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March 31, 2006 7:05 AM

I'm going to interview a couple sysadmin candidates in the near future. What are some questions that one should ask a sysadmin candidate that are Solaris specific? Please let me know what the correct answer should be, too. I've found that "How would you use newfs?" is a good one. Help me think of others!
posted by drstein to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I tend to shy away from the "think outside the box" kind of questions that are popular in interviews these days, and instead ask questions that any candidate could probably answer but which the best candidates will answer better. The problem with those is that you need to understand the level of detail in an answer, so I've just sort of hinted at possible answers. Some of my favorites:

• Describe the life of a process -- what happens when you run "true" from a shell? (Minimum: fork and exec, but there's lots of room for detail there. Even better if they remember that the process ends, too: signals, wait(), zombies.)
• Tell me how you'd perform a restore from tape after a system's root disk fails. (Should be straightforward, but watch for using software that isn't installed yet, and not replacing the failed disk. Talking about the possibility of existing documnted procedures is a good sign, too.)
• What's an inode?
• Some tool-design questions: How would you address the problem of false alarms in a network-monitoring system? (Lots of possibilities here.)
• Some troubleshooting: How would you diagnose a possible mail loop? (Needs to talk about DNS, mail configuration at all points in the loop, reading headers, etc.)
• What's your favorite utility/scripting language? What are a couple of its weaknesses? (Emphasize that there's no wrong answer to the first part -- in the second, it's a good opportunity to see how they choose their tools.)

Outside of technical stuff, I like to ask if they've worked on any open-source projects, what technical books they've enjoyed lately, to describe something they built at a past job that they were especially proud of and something they built at a past job that they weren't particularly proud of (where time was more important than quality, etc), talk about the organizational and supervisory structure of the teams they've been in in the past (the best, in my experience, have been those who were in a team with little direct supervision, but who took on an unofficial leadership or mentorship role in the team), that sort of thing. I make sure to push them into one situation where they at least think to themselves "I don't know", to see how they react (and saying "I don't know, but I'd..." is great).

I dunno how I'd answer "How would you use newfs?", other than "As documented", though.

You might also find the SAGE job description guidelines to be useful in figuring out what you need to look for when hiring.
posted by mendel at 9:14 AM on March 31, 2006

Oh, also: the SAGE guide to hiring system administrators.
posted by mendel at 9:16 AM on March 31, 2006

Crap, that's members-only, sorry. I thought it was free like the job description booklet. I also found this Ask Slashdot thread with the same question as yours, with answers of varying quality. There's some good suggestions in this answer -- I especially like the idea of walking them through a troubleshooting situation, but it means you have to come up with a situation where you can answer their questions on the spot.
posted by mendel at 9:26 AM on March 31, 2006

Mention the word "gbic" and watch their face. If they flinch, they've been at it for a while.
posted by eriko at 11:49 AM on March 31, 2006

I've always thought the "quiz show" style interview to be horrid, especially in the modern age where google is the diagnostic weapon of choice for rooting [npi] out obscure problems.

I prefer to interview based on our system needs and how the person will fit in with the group: bastard sysadmins who know their stuff are nearly as useless as a sysadmin neophyte who will be pleasant to work with.

Rather than the exam process, better questions would be a bit more open ended: explain the last downtime you had to deal with. What was your most troublesome system problem and how did you resolve it? What is your policy with sharing root? What security precautions do you take?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:45 PM on March 31, 2006

Technology changes quickly enough (although one can argue that Solaris doesn't change some things ever) that I've gone more after general skills and where they go when they get stumped (books, people, websites, etc.) when interviewing folks.

I agree with mendal that "I don't know..." is a great answer. A lot of new sysadmins always know. They create "issues" that their replacements have to spend months cleaning up.

The best tech interviews are those done by teammates. You can see how a person would fit in. Non-techies just don't have enough knowledge to tell when they are being snowed.
posted by QIbHom at 10:27 AM on April 1, 2006