What programming competences should a Unix admin have?

Question

How would you assess a Unix sys-admin.

What programming competences should a Unix admin have?

Answer 1

A few I use for a quick filter:

• What's a fork bomb, and is it good or bad?
• Give me a one line command that counts how many lines in a log file start with yesterday's date.
• Now do it a different way
• And a third if you're up to it.
• What should be chmod 777d, and why.
• What .* files would you expect in a users home directory, and what would be in them?

Answer 2

The only sure-fire way to assess them is to have them chat with somebody else who you know and trust to be a good Unix sys admin. I disagree with the practice of asking interview questions that you yourself don't really understand, since you won't be able to judge whether the candidate has a deep knowledge of the subject or is merely able to recite bits of trivia.

As for what you might want to quiz them on, that depends on what responsibilities they will have. You might ask them some stuff about how to maintain Apache, for example, but that only makes sense if they'll be responsible for servers running Apache (ditto MySQL, Samba, etc.)

Generally speaking, you may want to try asking some questions about shell scripting, user management, how to gauge server health and performance, and how to manage server security.

Knowledge and experience aren't everything, though. Make sure you hire somebody smart and responsible first and foremost. :) There's nothing worse than a flaky sys admin, or somebody dull with little interest in keeping up with current tech.