[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'. Usage: rare outside MIT --
under Unix and most other OSes this would be called a background
demon or {daemon}. The best-known Unix example of a dragon is
cron(1). At SAIL, they called this sort of thing a phantom.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {daemon}]