Bnonn wrote:
Yah, I know that coding ability isn't mandatory. It's just tricky gauging my own knowledge and ability against others when I don't really personally know any other Linux users :) I admin Windows at work, and feel pretty confident in that, but computers are such that the more you know, the more you know that you know damn all.
Still, I have no problem with taking risks. And I'm learning to take notes :D
Isomer's power user test: If you can answer all of these questions you truely have guru status. If you can answer more than about 5 or so, you are definately a power user. If you can answer any, you're doing well. Google, manpages and any other reference source is encouraged. * Why has the writing been worn off my tab key? what am I using it for? * What's a netmask? What is the netmask for a /23? What happens if you have the wrong netmask? * A service has died, you've fixed it and need to restart it, how would you go about doing so? * What does it mean if my computer boots up and says "L" then stops? What's wrong? How would you fix it? * Can you compile your own kernel? Does anyone really know what MTRR is? does anyone care? * What is ldconfig, and when would you use it? what happens if you forget to run it? * lost+found directories are scattered around the filesystem, what is their purpose? Can they just be removed? Are there any side effects to doing so? * emacs or vi? * What process has pid 1, why is this process important? Where would you configure this process? What happens if this process goes away? * Do you know what these tools are used for? ** apropos ** awk ** cvs ** dmesg ** find ** fsck ** grep ** locate ** screen ** sed ** ssh ** strace ** sudo ** svn ** umount ** watch ** wall ** wget * do you know how to use /sbin/fdisk? do you use cfdisk anyway? * How do killall and killall5 differ? Have you ever got them confused? Is this bad? Were you fired? * Do you run screaming at the word PCMCIA? How would you configure a PCMCIA wireless card? a PCMCIA GPS? a PCMCIA flux capacitor? * Running most programs elicits the error "Read only filesystem", what may have caused this? How would you resolve it? * how would you tell if a machine is running debian, redhat, gentoo, or windows xp? * what would you do to get a program run on stup? * What kind of files would you expect to find in /usr/share/zoneinfo, are these files important? what would happen if they were removed? * I'm installing a package the depends on portmap, what is it that I'm likely to be installing? is portmap important? how would I diagnose issues with portmap? * How do I determine what ports are open on my machine? How can I tell what ports to close? Name at least two ways to "close" ports from the Internet. * How do I list all the hidden files in a directory? * What does "#!/bin/sh" mean, why is it important? * If I had permissions "rwxr-xr-x perry fooers" who could do what? What type of file is this likely to be? What about if the permissions are 550? * Whats the difference between bash and xterm? * How do I determine if swap is enabled? How would I disable it? * How many primary partitions can you have on a normal x86 box? How would you get around this? * I have a /boot partition, how big should this be? Is there anything special about how this partition is layed out on disk? * fsck says "Deleted inode has zero dtime" what has happened to my disk? am I going to have to reinstall? * I've forgotten my root password, what can I do about this? * depmod complains about unresolved symbols? How would you resolve this issue? * what is important about "."'s at the beginning of a filename? What sort of files would be named like this? * I have a file with a charactor I can't type in it, how would I delete it from the cli? * Linux boots and then says it can't start my X server, what does this mean? how would I fix this? * I want to have a program run every day at 3am, how would I do this? * What are the best ways of determining what hardware is in my machine? * Have you written any wiki pages? * ls segfaults when run, how can I tell what files are in the current directory without using X? * What is a window manager? What happens if I don't have one? * What's this lpd thing running? Why would I want it? Where is it's configuration usually stored? How would I submit files to it? * Every time I type an "s" in X I get a "z" on the screen, whats wrong? how would I fix this? * X needs a driver on a CD I have to run, how would I get that driver onto the machine? * How do I list all the rpm's installed on a machine? How do I list all the .debs installed on a machine? * click to focus? sloppy focus? or focus follows the mouse? Discuss. * I have a .tar.gz file that contains the source to a program I want to install, how would I compile and install it? * The above program fails while installing saying "checking for zlib.h... failed" what do I do now? * Should I install it in ~, /usr, /var/tmp, /opt, "/Program files/Perry's cool program" or /usr/local, discuss. * I have a daemon that isn't working, what would the first thing I do be? * I have a program running on port 23/tcp open, is this a problem? * what's /dev/ttyS0 likely to be? I sent "AT\n" to it, and it said something back that made me happy, what did it say? * How would I set up IP masquerading? * what's /etc/issue used for? why is it different to /etc/motd? Can I arbitarily edit either file? * eth0 has an IP address of 127.255.255.255, name two problems with this address being used on eth0. * Explain the difference between an oops and a panic. * I have an internal network, what IP address(es) can I use for my machines? what addresses shouldn't I use? * I use ihug for dialup internet, how would I set this up? * Whenever I try and use the internet it says "Unknown host", I can ping machines by IP address, whats probably wrong? what config file(s) would I check? How would I fix this? * I have no default route, how do I add a new one without rebooting? If I know my IP and netmask, at a guess what should I set the default gateway to? * What is 0x20 in decimal? binary? octal? does anyone care? * /proc/interrupts is showing a lot of interrupts on IRQ 0, is this something I should be worried about? * inetd is a cool program, what does it do? What happens if it's not running? * I'm at an Installfest, and I have a problem I can't solve, what should I do? * What's NAT? Why is it evil? * I installed a new kernel and now my computer panics during boot, what should I do? * If you had a computer that had all the problems outlined above, would you switch to macos? If you want to discuss your answers to questions please reply to me *OFF LIST* so that other people have a chance to think about them without the answers being given away.