16. Unix Specific Services

The modules described in this chapter provide interfaces to features that are unique to the Unix operating system, or in some cases to some or many variants of it. Here's an overview:

posix		The most common POSIX system calls (normally used via module os).
pwd		The password database (getpwnam() and friends).
spwd		The shadow password database (getspnam() and friends).
grp		The group database (getgrnam() and friends).
crypt		The crypt() function used to check Unix passwords.
dl		Call C functions in shared objects.
termios		POSIX style tty control.
tty		Utility functions that perform common terminal control operations.
pty		Pseudo-Terminal Handling for SGI and Linux.
fcntl		The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls.
pipes		A Python interface to Unix shell pipelines.
posixfile		A file-like object with support for locking.
resource		An interface to provide resource usage information on the current process.
nis		Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages) library.
syslog		An interface to the Unix syslog library routines.
commands		Utility functions for running external commands.

See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.