Linux admin interview questions

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1. How do you take a single line of input from the user in a shell script?
2. Write a script to convert all DOS style backslashes to UNIX style slashes in a list of files.
3. Write a regular expression (or sed script) to replace all occurrences of the letter ‘f’, followed by any number of characters, followed by the letter ‘a’, followed by one or more numeric characters, followed by the letter ‘n’, and replace what’s found with the string “UNIX”.
4. Write a script to list all the differences between two directories.
5. Write a program in any language you choose, to reverse a file.
6. What are the fields of the password file?
7. What does a plus at the beginning of a line in the password file signify?
8. Using the man pages, find the correct ioctl to send console output to an arbitrary pty.
9. What is an MX record?
10. What is the prom command on a Sun that shows the SCSI devices?
11. What is the factory default SCSI target for /dev/sd0?
12. Where is that value controlled?
13. What happens to a child process that dies and has no parent process to wait for it and what’s bad about this?
14. What’s wrong with sendmail? What would you fix?
15. What command do you run to check file system consistency?
16. What’s wrong with running shutdown on a network?
17. What can be wrong with setuid scripts?
18. What value does spawn return?
19. Write a script to send mail from three other machines on the network to root at the machine you’re on. Use a ‘here doc’, but include in the mail message the name of the machine the mail is sent from and the disk utilization statistics on each machine?
20. Why can’t root just cd to someone’s home directory and run a program called a.out sitting there by typing “a.out”, and why is this good?
21. What is the difference between UDP and TCP?
22. What is DNS?
23. What does nslookup do?
24. How do you create a swapfile?
25. How would you check the route table on a workstation/server?
26. How do you find which ypmaster you are bound to?
27. How do you fix a problem where a printer will cutoff anything over 1MB?
28. What is the largest file system size in solaris? SunOS?
29. What are the different RAID levels?

Basic .NET and ASP.NET interview questions

1. Explain the .NET architecture.
2. How many languages .NET is supporting now? - When .NET was introduced it came with several languages. VB.NET, C#, COBOL and Perl, etc. The site DotNetLanguages.Net says 44 languages are supported.
3. How is .NET able to support multiple languages? - a language should comply with the Common Language Runtime standard to become a .NET language. In .NET, code is compiled to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL for short). This is called as Managed Code. This Managed code is run in .NET environment. So after compilation to this IL the language is not a barrier. A code can call or use a function written in another language.
4. How ASP .NET different from ASP? - Scripting is separated from the HTML, Code is compiled as a DLL, these DLLs can be executed on the server.
5. Resource Files: How to use the resource files, how to know which language to use?
6. What is smart navigation? - The cursor position is maintained when the page gets refreshed due to the server side validation and the page gets refreshed.
7. What is view state? - The web is stateless. But in ASP.NET, the state of a page is maintained in the in the page itself automatically. How? The values are encrypted and saved in hidden controls. this is done automatically by the ASP.NET. This can be switched off / on for a single control
8. Explain the life cycle of an ASP .NET page.
9. How do you validate the controls in an ASP .NET page? - Using special validation controls that are meant for this. We have Range Validator, Email Validator.
10. Can the validation be done in the server side? Or this can be done only in the Client side? - Client side is done by default. Server side validation is also possible. We can switch off the client side and server side can be done.
11. How to manage pagination in a page? - Using pagination option in DataGrid control. We have to set the number of records for a page, then it takes care of pagination by itself.
12. What is ADO .NET and what is difference between ADO and ADO.NET? - ADO.NET is stateless mechanism. I can treat the ADO.Net as a separate in-memory database where in I can use relationships between the tables and select insert and updates to the database. I can update the actual database as a batch.

Linux admin interview question

1. How do you take a single line of input from the user in a shell script?
2. Write a script to convert all DOS style backslashes to UNIX style slashes in a list of files.
3. Write a regular expression (or sed script) to replace all occurrences of the letter ‘f’, followed by any number of characters, followed by the letter ‘a’, followed by one or more numeric characters, followed by the letter ‘n’, and replace what’s found with the string “UNIX”.
4. Write a script to list all the differences between two directories.
5. Write a program in any language you choose, to reverse a file.
6. What are the fields of the password file?
7. What does a plus at the beginning of a line in the password file signify?
8. Using the man pages, find the correct ioctl to send console output to an arbitrary pty.
9. What is an MX record?
10. What is the prom command on a Sun that shows the SCSI devices?
11. What is the factory default SCSI target for /dev/sd0?
12. Where is that value controlled?
13. What happens to a child process that dies and has no parent process to wait for it and what’s bad about this?
14. What’s wrong with sendmail? What would you fix?
15. What command do you run to check file system consistency?
16. What’s wrong with running shutdown on a network?
17. What can be wrong with setuid scripts?
18. What value does spawn return?
19. Write a script to send mail from three other machines on the network to root at the machine you’re on. Use a ‘here doc’, but include in the mail message the name of the machine the mail is sent from and the disk utilization statistics on each machine?
20. Why can’t root just cd to someone’s home directory and run a program called a.out sitting there by typing “a.out”, and why is this good?
21. What is the difference between UDP and TCP?
22. What is DNS?
23. What does nslookup do?
24. How do you create a swapfile?
25. How would you check the route table on a workstation/server?
26. How do you find which ypmaster you are bound to?
27. How do you fix a problem where a printer will cutoff anything over 1MB?
28. What is the largest file system size in solaris? SunOS?
29. What are the different RAID levels?

Basic .NET and ASP.NET interview questions

1. Explain the .NET architecture.
2. How many languages .NET is supporting now? - When .NET was introduced it came with several languages. VB.NET, C#, COBOL and Perl, etc. The site DotNetLanguages.Net says 44 languages are supported.
3. How is .NET able to support multiple languages? - a language should comply with the Common Language Runtime standard to become a .NET language. In .NET, code is compiled to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL for short). This is called as Managed Code. This Managed code is run in .NET environment. So after compilation to this IL the language is not a barrier. A code can call or use a function written in another language.
4. How ASP .NET different from ASP? - Scripting is separated from the HTML, Code is compiled as a DLL, these DLLs can be executed on the server.
5. Resource Files: How to use the resource files, how to know which language to use?
6. What is smart navigation? - The cursor position is maintained when the page gets refreshed due to the server side validation and the page gets refreshed.
7. What is view state? - The web is stateless. But in ASP.NET, the state of a page is maintained in the in the page itself automatically. How? The values are encrypted and saved in hidden controls. this is done automatically by the ASP.NET. This can be switched off / on for a single control
8. Explain the life cycle of an ASP .NET page.
9. How do you validate the controls in an ASP .NET page? - Using special validation controls that are meant for this. We have Range Validator, Email Validator.
10. Can the validation be done in the server side? Or this can be done only in the Client side? - Client side is done by default. Server side validation is also possible. We can switch off the client side and server side can be done.
11. How to manage pagination in a page? - Using pagination option in DataGrid control. We have to set the number of records for a page, then it takes care of pagination by itself.
12. What is ADO .NET and what is difference between ADO and ADO.NET? - ADO.NET is stateless mechanism. I can treat the ADO.Net as a separate in-memory database where in I can use relationships between the tables and select insert and updates to the database. I can update the actual database as a batch.

Interview at IBM

I have a scale and 7 balls. 1 ball is heavier than all the rest. How do I determine the heaviest ball with only 3 possible weighing attempts?

What is a linked list?

Name an advantage of linked list over array?

Name an advantage of array over linked list?

Have you ever used threads?

Should you protect the global data in threads? Why or why not?

Have you ever interfaced with a database?

Tell us about yourself.

Questions about specific resume entries.

Given two strings like x=”hello” and y=”open”, remove any character from string x which is also used in string y, thus making the result x=”hll”.

Interviews at IBM

I have a scale and 7 balls. 1 ball is heavier than all the rest. How do I determine the heaviest ball with only 3 possible weighing attempts?

What is a linked list?

Name an advantage of linked list over array?

Name an advantage of array over linked list?

Have you ever used threads?

Should you protect the global data in threads? Why or why not?

Have you ever interfaced with a database?

Tell us about yourself.

Questions about specific resume entries.

Given two strings like x=”hello” and y=”open”, remove any character from string x which is also used in string y, thus making the result x=”hll”.

Open-ended .NET questions

What is the difference between VB 6 and VB.NET?

What are the authentication methods in .NET?

What’s the use of formatters in .NET?

What is Serialization in .NET?

How is Threading done in .NET?

Differences between Namespace, Class, Assembly?

What’s the use of System.Diagnostics.Process class?

Open-ended .NET questions

What is the difference between VB 6 and VB.NET?

What are the authentication methods in .NET?

What’s the use of formatters in .NET?

What is Serialization in .NET?

How is Threading done in .NET?

Differences between Namespace, Class, Assembly?

What’s the use of System.Diagnostics.Process class?

Perl interview questions and answers

What arguments do you frequently use for the Perl interpreter and what do they mean?

What does the command ‘use strict’ do and why should you use it?

What do the symbols $ @ and % mean when prefixing a variable?

What elements of the Perl language could you use to structure your code to allow for maximum re-use and maximum readability?

What are the characteristics of a project that is well suited to Perl?

Why do you program in Perl?

Explain the difference between my and local.

Explain the difference between use and require.

What’s your favorite module and why?

What is a hash?

Write a simple (common) regular expression to match an IP address, e-mail address, city-state-zipcode combination.

What purpose does each of the following serve: -w, strict, -T ?

What is the difference between for & foreach, exec & system?

Where do you go for Perl help?

Name an instance where you used a CPAN module.

How do you open a file for writing?

How would you replace a char in string and how do you store the number of replacements?

When would you not use Perl for a project?

Perl interview questions and answers

What arguments do you frequently use for the Perl interpreter and what do they mean?

What does the command ‘use strict’ do and why should you use it?

What do the symbols $ @ and % mean when prefixing a variable?

What elements of the Perl language could you use to structure your code to allow for maximum re-use and maximum readability?

What are the characteristics of a project that is well suited to Perl?

Why do you program in Perl?

Explain the difference between my and local.

Explain the difference between use and require.

What’s your favorite module and why?

What is a hash?

Write a simple (common) regular expression to match an IP address, e-mail address, city-state-zipcode combination.

What purpose does each of the following serve: -w, strict, -T ?

What is the difference between for & foreach, exec & system?

Where do you go for Perl help?

Name an instance where you used a CPAN module.

How do you open a file for writing?

How would you replace a char in string and how do you store the number of replacements?

When would you not use Perl for a project?

Typical Oracle questions

1. Tell us about yourself, your background.
2. What are the three major characteristics that you bring to this company?
3. What version of Oracle were you running?
4. How many databases did the organization have and what sizes?
5. What motivates you to do a good job?
6. What two or three things are most important to you at work?
7. What qualities do you think are essential to be successful in this kind of work?
8. What courses did you attend? What job certifications do you hold?
9. What subjects/courses did you excel in? Why?
10. What subjects/courses gave you trouble? Why?
11. How does your previous work experience prepare you for this position?
12. How do you define ’success’?
13. What has been your most significant accomplishment to date?
14. Describe a challenge you encountered and how you dealt with it.
15. Describe a failure and how you dealt with it.
16. Describe the ‘ideal’ job… the ‘ideal’ supervisor.
17. What leadership roles have you held?
18. What prejudices do you hold?
19. What do you like to do in your spare time?
20. What are your career goals (a) 3 years from now; (b) 10 years from now?
21. How does this position match your career goals?
22. What have you done in the past year to improve yourself?
23. In what areas do you feel you need further education and training to be successful?
24. What do you know about our company?
25. Why do you want to work for this company. Why should we hire you?
26. Where do you see yourself fitting in to this organization initially? How about in 5 years?
27. Why are you looking for a new job?
28. How do you feel about re-locating?
29. Are you willing to travel?
30. What are your salary requirements?
31. When would you be available to start if you were selected?
32. Did you use online or off-line backups?
33. If you have to advise a backup strategy for a new application, how would you approach it and what questions will you ask?
34. If a customer calls you about a hanging database session, what will you do to resolve it?
35. Compare Oracle to any other database that you know. Why would you prefer to work on one and not on the other?

Typical Oracle questions

1. Tell us about yourself, your background.
2. What are the three major characteristics that you bring to this company?
3. What version of Oracle were you running?
4. How many databases did the organization have and what sizes?
5. What motivates you to do a good job?
6. What two or three things are most important to you at work?
7. What qualities do you think are essential to be successful in this kind of work?
8. What courses did you attend? What job certifications do you hold?
9. What subjects/courses did you excel in? Why?
10. What subjects/courses gave you trouble? Why?
11. How does your previous work experience prepare you for this position?
12. How do you define ’success’?
13. What has been your most significant accomplishment to date?
14. Describe a challenge you encountered and how you dealt with it.
15. Describe a failure and how you dealt with it.
16. Describe the ‘ideal’ job… the ‘ideal’ supervisor.
17. What leadership roles have you held?
18. What prejudices do you hold?
19. What do you like to do in your spare time?
20. What are your career goals (a) 3 years from now; (b) 10 years from now?
21. How does this position match your career goals?
22. What have you done in the past year to improve yourself?
23. In what areas do you feel you need further education and training to be successful?
24. What do you know about our company?
25. Why do you want to work for this company. Why should we hire you?
26. Where do you see yourself fitting in to this organization initially? How about in 5 years?
27. Why are you looking for a new job?
28. How do you feel about re-locating?
29. Are you willing to travel?
30. What are your salary requirements?
31. When would you be available to start if you were selected?
32. Did you use online or off-line backups?
33. If you have to advise a backup strategy for a new application, how would you approach it and what questions will you ask?
34. If a customer calls you about a hanging database session, what will you do to resolve it?
35. Compare Oracle to any other database that you know. Why would you prefer to work on one and not on the other?

Questions to ask when tech recruiter calls

1. How did you find me?
2. Is this a retainer or contingency assignment?
3. Are you dealing with the client’s HR people, or do you have direct contact with the hiring manager?
4. How long has the client been with you?
5. How many candidates have you placed with this client?
6. When will I find out the name of the principal or client company?
7. May I have a written job description?
8. Where is the position located?
9. Where is the company headquartered?
10. To whom does the position report?
11. Can you tell me about this executive’s management style?
12. Why is the position open?
13. What happened to the person who previously held this position?
14. Is this a new position?
15. How long has the position been open?
16. How long have you been working on the assignment?
17. What does the position pay?
18. Are here any pay or compensation constraints that I should take into consideration?
19. What can you tell me about the person who will be interviewing me?
20. What is his or her position, title, management style?
21. Who will make the final hiring decision?
22. After you present my resume, when can I expect to hear from you regarding the status of this position?
23. Can you describe, specifically, how the company navigates/balances work? and personal-life issues?
24. What might I do that would violate the culture of the company during my interview?

Questions to ask when tech recruiter calls

1. How did you find me?
2. Is this a retainer or contingency assignment?
3. Are you dealing with the client’s HR people, or do you have direct contact with the hiring manager?
4. How long has the client been with you?
5. How many candidates have you placed with this client?
6. When will I find out the name of the principal or client company?
7. May I have a written job description?
8. Where is the position located?
9. Where is the company headquartered?
10. To whom does the position report?
11. Can you tell me about this executive’s management style?
12. Why is the position open?
13. What happened to the person who previously held this position?
14. Is this a new position?
15. How long has the position been open?
16. How long have you been working on the assignment?
17. What does the position pay?
18. Are here any pay or compensation constraints that I should take into consideration?
19. What can you tell me about the person who will be interviewing me?
20. What is his or her position, title, management style?
21. Who will make the final hiring decision?
22. After you present my resume, when can I expect to hear from you regarding the status of this position?
23. Can you describe, specifically, how the company navigates/balances work? and personal-life issues?
24. What might I do that would violate the culture of the company during my interview?

SAP Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is ERP? - ERP is a package with the techniques and concepts for the integrated management of business as a whole, for effective use of management resources, to improve the efficiency of an enterprise. Initially, ERP was targeted for manufacturing industry mainly for planning and managing core business like production and financial market. As the growth and merits of ERP package ERP software is designed for basic process of a company from manufacturing to small shops with a target of integrating information across the company.
2. Different types of ERP? - SAP, BAAN, JD Edwards, Oracle Financials, Siebel, PeopleSoft. Among all the ERP’s most of the companies implemented or trying to implement SAP because of number of advantages aver other ERP packages.
3. What is SAP? - SAP is the name of the company founded in 1972 under the German name (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) is the leading ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software package.
4. Explain the concept of “Business Content” in SAP Business Information Warehouse? - Business Content is a pre-configured set of role and task-relevant information models based on consistent Metadata in the SAP Business Information Warehouse. Business Content provides selected roles within a company with the information they need to carry out their tasks. These information models essentially contain roles, workbooks, queries, InfoSources, InfoCubes, key figures, characteristics, update rules and extractors for SAP R/3, mySAP.com Business Applications and other selected applications.
5. Why do you usually choose to implement SAP? - There are number of technical reasons numbers of companies are planning to implement SAP. It’s highly configurable, highly secure data handling, min data redundancy, max data consistency, you can capitalize on economics of sales like purchasing, tight integration-cross function.
6. Can BW run without a SAP R/3 implementation? - Certainly. You can run BW without R/3 implementation. You can use pre-defined business content in BW using your non-SAP data. Here you simply need to map the transfer structures associated with BW data sources (InfoCubes, ODS tables) to the inbound data files or use 3rd part tool to connect your flat files and other data sources and load data in BW. Several third party ETL products such as Acta, Infomatica, DataStage and others will have been certified to load data in BW.
7. What is IDES? - International Demonstration and Education System. A sample application provided for faster learning and implementation.
8. What is WF and its importance? - Business Work Flow: Tool for automatic control and execution of cross-application processes. This involves coordinating the persons involved, the work steps required, the data, which needs to be processed (business objects). The main advantage is reduction in throughput times and the costs involved in managing business processes. Transparency and quality are enhanced by its use.
9. What is SAP R/3? - A third generation set of highly integrated software modules that performs common business function based on multinational leading practice. Takes care of any enterprise however diverse in operation, spread over the world. In R/3 system all the three servers like presentation, application server and database server are located at different system.
10. What are presentation, application and database servers in SAP R/3? - The application layer of an R/3 System is made up of the application servers and the message server. Application programs in an R/3 System are run on application servers. The application servers communicate with the presentation components, the database, and also with each other, using the message server. All the data are stored in a centralized server. This server is called database server.
11. What should be the approach for writing a BDC program? - Convert the legacy system data to a flat file and convert flat file into internal table. Transfer the flat file into sap system called “sap data transfer”. Call transaction(Write the program explicitly) or create sessions (sessions are created and processed ,if success data will transfer).
12. Explain open SQL vs native SQL? - ABAP Native SQL allows you to include database-specific SQL statements in an ABAP program. Most ABAP programs containing database-specific SQL statements do not run with different databases. If different databases are involved, use Open SQL. To execute ABAP Native SQL in an ABAP program, use the statement EXEC. Open SQL (Subset of standard SQL statements), allows you to access all database tables available in the R/3 System, regardless of the manufacturer. To avoid conflicts between database tables and to keep ABAP programs independent from the database system used, SAP has generated its own set of SQL statements known as Open SQL.
13. What are datasets? - The sequential files (processed on application server) are called datasets. They are used for file handling in SAP.
14. What are internal tables check table, value table, and transparent table? - Internal table: It is a standard data type object, which exists only during the runtime of the program. Check table: Check table will be at field level checking. Value table: Value table will be at domain level checking ex: scarr table is check table for carrid. Transparent table: - Exists with the same structure both in dictionary as well as in database exactly with the same data and fields.
15. What are the major benefits of reporting with BW over R/3? Would it be sufficient just to Web-enable R/3 Reports? - Performance — Heavy reporting along with regular OLTP transactions can produce a lot of load both on the R/3 and the database (cpu, memory, disks, etc). Just take a look at the load put on your system during a month end, quarter end, or year-end — now imagine that occurring even more frequently. Data analysis — BW uses a Data Warehouse and OLAP concepts for storing and analyzing data, where R/3 was designed for transaction processing. With a lot of work you can get the same analysis out of R/3 but most likely would be easier from a BW.
16. How can an ERP such as SAP help a business owner learn more about how business operates? - In order to use an ERP system, a
    business person must understand the business processes and how they work together from one functional area to the other. This knowledge gives the student a much deeper understanding of how a business operates. Using SAP as a tool to learn about ERP systems will require that the
    people understand the business processes and how they integrate.
17. What is the difference between OLAP and Data Mining? - OLAP - On line Analytical processing is a reporting tool configured to understand your database schema ,composition facts and dimensions . By simple point-n-clicking, a user can run any number of canned or user-designed reports without having to know anything of SQL or the schema. Because of that prior configuration, the OLAP engine “builds” and executes the appropriate SQL. Mining is to build the application to specifically look at detailed analyses, often algorithmic; even more often misappropriate called “reporting.
18. What is “Extended Star Schema” and how did it emerge? - The Star Schema consists of the Dimension Tables and the Fact Table. The Master Data related tables are kept in separate tables, which has reference to the characteristics in the dimension table(s). These separate tables for master data is termed as the Extended Star Schema.
19. Define Meta data, Master data and Transaction data - Meta Data: Data that describes the structure of data or MetaObjects is called Metadata. In other words data about data is known as Meta Data. Master Data: Master data is data that remains unchanged over a long period of time. It contains information that is always needed in the same way. Characteristics can bear master data in BW. With master data you are dealing with attributes, texts or hierarchies. Transaction data: Data relating to the day-to-day transactions is the Transaction data.
20. Name some drawbacks of SAP - Interfaces are huge problem, Determine where master data resides, Expensive, very complex, demands highly trained staff, lengthy implementation time.
21. What is Bex? - Bex stands for Business Explorer. Bex enables end user to locate reports, view reports, analyze information and can execute queries. The queries in workbook can be saved to there respective roles in the Bex browser. Bex has the following components: Bex Browser, Bex analyzer, Bex Map, Bex Web.
22. What are variables? - Variables are parameters of a query that are set in the parameter query definition and are not filled with values until the queries are inserted into workbooks. There are different types of variables which are used in different application: Characteristics variables, Hierarchies and hierarchy node, Texts, Formulas, Processing types, User entry/Default type, Replacment Path.
23. What is AWB?. What is its purpose? - AWB stands for Administrator WorkBench. AWB is a tool for controlling, monitoring and maintaining all the processes connected with data staging and processing in the business information whearhousing.
24. What is the significance of ODS in BIW? - An ODS Object serves to store consolidated and debugged transaction data on a document level (atomic level). It describes a consolidated dataset from one or more InfoSources. This dataset can be analyzed with a BEx Query or InfoSet Query. The data of an ODS Object can be updated with a delta update into InfoCubes and/or other ODS Objects in the same system or across systems. In contrast to multi-dimensional data storage with InfoCubes, the data in ODS Objects is stored in transparent, flat database tables.
25. What are the different types of source system? - SAP R/3 Source Systems, SAP BW, Flat Files and External Systems.
26. What is Extractor? - Extractors is a data retrieval mechanisms in the SAP source system. Which can fill the extract structure of a data source with the data from the SAP source system datasets. The extractor may be able to supply data to more fields than exist in the extract structure.