RE: Interview Questions for a Unix Solaris System Admin

Okay, here are my favorites for senior candidates (I'm giving all my secrets away...):

1. What is an inode? Bonus: What important piece of file information is NOT stored in the inode?
2. What is priority paging and how does it work? (mildly dated, but useful if they claim to have been around for a while)
3. What does sr stand for in vmstat output?
4. How would I configure the gigabit ethernet interface to force it to be full duplex?
5. How does RAID-5 work? Bonus question: how does raid-4 work? Extra-extra bonus question: how does raid-3 work?
6. What's the difference between the passwd and the shadow files?
7. What's the difference between the dsk and rdsk devices in /dev? Bonus question: what's the difference between a block and a character device?
8. How do journaling filesystems work?
9. What's the difference between ssh and telnet? Why is one preferable over the other?
10. What's the difference between the e4000 and the e4500 (or e6000 and e6500, etc. - also a bit dated, but there's still a million of the things out there)
11. What happens on an E6500 when I add boards in the bottom two slots? (I won't ask this if the person has never touched an E6500)
12. On an Sbus e-class I/O tray, what performance considerations do I have to keep in mind when I'm installing Sbus cards?
13. Why is NIS bad?
14. What's the difference between TCP and UDP?
15. How does DNS work? Bonus question: is DNS TCP or UDP?

Then I usually throw in some amorphous questions: tell me about a performance problem you tracked down and solved, how do you normally secure a freshly installed Solaris server, etc. Then I follow up with product specific questions - oracle, sun cluster, veritas volume manager, storage, etc.

Thanks,
Matt

--
Matthew Zito
GridApp Systems
Email: mzito_at_gridapp.com
Cell: 646-220-3551
Phone: 212-358-8211 x 359
http://www.gridapp.com



> -----Original Message-----

> From: ml-errors_at_fatcity.com [mailto:ml-errors_at_fatcity.com] On 

> Behalf Of Scott.Shafer_at_dcpds.cpms.osd.mil

> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 1:44 PM

> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

> Subject: RE: Interview Questions for a Unix Solaris System Admin

> 

> 

> question #1:  Do you realize that your DBA is a God, and you 

> will obey his/her edicts without question?

> 

> question #2:  Are you aware of the daily offering of 

> food/beer required to keep in your God's (DBA's) good graces?

> 

> etc...

> 

> Scott Shafer

> San Antonio, TX

> 210.581.6217

> 

> 

> > -----Original Message-----

> > From:	M.Godlewski [SMTP:mcgodlewski_at_yahoo.com]

> > Sent:	Tuesday, July 15, 2003 1:30 PM

> > To:	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

> > Subject:	Interview Questions for a Unix Solaris System Admin

> > 

> > I've been asked to interview a system admin candidate for 

> our Solaris 

> > shop.  I've search Google and altavista, but haven't come 

> up with any 

> > after 1999 interview questions.  Does anyone have a list of 

> interview 

> > question or a link to some?

> > 

> >  

> > 

> > tia

> > 

> > M

> > 

> >   _____

> > 

> > Do you Yahoo!?

> > The New Yahoo! Search 

> > <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/search/mailsig/*http://search.yahoo.com> - 

> > Faster. Easier. Bingo.

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