System Administrator Interview Questions
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System Administrator interview questions shared by candidates
A UNIX fie system has been reported at 100% full. You log in and clear what appears to be the offending file. However, the file system still reports to be 100% full. What could cause this?>
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Use the lsof utilty (List Open Files) to identfy the process
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Kill or restart the process which has been still looking for deleted file
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In this case the answer accepted was. "The file that you cleared was still open by the calling application. The file handle was still in use and the file system was not recognizing that the space had been released. Less
If the customer was on the phone angry and pressuring to get the system back online but you didn't know what the issue was how would you deal with the situation
1 Answers↳
Try to keep the customer informed while solving the problem. Makey them feel their problem is the only issue your focused on. Show the customer sucess no matter how little to gain their confidence. Less
what is third field in /etc/shadow file?
5 Answers
The interview questions were pretty average. Each person had questions written down but they didn't seem to be form questions. Average interview questions. The questions were not very technical
5 Answers↳
Looking for full time employment
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Want a change in my career
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Live real close to the hospital
Why are manhole covers round?
5 Answers↳
The answer they are undoubtedly looking for is because manholes are also round thus need round covers. It doesn't ask why they were designed to be round from an inventive stand point and makes no mention of why the holes themselves are round, just the covers. Its a test of your ability to use logic and reason and make sure that if they hired you that you would have a firm understanding of the "big picture". Thats my take on this anyway... Less
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My guess is if you need to put it back or take it off you can roll it around rather than carry it or drag it Less
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They aren't. In my house, there are 3, and they are all square or rectangular. I have been in a mine where the (round) manholes weren't covered with anything at all which was rather unsafe, and another where they were covered with a lattice to prevent things or people from falling into them. I haven't seen any round manhole cover yet. But I'm not a native English speaker and may not be getting the pun, someone please enlighten me what this stupid question means. Less
When does DNS use TCP instead of UDP
4 Answers↳
DNS use TCP for zone transfer.
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Maximum UDP packet size is 512 bytes (or 4096, with the extension of DNS protocol). When the request is larger then a max. UDP size, DNS will switch to TCP. Less
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speed
Why do you want to switch from your current job to a customer support role?
4 Answers↳
Be honest. If you don't know why you did it then you are just going to come across as a floater. If you struggle with this type of question ask yourself this: What are the Con's of my current job / career path? What are the Pro's of my target job / carrer path? Why did I apply for this job? Why did I apply to this company? This structure will clarify things within yourself and hopefully spawn a few branching thoughts. When answering: Be confident of your decision; be prepared for rebuke and counter-questions. These are designed to test your resolve; your thought process and your competence. The real question here is much different - Who am I hiring. Consider this. Less
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Hi and thanks for your comment. I totally agree and I would have been prepared for the question hadn't it been that I was brought in for a interview in a "Linux System Administrator" position, which promptly changed into a "Support Engineer" role. I still wanted the job though. Less
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I want a career not a job
Which one is the bit of the Sticky Bit?
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The octal value is 1. i.e. chmod 1644. The "1" is for sticky
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2 is for sticky bit 2644 for files; 2755 for directory.
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I answered 10.. the recruiter said... are you sure? yes... it was the 1st... remember the permissions are a 12 bit structure divided into 4 sections of three bits. Less
How would you restart IIS running on Windows Server
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1) open run and type iisrestart 2) open services.msc and restart the IIS server 3) reboot the server Less
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I'd bring up the services window on that server and right click and select restart or stop and then start. Less
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Ohhh, the perfect question for testing the real skill of a sys admin. The answer is most definitely "enter-pssession ; cmd.exe net stop w3svc && net start w3svc" However, the real answer is "Ensure the IIS server is out of the load balancer and completely drained. Run the commands above. Ensure it is ready to accept HTTP(s) connections and the code is warmed up. Throw back into the load balancer pool." Less