Linux Czar

As the Linux Czar, I’m asked to interview folks that are applying to jobs that require some Linux skills.  Interveiwing isn’t really my strong point and I always struggle to come up with good questions that will lead the canidate to talk about himself and his skills in a helpful way.  So, here are my own interview questions I’ve been known to use:

• What email lists, blogs, websites, etc. do you read regularly to keep current in your areas of interest and IT in general?
• How do you delete a file who’s name starts with a dash (ie: ‘-foo’)?  What about a file name that contains control characters?
• Tell us about the systems/infrastructure you deployed that you are most proud of.
• What tools and techniques have you used to deploy servers, workstations, etc. at scale?
• What’s the differences in RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6?  10?  50?
• When would you not partition a storage array?
• Have you used Red Hat Kickstart’s before?  When and why would you use the %pre and %post sections?
• How would you find out if there are duplicate RPM packages installed?
• How do you define a new macro in an RPM .spec file?