int main (void)
{
   printf("Hello world.\n");
   exit(0);
}

 
Now that the obligatory geeking out of the way, I can introduce myself. My name is Kristin, I've been a *nix geek since 1992. I started got my very first unix account on my university's brand new AIX machines. I grew up in an Apple household and despite being used to pretty graphics, I took to the command like like a fish to water. "Ah, the absolute power!!" (Those of you with kids may recognize that reference.)

 
I bought my first NeXT Cube in 1993 and started collecting slabs as well by 1994. I became the Solaris admin for the computer science department a couple of years later and my first desktop machine at work was a DimensionCube. I hacked the backplane on it so it could run 2 other motherboards (sadly not as one machine though that was NeXTs goal they never realized). Unfortunately, as much as I loved my beautiful black cube, its 33 Mhz processor just could not keep up and I switched to a PC running Red Hat with AfterStep. My enjoyment of eye candy from my formative years was never lost and I switched to Enlightenment eventually. I always had an Apple laptop at home as well... I could not leave my first computer love.

 
I started at Sun straight out of college (which took me 7 years, but I did have a baby in that time too). My job at Sun involves standards conformance testing of Solaris and branding it to the Single UNIX Specification. It really is a lot more interesting that it sounds and it gives me a chance to work in all different areas of the OS.

 
Here are some other random details about me...

 
I have two daughters, Autumn, who will be 9 in 11 days, and Laura, who is 2 1/2. I am a full-time work-at-home employee. I live a mile from the Pacific Ocean half-way between Los Angeles and San Jose. I love it here. I am back in school getting my Master's in computer science, which will hopefully be done in June. My thesis is about agile software development, so expect to see stuff about that here too.

 
My inspiration for this blog was not work directly related to my job at Sun or my thesis but the conversations with my spouse, who is the UNIX Specialist for the computer science department of a large university (that I attend). I realized that through him, the students, and faculty I gain an amazing insight into how people use (or don't use) Solaris outside of Sun. He has agreed to let me post snippets from some of our IM conversations here. So, here are some from conversations over the last few weeks, enjoy...

 
On fcntl with nfsv4 between Linux and Solaris:

 
Tom: AHH!
Tom: linux sucks
Kristin: ?
Kristin: yes, sorry about that
Tom: can you fix it?
Kristin: uh... well sort of
Kristin: i can put solaris in its place
Kristin: that will probably fix your problem
Tom: little problems, like fcntl locking doesn't work
Kristin: uh that is more than a little problem
Tom: how can they release code with that big a problem
Kristin: i have no idea
Tom: its only in nfsv4
Kristin: heh, a little used part of the OS i'm sure
Kristin: i mean, who really uses nfs anyway?
Tom: it may not be as bad as I think
Kristin: well tell me what you find... i have to go

 
Follow-up to that conversation a few weeks later:

 
Kristin: hey did you ever get fcntl to work on linux?
Kristin: with nfs?
Tom: yes
Tom: I got a newer version of the kernel
Tom: and then it worked

 
Linux server misbehaves:

 
Tom: my linux server is behaving weird
Kristin: well it is linux
Tom: the cpu is 99% idle, yet the load is at 25
Kristin: that is weird
Tom: and there are processes that I just cannot kill
Kristin: that is not right

 
Solaris zones + smpatch doesn't work:

 
Tom: Here lets make up a conversation for your blog
Tom: make sure the appropriate people at sun see it:
Kristin: ok
Tom: Tom: This sucks... smpatch doesn't work with machines that have zones.
Tom: Kristin: yeah, thats bad
Tom: Tom: Well when is sun going to fix it... cause its hard to use zones when you cant patch the $@%^ machine
Tom: Kristin: I hope its soon
Tom: Tom: yeah, me too
Tom: there... blog that
Kristin: hehehe
Kristin: they are aware of it
Kristin: and i agree that someone needs to fix it, like yesterday

 
Using zones for a couple software engineering classes:

 
Tom: So some of the software engineering classes next quarter are going to use zones to do their projects
Kristin: nice
Tom: which means that at least one member of the group needs to be a sysadmin
Kristin: interesting...
Tom: I'm trying to write a one to two page intro for them
Kristin: you need to keep track of how it goes
Kristin: it would be fun to post updates on how it goes
Tom: do you think someone at sun might be interested in how it goes
Kristin: yes
(a little later)
Tom: I wonder if this is too much for students?
Kristin: what? zones?
Tom: Should the really be partially administering their own machine?
Kristin: i think they should know how to do that but I may be biased