Test To Give When Hiring or Interviewing a Junior Linux System Administrator

[Rob]

Grimlock: Welcome to LinuxForum - great additions!

Yes, we do use mostly Red Hat / CentOS - but also have a lot of customers running Debian.

[digininja]

Can I be pedantic and say the answers to 1 and 2 are what ever you'd like the lines to be if you run them as

perl file.pl

[michiganbob]

Jeez, haven't written any Perl since college. Better not hire me!

[geewizzo77]

here i am thinking I had a handle on linux, wow!

[bartonphillips@gmail.com]

Grimlok I found your questions much harder than the ones in the article. I also noticed that the article was aimed at a RedHat based distribution. Thanks

[lykwydchykyn]

I've been a Linux admin for close to six years or so, and I'd probably fail most of these tests; either because I work with different distributions, work with different kinds of workloads, or just haven't had to do most of these things often enough to commit the process to memory. At my employer, we use Linux for database servers, web applications, kiosks, network booting, and basic file services; we run Debian, Ubuntu Server, and some SLES. Your test touched on little to nothing that I do on a daily basis.

IMO a good test would:

- Stick to distro-agnostic commands and ideas

- Not require knowledge of a certain command if there are potential alternatives

- Not require the testee to remember obscure switches (that's what "man" is for).

- Check for knowledge with a variety of workloads, and only then for the most basic familiarity.

Honestly, how hard do you want to make it for someone to work for you?

[bartonphillips@gmail.com]

lykwydchykyn good point about man. I actually didn't have much trouble with the article's test but I in general don't remember all the switches etc. When I am coding in C for example I often have to refer to the web for specific arguments and order of args -- and I have been coding in C for over 20 years. The important thing is being able to find the information one needs. I would give any applicant high marks for using the man pages or the Internet when answering questions.

[gcawood]

Thanks for the great feedback everyone. It's important to remember that this test is designed to be taken by someone who has access to both MAN pages and to Google. This should help the interview candidate not get stumped on syntax or switches. Also, there are only one or two commands that specifically reference Red Hat. If the candidate were to be a Debian buff or show preference to another distro, then I would agree that question #13 should be reworded.

Remember, the premise of this test isn't to score the candidate on a pass/fail. It is to watch them use the tools that they have learned over the years to attempt to answer the questions that are in front of them. It also should help you uncover where their strengths or weakness are.

If you have other good questions that you think should be asked, please post them and I will happily update the test.

Thanks, and keep the feedback coming.

[tedryder]

1) #!/usr/bin/perlLocation of perl interpreter.

[tedryder]

1) #!/usr/bin/perl Location of perl interpreter.

2) #!/bin/bash Location of bash interpreter.

3) whereis

4) Create a.htaccess file in the directory with the following line:AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php .php4 .php3

5) lspci

6) updatedb

7) updatedb -e /home/sites

8) ps -ef | grep httpd | awk {'print $2'} | xargs kill [-9]

9) lsof -u root

10) find -maxdepth 1 -user USER -perm 600

11) /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

12)

13) chkconfig service off

14)

15) rsync -avz --exclude '*.tar' source/ destination NOTE: If you don't want the base directory to be created, leave the trailing / after the source dir.

16) netstat --tcp --listening | grep LISTEN | wc -l

17) dig linuxforum.com mx

18) iptables -L --line-numbers

19) iptables -D CHAINNAME 10

20) iptables -A INPUT -s IP-ADDRESS -j DROP

21) vi /etc/resolv.conf
delete all entries starting with nameserver
add nameserver 8.8.8.8
:wq!

22) at 02:00
shutdown -r now
^D

23) service servicename status

24) service servicename stop

25)

26)