Adavicity
and Unix last updated July, 2009
Adavicity has played a Unix support role since
the 1980’s when SunOS workstations costing $25K apiece were common in
engineering environments. Much has
changed since those days. The desktop
has become commoditized and Unix had been moving into the server room until the
promise of Linux threatened to unwind the Windows advantage. Will ChromeOS from Google finally drive nails
into a Microsoft coffin?
Meantime, there are many Unix applications and
servers that must be supported today. At
Amtrak, porting multiple applications to Solaris 10 is providing a bridge to
the future. This includes a large
C++/Motif desktop graphical train control system and a perl-based intranet
schedule reporting system. The project
involves the update, intimate use and building of Apache, MySql, Java, Perl and
many CPAN modules, an in-depth analysis of Solaris 10 changes, development of
scripts and configuration functions and identifying the impact of TCP/IP
performance enhancements in Solaris 10.
Adavicity has completed modifications to
replication and rollout scripts, determination of the need for firmware
upgrades, analysis of disk and network configuration and evaluation of Solaris
10 on a PC.
Adavicity supports Systems Administration,
Configuration Management and Quality Assurance.
Adavicity is the primary source of Unix script development. Adavicity automates tasks using scripts,
scheduling tools such as cron, and other Unix utilities. The preferred shell here is Korn, so
Adavicity continues this tradition by upgrading existing Korn scripts and
writing new ones in ksh.
To automate the build process, Adavicity uses
two common tools: Make and Ant and their corresponding makefiles and XML. To provide control and monitoring of Apache, MySQL, Java and
C++ applications, Adavicity has used Korn shell scripts and SQL. We helped automate backup/replicate process
for MySql. We also created a
“unification” system that encapsulates differences among all production
machines in a simple ascii file, simplifying rollout/replacement.
More
Adavicity Accomplishments at Amtrak
Automated
other build and deploy processes in Perl and Korn shell scripts with TCP/IP. Modifications/enhancements to the GUI
front-end “Track Model Animator” and editing software in C/C++ and Motif.
Working with Motif UIL files and UIL editor. Served as Motif and C/C++ expert. (Application displays a scalable track model
of tracks, switches, signals, trains and other objects.) Also programmed time setting program.
Administer and support object client/server
version management (“True”) software on Unix, Windows and HP-Nonstop (formerly
Tandem) systems. Unix system
administration tasks including all aspects of Unix automation through
scripting, supporting users, patch levels, vendor interface, performance and
some network administration. Also set up
and configured CDE and window manager menus and resources, application
resources and xinit startup of the X server and applications (turnkey). Unified diverse Unix machines. Taught Unix course.
Automated the release process, created suite of
release and distribution tools in ksh and perl, restructured source file tree
to eliminate duplicate code, instituted tracking policies, brought all internal
and third party software under source control, created startup and turnkey
scripts for the application on several platforms. Also pitched in on development effort,
debugging a time setting C++ program that runs on HP-Nonstop and Unix,
debugging serial I/O to the program and the setting of a wall clock. Debugged and configured tape backups, machine
reboot and many other Unix administration tasks. Also created many tools using Unix scripts and
maintained TACL scripts to automate the installation of software and to configure
maintain and operate the development, test and production systems. Added users, configured startup scripts,
built machines, installed SSH, configured Apache and other Unix Administration.
Achievements:
[May
1997 – Present]
Adavicity
Accomplishments at Hudson-Bergen Light Rail;
This is another transportation company and
Adavicity takes pride in helping to provide convenient and economical
mass-transit. The system is due for an
upgrade but meantime performs admirably on DEC-Alpha servers running Tru64
Unix.
Supporting a Tru64 Alpha train control system
can be challenging but Adavicity has risen to the challenge of keeping the
system operating 24x7. Sometimes this
means getting out of bed at 2, 3 or 4 AM!
It also means creating suites of scripts to automate backups, disk space
monitoring, system performance monitoring and network trouble alerting. Disk space in particular presented a serious
challenge to system stability. After
installation of Adavicity products two years ago, the system has been stable
and has not crashed due to disk space issues.
In fact, the only system failures have been hardware-related. Of these, unplanned downtime totaled one hour
in the past two years.
Adavicity regularly configures and supports
various real-time devices connected to the servers. Supports IT infrastructure, Oracle and
Windows desktops. We upgraded Oracle
from version 8.0 to 9i, recreating all users, views, stored procedures and
Crystal Reports. and maintaining data integrity with no user impact. We also administer Oracle daily operations
and backups (2 of the 3 recommended methods).
