[nycbug-talk] MSNBC on the decline of technology jobs

[Francisco Reyes]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 alex at pilosoft.com wrote:

> I have a list of questions I like to ask on interviews from prospective
> employees, I should share it and you can see how well would you do.

I am not a "network professional", but I will bite. :-)
No cheating.. googling for the answers..
<roll up sleaves>

> * How many fields in an IP header router will change while forwarding?
> [ttl and crc]

Absolutely no clue. :-(

> * Why should you have recursive dns server separate from authoritative dns
> server [cache growth/cache poisoning]

A guess. :-)
Redundancy, growth and to prevent against malicious activities.

> Unix admin questions:
> * Solaris: how do you change fullduplexness of an interface? [ndd
> /dev/xxx]

Solaris.. what's that? :-)
Not a Solaris person... (but I do know what it is .. at least) hehe.

> * What's an inode?

Finally.. One, I think, I know.
An Inode is how the operating system tracks files and their parts.
It uses a B-Tree data structure to track files. Because of it's B-tree 
data structure it can quickly find a file or all it's parts.

>What happens if you run out of inodes?

You can't create more files or expand files.

>How do you prevent yourself from running out?

If you are preparing a file system and you know you will have lots of 
files you can configure the parameters to newfs to have more inodes.

If you already have the filesystem you may need to copy the files and 
re-do the filesystem.
You could also use a mount point to move some of the files to a new 
partition.

You can also move all/some of the files to a different partition and use a 
symbolink link in the original location.

> * What's a sticky permissions bit?

It's an additional permission beyond read, write, execute which can be set 
on a file or a directory.

>What if a directory is sticky?

Only the owner of the file can edit the file.

> * When would you use tar vs cpio?

Tar is more portable.

> * You are trying to unmount filesystem, but it tells you 'busy'. How would
> you see what processes are using it? [fuser -m or lsof]

Don't know in Linux, but in FreeBSD lsof and fstat.

>
> * You screwed up boot block and server won't boot. You have the original
> OS CD. How do you boot off the CD the OS on the current hard drive? [very
> os-dependent, but in most cases boot -a will prompt you for root fs]

Use the install CD to fix the boot block.

> I can write down the questions I usually ask C/C++ people too, if there's
> any interest.

:-)
Not a C/C++ developer..