Richard Moore graduated in pure mathematics from the University of Kingston upon Hull. He joined IBM in 1984 as a Networking Systems Programmer. His entire career has been devoted to problem determination and developing PD techniques. He has worked in a wide range of operating system environments including MVS and OS/2. Under OS/2 he co-authored the OS2 Debugging Handbooks and was responsible for bringing to OS2 enhanced tracing and dumping capabilities. He now works in IBM's Linux Technology Centre as RAS architect and is responsible for leading Serviceability initiatives for Linux. Dynamic Probes, Flexible Dump, Error Logging are the projects he is currently working on.

Linux is receiving the attention of industries that require reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) as key characteristics. The Telco and Enterprise market segments particularly come to mind. Over the past two or three years a number of independent RAS initiatives have been launched from the Linux Community. These are beginning to reach a sufficient state of maturity for major distributors, including Red Hat, Turbo Linux, SuSE and Monta Vista, to consider RAS items for inclusion in their Linux distributions. IBM has taken a major step in open-sourcing several of its own RAS technologies--notably Dynamic Probes--but more importantly, the company is collaborating in a wide range of complementary, community-based RAS projects. The result is that a consolidated approach to RAS is beginning to emerge which should accelerate its adoption by the Linux community at large. This paper provides a round-up of those initiatives and will offer insight in to the growing interest in RAS from the Linux Community.