Other Adavicity Achievements:
§ Replace old, failure-prone
excel VBA reporting process that took over 5 minutes to run with a
fuller-featured perl script running in 2-3 seconds.
§ Upgrade “Spear 2000”
database package and Oracle through nine versions (1999 to current) with no
operational disruption while modifying a half-dozen interfaces
§ Enhance Excel VBA
program. Add a toolbar to accept dates
as an input.
§ Create VB/WSH script to
automate train performance data correction & database import
§ Automate Unix file archiving
and backup using perl/bash scripting
§ Institute Configuration
Management using “Perforce” CM product
[January
15, 2007 to Present]
Adavicity
Accomplishments at Medco Health Solutions;
Created monitoring tools and launching scripts
for testing and production in bash, SQL and perl. Created makefile system to mirror Eclipse
functionality. Helped port various other
programs from VMS and Windows to Linux systems. Tested using TOAD in an Oracle
environment and Redhat Linux. Developed
two-part real-time simulator for control of pharmacy shipping system in C++
using Windows Forms, MSMQ and multi-threaded, TCP/IP backend.
[August
2008 – March 2009]
Adavicity
Accomplishments at ActiveNetwork/SportsPower
This was an interesting opportunity to apply
scraping knowledge and also some web technologies such as RSS. MySql and Linuix were in use and loading of
feed data was accomplished via cron calling perl. The perl code extracted, transformed and
loaded the data into the MySql database.
It was also fun to implemented web spiders, a
generalized news feed reader, a team name fuzzy matching library and date
recognition and normalizing library. The RSS reader was generic enough to read
more than 60 RSS news sources. Disk
space was also an issue as there was so much data coming in. Firtunately, the Unix find command is adequate for most tasks. This project used CVS for version control.
[August,
2007 to March, 2009]
Adavicity
Web Development
BidAttorney.com was a web site developed by and
for Lawyers. When these
non-professionals ran out of steam, they turned to Adavicity for LAMP
development. In case you are not keeping
up with the acronyms, that stands for Linux/Apache/MySql/PHP. You’ll have to look up PHP for yourself to
know what that means, but I can tell you simply it is a script language similar
to Javascript and perl, the invocation of which is embedded in web pages.
The case was with Pyramid Technologies. In both, Adavicity served as the
administrator of a Linux machine with a static IP address (necessary for
hosting your own sites).
Complete the design and initial development of a
prototype website matching consumers and attorneys using Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP
development environment. System
administration for in-house Linux server.
Complete setup and maintenance of Linux Apache server and static-IP for hosting web sites:
Adavicity
contributions at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange
Wrote
Unix scripted tools to allow sharing of testing resources among development
staff. Also, supported daily operations,
assisted in bringing new customers online, supported customer tests, supported
users and interacted with vendors. There
was a lot of programming work completed mostly on a Stratus running VOS and
PL/1 and C. If you don’t know what these
systems are, don’t worry too much I doubt there are very many left in
operation. VOS is a cousin to Unix,
having been developed from Multics just like Unix.
[December
1993 to May 1997]
Adavicity
at
Implemented parsers to read typesetting tapes
using many Unix tools such as lex, sed, grep, awk, tr (many others) and C
programs. Used trie data structures to
create searchable compressed data.
Performed Unix System Administration tasks, supported PC users, wrote
utilities to read tapes from HP 3000 system.
[1990]
Adavicity
at Sonalysts, Inc.
Developed entire display portion of radar and
other sensor tracking, advance warning system.
System showed contacts against a zoomable map of
the world and maintained a graphics capable history of all data. This R&D project was well behind schedule
until I joined the team -- it was delivered on time. This system was implemented on a SunOS
Sparcstation using C and Motif.
Maintained and upgraded text processing system
on a DEC Vax. Investigated and wrote
proposal for upgrade to Unisys embedded system.
Supported Trident radio room software in assembly language.
[1988]
At
Telesciences CO Systems
Began port of embedded real-time billing data
collection system to new MC68000 based hardware using psos real-time kernel and
C. Supported older 6809 based system in
assembly language. Used trace emulator, ice,
and other tools. Wrote tools, such as
program flow analyzer, in C on Unix platform.
[1987]