/etc etymology

[Piotr Zgorecki]

Hi,

Does anybody know the etymology of /etc directory name? I tried
googling for it, but got no results. Is it THAT obvious, are doesn't
anybody really remember it?

Thanks,
Piotr

[Lew Pitcher]

/etc - et cetera - a directory for miscellaneous data.

--
Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Application Architecture
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)

[Måns Rullgård]

Lew Pitcher <Lew.P...@td.com> writes:

> > Does anybody know the etymology of /etc directory name? I tried
>
> > googling for it, but got no results. Is it THAT obvious, are doesn't
> > anybody really remember it?
>
> /etc - et cetera - a directory for miscellaneous data.

Some system programs used to go there, too. More precisely, some of
those found in /sbin nowadays.

--
Måns Rullgård
m...@users.sf.net

[Lew Pitcher]

Lew Pitcher wrote:
> Piotr Zgorecki wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Does anybody know the etymology of /etc directory name? I tried
>> googling for it, but got no results. Is it THAT obvious, are doesn't
>> anybody really remember it?
>
>
> /etc - et cetera - a directory for miscellaneous data.

from "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian W Kernighan and Rob
Pike ((c) 1984 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated) Chapter 2:
The File System, Section 2.6 The directory hierarchy

"/etc (et cetera) we have also seen before. It contains various
administrative files such as the password file and some system
programs such as /etc/getty, which initializes a terminal connection
for /bin/login. /etc/rc is a file of shell commands that is executed
after the system is bootstrapped. /etc/group lists the members of
each group."

FWIW, "The Unix Programming Environment" described AT&T "7th Edition"
Unix, which is commonly held to be the last true Unix.

--
Lew Pitcher

Master Codewright and JOAT-in-training
Registered Linux User #112576 (http://counter.li.org/)
Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing.