On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 08:14:37PM +0300, Giannis Stoilis wrote: > I was interview by Google some months ago, for an admin position. They > kept asking me some anal questions for kill parameters and signals and > what does traceroute show when that X specific network problem exists > and stuff like that. I knew most of them but some where quite obscure > and although I consider myself an experienced system administrator, I > didn't know them by heart, since I didn't ofter use them. > > After the interview, I finally got it. Yes, we admins can find any > solution to probably any problem by Googling it. However, think about > it. How does a google admin solve an infrastructure problem preventing > google from working in the first place? Yes, experience counts, but > sometimes you really need to know exactly how stuff works inside, even > if it is just boring theory, even if you never use it. Most of the > times our job is infrastructure maintenance, so our dependance to > resources should be as low as possible. > Yes, man pages are always available. However, what do you do when the > damn knoppix cd has bad sectors EXACTLY on the man page you are > looking for?
You read the man page or documentation files for the tools if you need a weird option. I don't use google to find command line options for tools. I use it for looking up bugs and other things that people may have already found solutions for. > When I fell in love with linux, one of the first thing I did was to > read every single man page. Although I certainly can't remember the > details, I have at least a vague knowledge of what lies inside the > /usr/bin treasure chest. And that gives me confidence. Yes experience will help you know where to look. It doesn't mean you have every option memorized. > That said, although there is room for improvement, I like LPI's > current question approach. I was certainly very very disappointed in it, although I think it was 5 or 6 years ago I took the 101 test. I hope it has gotten much better since. -- Len Sorensen _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
