and write for a human. — Wikipedia

permissions

In a POSIX system, it is possible to assign permissions to files and folders. They allow to grant or deny rights to users or groups on these files and folders.

There are 3 main rights, read (r), write (w) and execute (x).

Table 7.1 Summary of permissions

Droit	Sur un fichier	Sur un dossier
r	Lire le contenu du fichier	Lister le contenu du dossier
w	Modifier le contenu du fichier	Ajouter/supprimer des fichiers dans ce dossier
x	Exécuter ce fichier	Traverser ce dossier

Which can be granted either to the user owner of the file/folder, the group of the file/folder, or other users.

Permissions can be accessed in CLI with ls -l and modified with chmod. — Wikipedia

PHP

(PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) High-level programming language, primarily used to produce Web pages dynamically by generating HTML code. Its acronym originally stood for “Personal Home Page” and it is precisely the language that CLUB1 puts forward for the creation of dynamic website. — Wikipedia

POSIX

(Portable Operating System Interface) Ensemble de normes techniques qui spécifient une interface, permettant aux systèmes d’exploitation qui la respectent d’être interchangeables, du point de vue d’un logiciel utilisateur.

Linux, macOS and many other systems respect this interface, unlike Windows. — Wikipedia

protocol

In the context of computing, a protocol is a set of rules that govern the exchange of data or the collective behavior of processes or computers in networks. — Wikipedia

registrar

Domain name registrar. Company or association managing the Internet domain name reservation. — Wikipedia

server

Software that provides a service. It holds the data and responds to requests from a client. Often, servers and clients are installed on different computers. By extension, the computer on which the servers are installed is called a “server” (e.g. the CLUB1 server). — Wikipedia

static website

Web site consisting of HTML files whose content does not change until they have been edited. They can be designed “by hand” or using a “static site generator”. Static sites are an interesting way for those looking to offer more energy-efficient sites. — Wikipedia

terminal

In computing, a terminal was originally a device consisting of a monitor and a keyboard, allowing a human to interact with a remote shared computer. It offered a textual interface, making it possible to enter commands and read the result.

Nowadays, the word “terminal” is often used as a shorthand for a “terminal emulator”. This is a software that recreates the command line interface (CLI) of this hardware. — Wikipedia

TLD

Top level domain name. For example fr, com or org are TLDs. — Wikipedia

TLS

(Transport Layer Security) Protocol used to secure exchanges in a computer network. One of its main features is to encrypt all data exchanged between the client and the server, so that no one else can read its content. — Wikipedia

Web

One of the best known services on Internet. Its full name is “World Wide Web” (also abbreviated “www”). It allows to publish documents and link them together using hypertext links.

A “Web page” usually consists of a document whose content is written in HTML and may include other resources such as images or “style sheets”. The client used to access it is called a “Web browser”. — Wikipedia

Web client

Client accessible via the Web and executed by a Web browser.

wiki

Type of Web application that allows to create a site collaboratively. Page editing is possible from the Web browser. The best known being Wikipedia. The name comes from the Hawaiian language in which “wiki” means “quick”. — Wikipedia