How to prepare system /Unix internals interviews

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pear2018

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pear2018
Apr 21, 2018 22 Comments

I’ve tried several DevOps/sre opportunities for FANG level companies. All failed in phone interview of system / Unix internals. How to prepare it?

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  • Know your fundamentals. I should be able to throw you in the deep end for any problem whatsoever, and you should be able to start poking around and start eliminating possible issues. This means knowing some rudimentary theory (everything on unix is a file, what are common OS-level metrics to check for anything abnormal, how to check for them and what causes these abnormalities, what a process is, the basics behind how VMs and containers work, etc). Common sense will bring you much further than anything you could learn from a book, and for that you need hands-on experience. Know a little about everything, be a generalist.
    Apr 21, 2018 3
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    thebumble

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    thebumble
    The Linux Programming Interface. Cover to cover. It will change you for good.
    Apr 21, 2018 1
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    hefq15

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    hefq15
    Do you run your own servers, use Linux daily? So much of that stuff isn't in books, you just have to dig deep when trying to make things work and work better.

    Filesystems are academic until you're trying to pick the right one for your pictures. SMB and NFS are the same until you have performance issues moving your files around.

    And yeah, I guess you could read the Linux source code. But you better be really good at C.
    Apr 21, 2018 0
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    pear2018

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    pear2018
    OP
    For example , if you got an error ,file not found , during installation of a package on Linux . How to troubleshooting it ?I dig into system calls and strace but still can not make him happy
    Apr 21, 2018 4
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      pear2018

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      pear2018
      OP
      Good to know
      Apr 21, 2018
    • Check what file it is, and check for whether the partition it's on has a mounting issue, yes. But in that case, the "file not found" issue is completely unrelated to your installing a package so go from there and troubleshoot the partition.
      Much more likely, the package has an installation issue. Open it up (unarchive it), check the contents and most importantly check the pre- and post-install scripts that are embedded in it. See where they're going wrong. If you go into kernel land as soon as you have some file not found issue, you're going to take days to solve an issue that can be figured out in 15min at most
      Apr 21, 2018
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