[JOB] - Linux Appliance Distro Jockeys Wanted

["Charlie Bennett-3" <user=191@nabble.blu.org>]

Pardon the intrusion... 

Two and half years ago Jesse Noller posted on this list looking for a 
'Linux Guy' for a startup in Waltham called 'Archivas'.  Archivas makes 
a clustered data archiving appliance which uses a group of Linux nodes 
to make a high-availability spinning-disk WORM device. 

I became the Linux Guy at Archivas.  The Linux Guy at Archivas is 
responsible for providing the operating system and all the OS-to-App 
glue used by the nodes.  This has meant stripping down a stock Fedora 
distro to the bare essentials, providing a custom unattended CDROM and 
PXE installer (we dumped Anaconda early) and doing all of the code that 
handles storage and network discovery and configuration, as well as all 
of the init-script and log rotation noise you'd need on such an 
application node.  I also get to consult on 10,000 details on how we use 
Linux for other things inside the shop. 

Last year Archivas was bought by Hitachi Data Systems and this OS is 
finding its way into other product lines at Hitachi.  It's grown to 
support multipathed Fibre and iSCSI SAN with internode storage failovers 
and fairly tight integration with enterprise SAN management tools, yada, 
yada, yada. 

Although everybody here uses Linux on their desktop and there are a lot 
of very talented engineers, most of them are Java jockeys working at the 
application layer or Python people working test automation and have no 
skill or interest in helping out with the increasing load of bringing 
new features into the underlying platform. 

Being *the* Linux guy my work load is crushingly high.  I need help. 
Most recruiters are worse than useless in finding the kind of person we 
need: Linux Chimera.  Ideally someone interested in joining me would 
have a skill mix similar to my own: 

- solid Linux sysadmin skills 
- reasonable familiarity with GNU/Linux release engineering, like 
  RPM (rpmbuild, spec files, patching SRPMS, etc), yum, some autoconf 
  savvy and solid GNU make skills 
- decent programming skills in at least two of bash, busybox ash, awk, 
  C and python 
- knows how Fedora is put together from the initrd, sysfs, udev, 
  /etc/sysconfig level 
- knows what to do with a modalias file in sysfs 
- venerates Ken Thompson and views Linux through UNIX v7 glasses 

Pluses would include: 
- SAN experience 
- familiarity with dm-multipath 
- familiarity with dm-crypt 
- familiarity with OpenIPMI 
- Voldemort-level python and GNU Make skills 
- QEMU virtualization 
- TUN/TAP VLAN routing for virtual machines 
- some Perl 
- deep (CDB/sgio-level) SCSI chops 
- emacs, 'if( foo ) {', pepsi, cats, Paige, Python 

I would gladly take a Bill Nottingham or Jeremy Katz but they're kind of 
busy. 

We're still in Waltham.  We work hard and learn new stuff every day and 
spend a lot of time drilling down on stuff that's not widely understood 
in the Linux world (like SCSI persistent reservations on Multipath).  We 
pay real money and being a division of Hitachi Ltd. (Japan) we're going 
to be here for a while.  The original Archivas management is still here 
and is very deft at preserving the 'startup' feel that many of us here 
require to work happily. 

If this kind of gig interests you and you think you can come up to speed 
quickly with the kinds of skills I need, reply to me directly and we'll 
talk. 

Thanks, 
ccb 


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