;login:

;login: is a long-running bi-monthly technical journal published by the USENIX Association, focusing on the UNIX operating system and system administration in general. It was founded by Mel Ferentz in 1975 as UNIX News, changing its name to ;login: in 1977.

;login: is published six times per year and is the #1 USENIX membership benefit. Single issues as well as subscriptions are available for purchase to non-members. Online issues of ;login: more than one year old are freely available for everyone to download, as are a number of articles in each issue. Currently, issues from 1997 through the present are available online.

The leading semicolon is a reference to the appearance of the login prompt of early versions of UNIX, where an escape code specific to the Teletype model 37 computer terminal would appear as a semicolon on other models of terminal.

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Login

In computer security, logging in, (or logging on or signing in or signing on), is the process by which an individual gains access to a computer system by identifying and authenticating themselves. The user credentials are typically some form of "username" and a matching "password", and these credentials themselves are sometimes referred to as a login, (or a logon or a sign in or a sign on). In practice, modern secure systems also often require a second factor for extra security.

When access is no longer needed, the user can log out (log off, sign out or sign off).

Procedure

Logging in is usually used to enter a specific page, which trespassers cannot see. Once the user is logged in, the login token may be used to track what actions the user has taken while connected to the site. Logging out may be performed explicitly by the user taking some actions, such as entering the appropriate command, or clicking a website link labelled as such. It can also be done implicitly, such as by the user powering off his or her workstation, closing a web browser window, leaving a website, or not refreshing a webpage within a defined period.

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional Unix-like command line user interface. Users direct the operation of the computer by entering commands as text for a command line interpreter to execute, or by creating text scripts of one or more such commands. Users typically interact with a Unix shell using a terminal emulator, however, direct operation via serial hardware connections, or networking session, are common for server systems. All Unix shells provide filename wildcarding, piping, here documents, command substitution, variables and control structures for condition-testing and iteration.

Concept

The most generic sense of the term shell means any program that users employ to type commands. A shell hides the details of the underlying operating system and manages the technical details of the operating system kernel interface, which is the lowest-level, or "inner-most" component of most operating systems.

In Unix-like operating systems, users typically have many choices of command-line interpreters for interactive sessions. When a user logs in to the system interactively, a shell program is automatically executed for the duration of the session. The type of shell, which may be customized for each user, is typically stored in the user's profile, for example in the local passwd file or in a distributed configuration system such as NIS or LDAP; however, the user may execute any other available shell interactively.