Daemon (computing)

In addition, a daemon launched by forking and exiting typically must perform other operations, such as dissociating the process from any controlling terminal (tty).

Systems often start daemons at boot time that will respond to network requests, hardware activity, or other programs by performing some task.

According to Fernando J. Corbató, who worked on Project MAC around 1963, his team was the first to use the term daemon, inspired by Maxwell's demon, an imaginary agent in physics and thermodynamics that helped to sort molecules, stating, "We fancifully began to use the word daemon to describe background processes that worked tirelessly to perform system chores".

Maxwell's demon is consistent with Greek mythology's interpretation of a daemon as a supernatural being working in the background.

In the general sense, daemon is an older form of the word "demon", from the Greek δαίμων.

[5] After the term was adopted for computer use, it was rationalized as a backronym for Disk And Execution MONitor.

They run as processes, usually do not interact with the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and may be launched by the operating system at boot time.