What I Learned from a 2018 Linux Ops Interview: Key Questions & Answers
In this detailed account of a 2018 Linux operations interview, the author shares the job description, required skills, practical preparation tips, and concise answers to seven common interview questions, offering valuable insights for aspiring sysadmin and DevOps professionals.
In early January 2018 the author, after receiving many recruiter messages, attended an interview for a Linux operations position and shares the experience.
Job Description: 1. Install, configure, optimize and maintain application servers. 2. Backup, manage, maintain and analyze application logs. 3. Daily monitoring, fault handling, performance analysis and optimization of applications. 4. Develop, deploy, upgrade and maintain deployment, environment configuration and monitoring systems to build a high‑performance operations platform. Requirements: 1. Familiar with basic Linux OS and common commands. 2. Proficient in configuring and optimizing Nginx, HAproxy and related software. 3. Understand networking fundamentals, TCP/IP, and be able to configure switches or routers. 4. Know at least one scripting language such as shell, Perl or Python for automation. 5. Experience with monitoring tools like Nagios or Ganglia.
The author then gives practical interview preparation advice, such as arriving early, brushing teeth, bringing a resume and a pen, and being ready to answer typical questions.
Typical interview questions and brief answers:
Self‑introduction – keep it 3‑4 minutes, focus on relevant experience and technologies.
How to implement gray‑release – (author omitted detailed answer).
MongoDB familiarity – deployed a replica set or sharded cluster, usually on three or five servers; explained sharding basics and the role of mongos.
Release and rollback with Jenkins – configure code repository, tag, build, push to release server, distribute to business servers; rollback by deploying the previous version.
Tomcat working modes – standalone, in‑process, and out‑of‑process containers, with request sources from front‑end web servers or browsers.
Monitoring solutions – Alibaba Cloud monitoring for cloud services, Zabbix for IDC environments.
Data backup – hot backup via master‑slave architecture, cold backup using a dedicated server with rsync + inotify and scheduled tasks; also backup deployment packages.
Finally, the author emphasizes the importance of knowing one’s résumé, being honest about unknown topics, preparing thoroughly, reviewing the job description, and summarizing the interview afterward.
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