NCP-GENL key terms

Installing an operating system or hypervisor directly onto physical hardware with no host OS underneath. Common for performance-sensitive or appliance-style deployments where virtualization overhead is unwanted.

An automated, file-driven installation method that supplies answers to installer prompts such as disk layout, network settings, and package selection, enabling unattended and repeatable system builds.

A single archive file containing an exact copy of an optical or bootable installation medium's filesystem, typically mounted or written to USB media to start an installer.

A network-accessible collection of software packages and metadata that a package manager queries to resolve dependencies and download installable or updatable software.

The process by which a package manager determines the full set of additional libraries and packages required by a requested install, and orders their installation so nothing is missing.

A tool that installs, upgrades, and removes software while tracking versions and dependencies, keeping a local database of what is present on the system.

A property of an operation that produces the same end state whether run once or many times. Central to configuration management, where repeated runs must not duplicate or drift configuration.

A 32-bit value that marks which portion of an IPv4 address identifies the network and which identifies the host, expressed as contiguous ones followed by zeros.

A compact way to write an IP network and its prefix length together, such as 192.168.10.0/24, where the trailing number is the count of leading network bits.

The router address a host sends traffic to when the destination is not on any directly connected subnet, serving as the exit point from the local network.

An in-memory list of destination networks, next-hop addresses, and interface associations that a system consults to decide where each outgoing packet should go.

A logical Layer 2 segmentation of a physical switch into isolated broadcast domains, letting separate groups share hardware while remaining network-isolated without separate cabling.

Combining two or more physical network interfaces into one logical interface for redundancy, increased throughput, or both, with a mode defining how traffic is distributed.

Maximum transmission unit: the largest payload size a network interface will send in one frame. Mismatched MTU values between links cause fragmentation or silently dropped packets.

Translating human-readable hostnames into IP addresses by querying name servers, typically following a hierarchy from local resolver to authoritative servers.

Logical Volume Manager: an abstraction layer that pools physical disks into volume groups and carves them into resizable logical volumes, allowing storage changes without repartitioning.

The structure and metadata scheme an operating system uses to organize files on a block device, defining how names, permissions, and data blocks are stored and retrieved.

A directory in the existing tree where a filesystem or device is attached, making its contents appear at that path until it is unmounted.

A filesystem metadata record holding a file's ownership, permissions, timestamps, size, and block locations, but not its name, which lives in a directory entry.

An additional directory entry pointing to the same inode as an existing file, so both names refer to identical data and share the same link count.

A special file containing a path to another file or directory; accessing it redirects to the target, which may be on a different filesystem or may no longer exist.

Network File System: a protocol for sharing directories over a network so remote clients can mount them and read or write files as if local.

A server-side configuration entry that declares which local directory is shared over a network filesystem protocol, and which clients and options are permitted to access it.

A security principle granting each user or process only the permissions strictly needed for its task, limiting the damage that a compromised or misused account can cause.

A mechanism allowing a permitted user to run specific commands as another user, typically root, with policy rules and audit logging rather than sharing the root password.

An authorization model assigning permissions to roles rather than individuals, with users granted roles; simplifies administration and auditing as staff or duties change.

A public and private cryptographic key used for passwordless authentication; the public half is stored on servers and the private half stays secret on the client.

A policy entry matching traffic by attributes such as source, destination, port, and protocol, then permitting, denying, or logging it in order of evaluation.

A firewall or access-control posture that blocks all traffic not explicitly allowed by a rule, so new services stay closed until an administrator opens them deliberately.

Automatically archiving, compressing, and deleting old log files on a schedule so logs do not exhaust disk space while recent history stays available.

A standard protocol and message format for forwarding system and application log events to local files or remote collectors, with severity levels and facility tags.

A numeric time-series measurement such as CPU utilization, memory pressure, or request rate, collected periodically to track system health and trigger alerts on thresholds.

A configured value or condition that, when a metric crosses it for a defined duration, triggers a notification so operators can investigate before users are affected.

Recording raw network traffic on an interface for analysis, used to diagnose connectivity failures, latency, and protocol errors that logs alone cannot explain.

Declaring the desired state of systems in version-controlled code and applying it automatically, so servers are reproducible, auditable, and free of manual drift.

A text file of commands executed in sequence by a command interpreter, used to automate repetitive administration tasks with variables, conditionals, and loops.

A scheduled task defined by a time specification in a crontab, run automatically by the cron daemon at minute, hour, day, month, and weekday intervals.

A numeric status a program returns on completion, conventionally zero for success and nonzero for failure, which scripts and schedulers use to detect errors.

Comparing a computed hash of a downloaded file against a published value to confirm the content arrived intact and was not tampered with in transit.