Tim Skirvin
Unix Group, Information Technology Services
Stanford University
209 Polya Hall
255 Panama Street
Stanford, California 94305-4136
Email: tskirvin@stanford.edu
Phone: 650/723-7953
Education
B.S. in Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999
Professional Experience
Systems Software Developer, Information Technology Services, Stanford University, California, USA [2007 - present]
- Develop and support a centrally managed research computing environment for the campus, both at a research group/department level and as a central service.
- Manage and support timeshare clusters for central campus research computing.
- Part of a team that administers and manages the Unix infrastructure for Stanford University, a network of 300 Linux servers running core services including Kerberos, OpenAFS, Zimbra email and calendar, etc.
- Develop software for group integration, including cross-platform installed package management, command-line integration with Remedy trouble ticket system, and a registration engine for a configuration management database (CMDB).
- Manage documentation migration efforts.
- Client support, documentation efforts, and other projects as needed.
Senior Systems Administrator (SAGE Level IV), Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA [2000 - 2007]
- Administer, maintain, and secure a network of 100 users and 300 machines, running Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, IRIX, Tru64, AIX, WinNT/2000/XP, and MacOS 9/X.
- Design, manage and upgrade group facilities including a 3D projection system and multiple Linux-based computation clusters.
- Lead a team of six to nine graduate aides and one to three undergraduate assistants in troubleshooting and solving user problems.
- Budget and plan for continuing system and network upgrades.
- Assist with and write grant proposals for research and equipment.
- Write and maintain system software, ranging from internal backup solutions to web management tools.
- Write and maintain system and user databases and associated frameworks.
- Develop and teach a series of workshops on designing and building Linux clusters.
- Manage web site design and content; maintain public technical documentation.
News Administrator (SAGE Level II-III), Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, Computer and Systems Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA [1999 - 2000]
- Administered and maintained Usenet news software and hardware.
- Installed, upgraded and maintained department Windows95/NT, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, and HP-UX systems and labs.
- Troubleshot other miscellaneous computer concerns.
Computer Consultant (SAGE Level I), Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA [1995 - 1999]
- Assisted graduate students and professors in computer setup and maintenance.
- Maintained, installed, and helped upgrade a computer lab of Sun SPARCStations and printers.
- Maintained departmental web pages.
Research Assistant - United States Army Construction Engineering Research Labs (USA-CERL), Champaign, IL, USA. [1996]
- Ran detailed noise-level tests and modeled the results in order to create a new sound measurement scale.
- Maintained the computer systems at the Nevada test site.
Beta Tester - Parallax Software, Champaign, IL, USA. [1995]
- Tested Descent, a 3D flight-simulation game.
Professional Skills
Experienced with virtually all aspects of running a computational facility, including funding and budgeting; machine room management; day-to-day system patching and upgrades; client and customer support, from help desk to level 2-3 support; vendor relations; project and team management; storage and backups; funding agency politics, including grant writing; hiring; computational facility design; software design.
Extensive background with computation cluster design and support, including ground-up cluster design. Specific knowledge of queueing systems (especially SGE/GridEngine) and ROCKS and Scyld Linux clustering solutions. Knowledgeable of national supercomputer centers.
Strong background with writing maintainable and expandable open-source software projects, with special interest in developer support applications (
Intimate knowledge of Usenet News administration, design, and development.
Experienced with SQL database use, design and administration.
Management: experience with developing computational facility budgets. Have managed up to ten part-time workers. Have been involved in hiring consultants and part-time and full-time workers.
Specific tools (strong skills are indicated with italics):
- Languages: Perl, Bourne Shell, C, C++. Basic knowledge of Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, Scheme, LISP, Basic, Intel/68k/MIPS assembly, VHDL.
- Operating Systems: Solaris, Linux, MacOS X, IRIX, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Windows 95/98, Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista, OpenBSD, Solaris x86, Alpha Linux, internetworking the above.
