topic Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions in Operating System - Linux

Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

Hunki — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:26:02 GMT

Please suggest some useful and important tips on how to tactfully and successfully tackle them.

Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

Patrick Wallek — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:31:09 GMT

The best advice I can give is to just answer them as best you can. Do NOT try to bluff your way through them. If you don't know, say you don't know.

I will have a lot more respect for someone that says they don't know than someone that starts spouting a bunch of crap and tries hide the fact that they don't know.

Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:37:04 GMT

The best possible advice is to know enough shell, awk, and Perl to be able to handle any reasonable question.

The good news is that there are usually several ways to solve a problem so rather than answering specific questions, list the various approaches to solving a problem.

Be prepared for a question like "What was the last project in which you participated that required scripting/coding skills?"

Sometimes the best answer is "I don't know."

Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

Geoff Wild — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:56:39 GMT

Are you going to an interview - or are you giving one?

Going to one:

Main tip - be honest - if you don't know the answer say so - but add how you would find out.

IE - look in manual, man pages, contact HP, etc.

Giving one:

See how the person answers - are they guessing?

Rgds...Geoff

Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

Bill Hassell — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:31:54 GMT

If I am interviewing someone for a sysadmin position where scripting skills are important, I ask about scripts that the candidate wrote, and some of the tasks that were solved with those scripts. I also ask about reliability and error checking techniques that have been commonly used and lastly, have them look at a small script to describe what it does. The last step can be intimidating, especially in an interview so I pick something small (less than one page in length) but with several common techniques. I don't expect people to remember obscure options - that's what the man pages are for. But inspecting old scripts and fixing or changing them is a very common sysadmin task.

If you are the one answering the questions, the best preparation is to read lots of scripts. Here are two sites with practical scripting examples:

http://shelldorado.com
ftp://ftp.hpux.dk/mirror/hprc.external.hp.com/sysadmin/coolscripts/

The second one is an old copy of an HP site where I stored a bunch of scripts (almost all have been updated). I'm working to get that site updated after it went out of service last year.

Re: Tips on Unix Scripting Interview Questions

Yogeeraj_1 — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:46:04 GMT

Hi,

Ability to read and understand a script comes first. Most of the time scripts have alreadby been written. Knowledge of AWK and PERL are becoming more and more desirable.

good luck!
kind regards
yogeeraj