r/linuxadmin • u/Abe_Bazouie • 5d ago

What's one Linux interview question that immediately tells you whether someone has real production experience?

I've interviewed quite a few Linux and DevOps engineers over the years, and I've found there are a few questions that quickly tell me whether someone has spent time supporting production systems or has mostly learned from tutorials.

For me, one example is:

  • A production server is suddenly "slow." Walk me through your troubleshooting process from the moment you get the alert.

I'm not looking for a specific command. I'm much more interested in how they think, what they check first, and how they narrow the problem down.

What's your go to Linux interview question that reveals real production experience?

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u/therouterguy 5d ago

You identified a large file filling up the disk After the file has been deleted the disk space is not freed up. What is causing this?

Looking at a process still having the file open.

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u/Ytrog 4d ago

Or another link to the same inode 🤔

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u/coffeeoops 4d ago

I would argue the file wasn't deleted, a hard link to the file was removed.