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
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