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Lock: The process no longer responds to input (the keyboard and mouse
seem dead). The system may or may not be alive; on a multi-user
O/S, it might work fine from another terminal. Your process can
lock but still be running, such as when it ignores the CANCEL
button while it erases 10,000 files from your hard disk. If
a PROCESS is hung, but the OS is fine, the mouse cursor, the
clock icon, and other windows may very well behave normally.
Freeze, Hang: The process doesn't respond at all to input, and doesn't
seem to be running, either. Both processes and entire
systems are referred to by these terms, depending on context;
my display can be frozen while yours runs fine on a multi-user
system.
Crash: All processes are gone forever: the system must be rebooted.
It may or may not reboot itself, depending on whether it has
merely crashed, or whether it's hung, too. Only entire systems
crash. Processes exit, terminate, fail, hang, freeze, lock, or bomb,
but they don't crash.
-- Robert
--
Robert Plamondon * President/Managing Editor, High-Tech Technical Writing, Inc.
36475 Norton Creek Road * Blodgett * Oregon * 97326
robert -at- plamondon -dot- com * (541) 453-5841 * Fax: (541) 453-4139
