Comments on: How to Interview a Unix SysAdmin

By: Jamal

Jamal — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:46:36 +0000

difference in redhat linux and sun solaris OS???
1. In Software level
2. In Certification level.

By: Sir fliesalot

Sir fliesalot — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 01:17:35 +0000

I have a interview tomorrow and would like to prepare a little bit.

By: Alun J

Alun J — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:19:32 +0000

To confine wht I really require and learn it is realy taking time for me. I am confused now to whether to learn Symbian or WIn Ce or RT linux or Win 2003 admin, Linux admin or J2ME or microcontrollers 8051, Arm32, Pic, Rabbit etc..
When you observe this are requirements of our future needs and they are interalted.. I am really confused which way I need to go and which way I can converge all this and where to settle down!! Some one who can really understand my mind or make sense for me Please suggest me any thing I will consider all u r Valuble suggestions

By: Keegan

Keegan — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:16:44 +0000

Which career has more benefits, I/T or Software engineering?

I have experience in both and love / hate certain aspects. I want your opinions based on your experiences in either field, classes you’ve taken, general interests, etc.

By: Dana G

Dana G — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:22:49 +0000

I am a beginner GNU/linux power user with aspirations of becoming a “sysadmin”. I have read on various sites that the role is fundamentally changing from one of installing the physical racks, wiring them etc, to managing a virtual environment, utilizing configuration management tools such as chef, vmware and puppet to manage remote servers in the data-center. I have read the profession will most likely split into physical sysadmins working with the physical servers and the operational sysadmins who will manage configuration etc.
Would this new role still require one to study scripting and all of the traditional UNIX wizard skills such as knowing about filesystems, ability to troubleshoot from log files etc?
I am basically seeking a skill set to enable me to work in this new environment. I assume there is more to it than simply learning the configuration management tools?

I await your replies……

By: sarah w

sarah w — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:01:40 +0000

Please rate the difficulty of a computer programming career out of 10, compared to other computer careers. Thanks

By: toast

toast — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 07:27:53 +0000

This is a question that I used to use in interviews. The idea was to see just how deep a candidate could get. I would use this:
“given: a unix flavor of your choice, network connectivity using DNS for resolution, describe what would happen if you typed ping http://www.netscape.com” Given, all ports are open and network connectivity is fine. Difficulty: I’m looking for detail from what happens when you type to the kernel, to the process to the network, etc until you get the reply and how/why that reply hits your screen. If you can’t get that deep on somethings, no problem – go as deep as you can on what you have knowledge in.

By: Charlie Guo

Charlie Guo — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:40:18 +0000

I like your idea about sysadmin interview. With the development of cloud computing today, may I suggest that a good sysadmin need more automation afforded by shell scripts and cron jobs, they can do serious system engineering and software development.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:29:55 +0000

In reply to Charbel Nasr. In Linux the "cd" command is built into the shell. If you enter "type cd", it will tell you "cd is a shell builtin". On Solaris /usr/bin/cd is a POSIX shell script. Not every available shell has the same functionality built in. Solaris uses POSIX shell scripts in /usr/bin to provide an alternative to built-in shell commands as a failsafe.

By: Charbel Nasr

Charbel Nasr — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:05:08 +0000

Why is the command “cd” not in /usr/bin on linux systems

By: admin

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:45:12 +0000

In reply to TS. I don't think so. The "-le" stands for "less or equal", thus I would not have missed node50.

By: TS

TS — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:39:08 +0000

Remember to verify your scripts. You would have missed node50 with this script…

#!/bin/ksh
i=1
while [ $i -le 50 ]
do
ssh node$i “echo ‘135.122.12.9 host.mydomain.com’ >> /etc/hosts”
(( i = i + 1 ))
done