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Marshall Kirk McKusick (born January 19, 1954) is a
computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...
, known for his extensive work on
BSD UNIX The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...
, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. He was president of the USENIX Association from 1990 to 1992 and again from 2002 to 2004, and still serves on the board. He is on the editorial board of ''
ACM Queue ''ACM Queue'' is a bimonthly computer magazine founded and published by the Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 an ...
'' Magazine. He is known to friends and colleagues as "Kirk". McKusick received his
B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...
in electrical engineering from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...
, and two
M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...
degrees (in 1979 and 1980 respectively) and a
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984. McKusick is openly gay and 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 ...
, who has been his domestic partner since graduate school and whom he married in October, 2013.Alt URL
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BSD

McKusick started with
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...
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 at th ...
, 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, 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 following ...
(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 systems). It is included as an easter egg. He was also primarily responsible for creating the complementary features of filesystem snapshots and background fsck (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 or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...
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 George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd President ...
: ''The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, July 2004, * M. McKusick,
George Neville-Neil George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd President ...
, 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 LGBT people from Delaware Living people People from Wilmington, Delaware