Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Sometime around 1981, when your editor was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, he was introduced to the Computer Science department's prized VAX 11/780, which, at that time, was a dual boot system, switching between VMS and and early BSD Unix every afternoon. The chief of the Unix side was Evi Nemeth. The first thing that struck most people about Evi was a general sense of distraction and disorganization; it's only later that one realized the she was one of those smart people who make things happen.

Evi armed your editor with a dog-eared edition of the K&R C book and access to the Unix source. She encouraged the writing of a fix to the system's memory management code, which tended to let one memory hog take over the system - a bad feature on a multiuser computer. That "fix" has, happily, vanished from living memory, and any backups which exist will no longer be readable. But the pure fun of being able to dig into the operating system code lasts to this day.

These days, Evi lists her office as being "my sailboat, Wonderland, somewhere in the Caribbean." She has a relatively low profile in the Linux community, despite being one of the authors of (and the inspiration behind) the Linux Administration Handbook, but the USENIX crowd knows her well. Her time at CU launched a whole generation of hackers who are in the field for the joy of it, and every one of them thinks back fondly to one of the people who got them started. Well done, Evi; you helped make all this happen.

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to post comments

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 24, 2010 16:55 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

The Unix System Administration Handbook, versions 1,2,3 have been the MOST useful books I have ever had the privilege to deal with. I have kept old copies because you never know when you will find an Ultrix system that needs a serial port terminal still. From the many people who I have met who have worked with Dr? Nemeth, she is a wonderful person to have learned from... always challenging and encouraging people to meet their full potential.

Thankyou for your books.. I hope you have fun sailing.

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 25, 2010 10:00 UTC (Thu) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

I was lucky enough for the USAH to be my first Unix book. It was all that I needed to find my way around my first Linux system and to dig the Unix philosophy in the process. Thank you, Evi!

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 25, 2010 10:43 UTC (Thu) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]

Thanks a lot to Evi from me as well.
The book in Russian translation happened to be very useful for me when I was learning Unix (FreeBSD, Linux, and some others).

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 25, 2010 21:09 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (guest, #2813) [Link]

Indeed a great book, one of my first purchases out of College. I just blew the dust off the 1989 copy on my office bookshelf and noticed it was right next to AEleen's Essential System Administration. I remember hitting USAH quite a bit for everything from Usenet to crufty mail configs.

So another thanks to Evi.

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 29, 2010 20:50 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

1) There's a 3d edition??

2) I have my first and second, as well.

3) Didn't realize you'd worked with her, Jon. Cool.

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 24, 2010 16:55 UTC (Wed) by abadidea (guest, #62082) [Link] (1 responses)

Glad to see more prominent sites picking up Ada Lovelace Day!

Dear hackers, if there are any women or girls in technology, past or present, you'd like to give a shout-out to, please see http://findingada.com/ TODAY. We need more posts!

Mine was for Valerie Aurora ;D

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 25, 2010 2:25 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Mine too. But I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be "pledging".

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 25, 2010 21:14 UTC (Thu) by tiagovdaa (guest, #50122) [Link]

Thank you Evi, for USAH. My first Unix book, that opened my eyes and lead my
way into depts of Unix!

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 26, 2010 11:59 UTC (Fri) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link]

Whilst not having read Evi's book (hangs head) I did hear her speak at the
1993 UKUUG LISA conference though sadly my memory fails me entirely on the
topic and content. :-(

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 26, 2010 15:33 UTC (Fri) by niv (guest, #8656) [Link]

Great article. Thank you, Jon, for honoring Ada and for writing this in particular.

Evi Nemeth (an Ada Lovelace day tribute)

Posted Mar 26, 2010 16:41 UTC (Fri) by jorgegv (subscriber, #60484) [Link]

What else can be said, everyone here seems to love "The Red Book" (USAH, second edition). I started my career as a System Administrator with it and my copy of The Red Book still has a preferential place in my shelf.

Thanks Evi, here's my tribute.

"Here lies the entire Berkeley CSRG" - Damn, I'm getting touched. :-D