Two questions regarding SNES/KSP

[Paul T. Bauman]

Hello,

I'm a new PETSc user, so if the questions I ask are redundant, I 
sincerely apologize. I was, however, unavailable to find the following 
information in the manual pages.

I have two questions.

First: When using the SNES package, is the initial guess for the 
/iterative linear solver/ (e.g. conjugate gradient) 0.0 or is it 
something else (e.g. the current Newton solution)?

Second: I see that PETSc checks the preconditioner matrix for positive 
definiteness, but does it check whether the current solution iterate is 
positive def. (i.e. if x_i is the current solution iterate and A is the 
current Jacobian matrix, does the algorithm check if (x_i)^T * A * (x_i) 
 > 0)?

Thanks so much for your help.

Best Regards,

Paul