Kirk McKusick
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Marshall Kirk McKusick (born January 19, 1954) is an American
computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
, known for his extensive work on
BSD UNIX The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
, from the 1980s to
FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
in the present day. He served on the board of the
USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...
Association from 1986 to 1992 and again from 2000 to 2006, including terms as president from 1990 to 1992 and 2000 to 2002. He served on the editorial board of ''
ACM Queue ACM ''Queue'' (stylized ''acmqueue'') is a bimonthly computer magazine, targeted to software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining softwar ...
'' Magazine from 2002 to 2019. He served on the board of the FreeBSD Foundation from 2012 to 2022. He is known to friends and colleagues as "Kirk". McKusick lives in California with
Eric Allman Eric Paul Allman (born September 2, 1955) is an American computer programmer who developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. In 1998, Allman and Greg Olson co-founded the company Sendmail ...
, his partner since graduate school, whom he
married Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...
in October, 2013.Alt URL
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Education

McKusick received his B.S. in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
from
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
, and two
M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...
degrees (in 1979 and 1980 respectively) and a Ph.D. in computer science from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
in 1984.


BSD

McKusick started with
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
by virtue of the fact that he shared an office at Berkeley with
Bill Joy William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO ...
, who spearheaded the beginnings of the BSD system. Some of his largest contributions to BSD have been to the file system. He helped to design the original
Berkeley Fast File System The Unix file system (UFS) is a family of file systems supported by many Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is a distant descendant of the original filesystem used by Version 7 Unix. Design A UFS volume is composed of the following ...
(FFS). In the late 1990s, he implemented
soft updates Soft updates is an approach to maintaining file system metadata integrity in the event of a crash or power outage. Soft updates work by tracking and enforcing dependencies among updates to file system metadata. Soft updates are an alternative t ...
, an alternative approach to maintaining disk integrity after a crash or power outage, in FFS, and a revised version of
Unix File System The Unix file system (UFS) is a family of file systems supported by many Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is a distant descendant of the original filesystem used by Version 7 Unix. Design A UFS volume is composed of the followin ...
(UFS) known as "UFS2". The magic number used in the UFS2 super block structure reflects McKusick's birth date: #define FS_UFS2_MAGIC 0x19540119 (as found in /usr/include/ufs/ffs/fs.h on
FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
systems). It is included as an
easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The ...
. He was also primarily responsible for creating the complementary features of filesystem
snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...
s and background
fsck The system utility fsck (''file system check'') is a tool for checking the consistency of a file system in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the L ...
(file system check and repair), which both integrate closely with soft updates. After the filesystem snapshot, the filesystem can be brought up immediately after a power outage, and fsck can run as a background process. The ''Design and Implementation'' series of books are regarded as very high-quality works in computer science. They have been influential in the development of the
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
descendants. The
BSD Daemon The BSD Daemon, nicknamed Beastie, is the generic mascot of BSD operating systems. The BSD Daemon is named after '' software daemons'', a class of long-running computer programs in Unix-like operating systems—which, through a play on words, ta ...
, often used to identify BSD, is copyrighted by Marshall Kirk McKusick.


Bibliography

* * S. Leffler, M. McKusick, M. Karels, J. Quarterman: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, January 1989, . German translation published June 1990, . Japanese translation published June 1991, (out of print). * S. Leffler, M. McKusick: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System Answer Book'', Addison-Wesley, April 1991, . Japanese translation published January 1992, * M. McKusick, K. Bostic, M. Karels, J. Quarterman: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, April 1996, . French translation published 1997, International Thomson Publishing, Paris, France, . * McKusick, 199
Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix
(from the book ''Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution'' ) * M. McKusick, George Neville-Neil: ''The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, July 2004, * M. McKusick, George Neville-Neil, R. Watson: ''The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, Second Edition'', Addison-Wesley, September 2014,


References


External links

* /www.mckusick.com/ McKusick's home page {{DEFAULTSORT:McKusick, Marshall Kirk 1954 births BSD people American computer scientists Cornell University College of Engineering alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Free software programmers FreeBSD people LGBTQ people from Delaware Living people People from Wilmington, Delaware