- Tools: Puppet, git, ikiwiki, Apache, sendmail, postfix, LPRNG, DNS/BIND, OpenSSH, Samba, YP/NIS, automounters, ntp, MySQL, dovecot, CVS, license managers
- Technical Protocols: TCP/IP (debugging), NFS, NNTP, HTTP, remctl, SQL, DBI, LDAP, SMB, NTP, Appletalk.
- Professional Protocols: Remedy ticketing, ITIL change management, CMDB
- Documentation/Markup: HTML, POD, LaTeX, XML.
Published Software
- DBIx::Frame - a set of perl modules for creating and maintaining database frameworks
- TCB::Publications - a publications database
- TCB::Seminar - a seminar database
- TCB:: System - sysadmin databases for the TCB Group
- TCB::Equipment - Equipment and Software
- TCB::Loan - Equipment Loans
- TCB::Help - Help Database
- TCB::SysLoads - System Loads and Supercomputers
- TCB::PortMap - Port Map
- TCB::System::Obsolete - Obsolete Tables
- TCB::Conference - a conference registration database
- TCB::Library - a library database, written in perl, based on DBIx::Frame
- TCB::AddressBook - an address book, written in perl, based on DBIx::Frame
- TCB::mysql - a DBIx::Frame interface to the MySQL authorization database
- TapeChanger::MTX - a perl module for managing tape changers, using mtx
- TCB::Backup - backup scripts used at the TCB Group
- TCB::RSS - RSS creation scripts, derived from killfile pages
- Mail::SpamAssassin::UIUC - use the campus spam filtering service with SpamAssassin
- TCB::Internal - Perl module for performing TCB web page layouts
- TCB::AddUser - Perl module for adding and managing users
- CGI::SHTML - a perl module for parsing server-side includes
- TCB::Webdav - mount webdav partitions on Linux boxes, specifically BioCoRE and Netfiles.
- HTML::FormRemove - a perl module to remove form tags from HTML
- make_tn - a script for creating thumbnail images and a web page to index them.
- Usenet News
- News::Archive - a news archiving package for Usenet
- News::Web - a news-to-web gateway for Usenet
- News::Overview - a news library for dealing with overview databases
- NewsLib - a package of news administration tools
- newsproxy - a proxying news server
- kiboze - a news archiving program
- News::Cancel - a perl module for Usenet cancel messages
- Verimod - newsgroup moderation package
- pgpmoose - a newsgroup moderation enforcement robot
- mini-inews - an inews replacement in perl.
- Package Contributions
- Argus - network monitor
- album - web gallery
- News::Gateway - moderation package
- SpamAssassin - spam filter
- Miscellaneous: Script Library, Perl Modules
Other Professional Activities
- Co-Founder and Chair - Big-8 Management Board [2005 - present]
- Maintainer - UIUC Campus Usenet News Server [2003 - 2007]
- Moderator (discussion facilitation and software design and maintenance)
- humanities.philosophy.objectivism [1995 - present]
- news.admin.net-abuse.policy [1996 - 2009]
- news.admin.net-abuse.sightings [1996 - 2009]
- news.admin.announce [2005 - 2009]
- rec.arts.comics.reviews [2005 - present]
- comp.std.announce [2006 - present]
- news.announce.newgroups [2006 - 2009]
- Technical Moderator (software and interface design and maintenance,
technical advice for other moderators)
- news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins [1998 - 2009]
- rec.games.mecha [1997 - 2009]
- rec.toys.transformers.moderated [1999 - 2009]
- rec.games.frp.moderated [2000 - 2007]
- soc.culture.paganism [2006 - 2009]
- news.admin.moderation [2007 - present]
- LOPSA (League of Professional System Administrators) - Member [2005 - present]
- USENIX (Unix Administration Society) - Member [2000 - present]
- SAGE (System Administrators Guild) - Member [2000 - present]
Technical Reports and Presentations
- Linux Clustering
- Newsgroup Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions
- Current Spam Thresholds and Guidelines
- Godwin's Law FAQ
- free.* FAQ
- mod.* Manifesto
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