Interview Question for active directory and exchange

User
These questions will demonstrate whether the supplicant has had exposure to UNIX as an end-user. Does not imply that the user has any other skills, only that they've really used

UNIX.
___ List 10 UNIX Commands List 10 UNIX Commands

___ What is the most important UNIX command? Man

___ How do I create a directory? Mkdir

___ How do I find out what processes are running? ps, top

___ How do I exit Emacs/How do I exit vi? ^C^X for Emacs, :q for vi

___ What does the grep command do? searches files or streams for a regex

___ How do I stop a process? kill

Shell Programming
These questions test whether the supplicant has used basic shell programming constructs. If the person has been using the shell for ANY length of time, some knowledge of each of these will get picked up. These aren't really easy to pick up from books and answers may get fuzzy.

___ How do I test for the presence of a file in Bourne Shell? test -f

___ In a shell script, how do I print the scripts arguments? $@ $* or $1..$2..

___ How do you make a shell-script executable?chmod ___ script

___ What is the difference between ' ` and "? Protect, Process and Group

___ How do I connect processes, so stdout of one becomes stdin of another? pipes

___ How do I redirect stderr under a Bourne Shell? 2>

___ How do I determine the home directory of a user in a shell script? $HOME, ~, /etc/passwd
___ What is a regular expression? pattern matching language

___ Explain shell job control. fg,bg,&,^Z

___ Whats the differences between a Bourne and C-Shell? startup file, script syntax, etc..

___ How are new processes created? fork/exec <><>

Basic (generic) Administration
These questions test whether the supplicant has done basic UNIX System Administration. Some questions (fsck) may not apply if the system architecture does not have an analogous construct (AIX). Sophistocated Help Desk personnel should be able to answer all of these. Since they all deal with day-to-day administration.

___ How do I find out who is logged into the system? who,w

___ What are the fields in the password file? user:pw:uid:gid:gcos:home:shell

___ What steps to setup a new user? /etc/passwd, home dir, permissions

___ What directory is typically used as scratchspace? /tmp

___ How do I stop a UNIX system? halt,init,shutdown

___ Name some top-level (under /) directories? (etc,bin,usr,var,tmp)

___ How do I install a new printer? lpadmin, /etc/printcap

___ What does fsck do? fixes filesystems (no AIX)

___ Explain the concept of virtual memory. Physmem, Swap, and paging.

___ What kind of permission would "chmod 755" yeild on a file?U = rwx, g/o rx

___ What is an "s" in a file's permission mean? setuid <><>

___ What does a "b" as the first letter of a file's permissions mean? block special

___ How do I make a new disk available for files? mkpart/newpart,mkfs,mount (no AIX)

___ If I'm logged in as root, what command lets me "become" another user id? Su

___ What's the difference between "su" and "su -"?su - run's the user's login files <><>
___ What command will tell me how busy the system is? (load average) top,sar,iostat,vmstat

___ How do I see what print jobs are pending? lpstat, lpc stat, etc..

___ How do I setup a printer? lpadmin, printcap, YMWV

___ What's the startup files for the C shell (or Bourne)? .login/.cshrc or .profile

___ What is /etc/aliases? mail aliases for systems
___ What's the current version of your OS? SunOS 5.x/2.x, HPUX ~10, AIX ~4, IRIX 5/6,etc..

Advanced Administration
These questions separate the men from the boys.
___ What is /etc/inittab? Startup sequence file

___ Where is the "main" mail configuration file for a system? sendmail.cf

___ What is the first process to start on a UNIX system, after the kernel? init <><>

___ What is an inode? pointer to block of disk, referenced in a directory

___ What does the ipcs command do? shows status of System V IPC structures <><>

___ What is the Changed time on an inode/file mean? Last time the inode was modified <><>

___ What's an indirect block? Pointer to a list of blocks <><>

___ What is an X Server? graphical display device, optional

___ What are two X Clients? xterm, xclock, netscape, CDE, etc...

___ What is RAID? Redundant Array of Independant Disks, striping, mirroring, etc.. <><>

___ How do I change the priority of a process?nice, renice, priocntl (SysV.4) <><>

UNIX Network
These questions test whether the supplicant has used basic network commands. Note, this doesn't mean that he knows anything about how they work.

___ What is a web server? What is a web client? place with pages, netscape/msie

___ How can I copy a file from one system to another? ftp,rcp

___ What command lets me remotely log into another system? telnet,rsh

___ Give an example of a domain name? dcicorp.com, ford.com

___ Give an example of a host name? varies widely

Networking Administration
These questions test whether the supplicant has done basic network administration. Note, this doesn't mean that he may not know some networking tools (FTP,rcp, etc..) but has he set them up before, does he know how they work?
___ What is an IP address? 32-bit Internet Protocol ID Number
___ What is a subnet? logical/physical grouping of systems by IP/Subnet

___ What is a MAC accress? ID number burned into every ethernet card

___ What is a hub? common: same-subnet, same-collision domain ether connection

___ How do I test to see if a system is setup on the network correctly? Ping

___ How do I display the route table? netstat, route

___ What's in the inetd.conf file? Internet daemon info <><>

___ What is DNS? heirarchical network naming system, Domain Naming System

___ What features of Anonymous FTP make it secure?chroot'ed environment

___ What is NSLOOKUP? tool for querying names/addresses in DNS

___ What are RPC's? Remote Procedure Calls <><>

___ What is an A record? primary name->ip address mapping <><>

___ What is an MX record? mail domain mapping record <><>

___ What is NFS? Network File System
___ How do I setup a system as an NFS server? share,/etc/exports,sharetab, etc..

___ How do I setup a system as an NFS client? mount, mount tables

___ What is SMTP? Simple Mail Transport Protocol

___ What is traceroute? IP routing utility

___ How does traceroute work? declining TTL in IP header<><>

Security
For those people that put "security" down, these two questions should be quite easy for UNIX "security" people.
___ What are shadow passwords? unreadable password files

___ What is an rhosts file? Why is it bad? Bezerkley trust, can be abused

___ Why are set-uid shell scripts a bad idea? unexpected shell expansion <><>

___ What is SSH? Secure Shell <><>

___ Explain (briefly) Kerberos? Ticket-based scheme for authentication <><>

___ What is the problem with running fingerd(1)? Gratuituous information

___ Sendmail is currently at what version? 8.x. If they don't use sendmail, hooray

___ Who is CERT? What do they do? Computer Emergency Response Team, issue advisories

Perl
These indicate whether or not a person really has seen perl scripts before. Perl scripts can be easy to read, but if you write them, these questions are easy. Use the perl examination for further testing here.
___ What does the @ in a variable indicate? its an array

___ What's the current version of Perl? 4 or 5, prefer 5. 5.005 is MRV

___ What is a Hash? a key-data pair type of array variable