Linux Interview Questions
 

hi,

can anyone give me linux interview questions?

Hi,

first read this.

Then use the forum search button.

After that come back here.

That is a very vague question.

Are you an interviewer/employer or are you looking for work and want to get an idea of potential questions?

What area within the world of Linux are you looking for questions on?

For general questions you can google "linux interview questions" and get a lot. You have to be more specific about who you are and what you are trying to achieve for more specific questions.

To get an understanding of the person and a feel for the technical abilities I would ask questions like these which are good for starting discussion:

What distribution do you use at home and why?

Says a lot about a person, specifically the why

What distribution have you got professional experience with?

In industry its all about the experience

What main applications (mail server/http daemon/office etc... applications do you use?

Depending on what the job role is the sort of applications you are looking for experience in will differ

What is your "killer app" and why?

This was a resent discussion topic at a recent Kent LUG meeting I attended. Again says a lot about a person and philosophy, some say sed/grep, others say screen, others wine. Took about 13 people before someone mentioned a web browser

Tell me an interesting problem you have had to solve using linux and outline how you did it.

Anyone who has worked on a systems level has had to at some point make the best of a bad situation with a bit of a hack. This is often where linux comes in useful by nature of it being hack friendly.
In most cases this allows someone to demonstrate their research and problem solving skills with a real world problem that is "outside the book" and fix it using (usually) a variety of methods they may not be immediately familiar with

Are you active in any OSS projects/groups? If so what role do you perform?

Both show a level of enthusiasm and interest outside of this being "just a job"
Active in a project on any level - programming experiance/working with teams etc...
If someone is active in a LUG they have access to other peoples expertise and insight. Perhaps they do some administrative/organisational work, perhaps they regularly give demos on different technology.

Although I agree, that the question asked by 'vksm' is very vague but I loved reading the response by amon.

I actually planned to kinda use similar questions when I get chance to interview someone .... :)

I'd employ amon, but then I don't work in IT ;)
Probably belongs in "General"

Have a look at these:

General:
1. http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interv...rviewquest.htm

Linux Basics:
1. http://www.coolinterview.com/type.asp?iType=83

@amon

Your post was really helpful :)

Those questions are very good. Some of those "Linux Basics" questions I would not call "basics" but everyone's experiences/requirements differ. Some jobs require a lot of scripting and intricate knowledge of grep,sed and awk within shell scripts. Others require that you know all the different network configuration options in depth.


Interview questions tend to be about:

1. Does this person fit with the personalities of the team/company
2. Does this person have all the required knoledge for the tasks at hand
3. Can this person be trained/pick up the required knoledge for the post in a time frame that fits the project

First and foremost It is always important for a person you are employing to be able to work within the teams and company. This does include aptitude/initiative and the more general job skills/requirements for the position.
When it comes to skills, sometimes an employer needs someone who can hit the ground running. Other times they are happy for a capable person to pick up skills on the job.

I personally aim to be a Linux problem solving "Swiss army knife". I'm not knowledgeable of the intricacies of sed (I can just about remember a basic string replace) or many tools, however I have an understanding of where things are what they do and I can jump from one area to another quickly with a small amount of research. I know this doesn't suit all employers who tend to look for people who are a specialist in specific areas but it is the way I have ended up working in the past (quickly hack this then run and hack something else).

I am interested in learning scripting languages, but I have heard the scripting languages are useful if you tend to become a system administrator.

I am not a system administrator, Will knowing sed, awk, etc. would be professionally useful for me ?

If yes, then would you be kind enough to explain !

I think that this line of questioning is worth a different thread and has most likely been asked before. see: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

There are a large number of scripting languages out there, each is a tool. You wouldn't use a screwdriver to bang in a nail so it depends on what you are trying to do.

sed, awk, etc... are used on the command line in Linux systems and in shell scripts (essentially a collection of command line instructions just like a .bat file on windows/dos).

Shell scripting guids are best found with a google search. There are many of them just find one you like.

For the answer to "Will knowing sed, awk, etc. would be professionally useful for me?" you need to let people know what you do/want to do and the nature of the problems you come across.

But all that is best for another thread after searching the forums here.

Thanks for the reply!

I admit its my fault I didn't browse the forums for this question !!

I think you are correct, now I am not expecting an answer to post no 9 in this thread, this post of mine is just a reply to your post no. 10

Anyways now I searched the threads of the forum w.r.t the question "Will knowing sed, awk, etc. would be professionally useful for me ?" but couldn't find much relevant threads !

I understand that without knowing what I want to do no one will be able to tell me whether I should learn sed or awk.
Currently my job doesn't need these scripting languages.
But if I know in what kind of projects they are used for (other than system administration jobs) I will be able to decide whether I am interested in that kind of work or not !

I searched Google as "uses of sed" and found that it is used for processing data files. But what I couldn't understand was that "What kind of projects require extensive data processing"

Anyways as you said this topic requires a new thread

Thanks for your replies !