Job descriptions: DNS/Network fundamentals, diagnostics w/ Unix tools, RHat ,Solaris, Apache, Sendmail, DNS. Given simple questionnaire. Interview w/ lead tech: Noisy background, flurry-rushed questions covering basic commands: list services, who, head. Very chaotic. Terrible atmosphere for interview. Didn't seem to have time to talk. VERY uncomfortable. After 15 years of linux experience, this job should be a cakewalk, however considering the way the interviewer presented himself (Rushing the questions, interruptions during answers, and the disruptive nature of the background noises, the interview was a nightmare. My suggestion would be to make enough time (more than 10 minutes) for the process. And proceed in a quiet atmosphere. Some of the questions asked during the interview:
Q: What is RAID?
A: data spread across different harddrives so in case you lose a harddrive, you don't lose your data.
Q: What is the difference between a TCP and UDP?
A: TCP is secure, using ACK's, UDP is unreliable.
Q: Default file system on Linux?
A: EXT3, or EXT4
Q: How do you see the top ten lines of a file?
A: head -10 filename
Q: User has lost root password, how do you reset?
A: Not sure.
Q: port #'s for SNMP, MySQL, and HTTPS I'm almost sure he said HTTPS, but it could have been SFTP, in which case the port would have been115
A: 161, 156, and 443
Q: What are different runlevels?
A: 1,2,3,4,5, with 5 being GUI, 2 single user(wrong, should be 1), 3 is command line with networking.
Q: Define "Hot Swapable"
A: The ability to add/remove Hardware w/o taking the machine down
Q: Define the difference between a hub and a switch.
A: Mumble, Mumble.... I knew years ago, but could google and have answer in 10 seconds.
I studied for 5 days on DNS (MX records), Sendmail, Apache, RH admin, Well known ports, MySQL, IPTABLES, and Solaris. If I had it to do over, I would ask the interviewer to please reschedule when he had the time. He was harried, rushed, and talked so fast it was sometimes hard to make out what he was asking. To much activity going on in the background. It seemed he was at a meeting and shoved me into a 10 minute time slot, sometimes interrupting my answers. This made the process unnerving and I had a hard time focusing on what was expected of me. The payrate they are willing to offer is less than what the job should pay. I left an 80K job that was much more professional. Only to be rejected at a chaotic work environment for 45K. The laid back atmosphere didn't seem to apply here.
