[ale] Absolutely deplorable Linux quiz

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Fri, 2011-02-25 at 23:57 -0500, Pat Regan wrote:
> Stumbleupon just gave me this page.  It is horrendous.  After seeing
> how poorly worded some of the question were I just had to click through
> for my score.  I can forgive them for a technicality on question number
> 1...  
> 
> The first oddly phrased question is probably number 4, I had no idea
> what they were really trying to get out of question 5.  Getting marked
> wrong for number 9 when I picked the correct answer (none of the above)
> is just ridiculous...
> 
> http://www.careerride.com/Linux-Interview-Questions.aspx

Okay, there are so many issues with that page that I don't even know
where to begin.

So, uh, I won't.  It's awful, and that's it.

I lied.  "Every user has a defined quota in Linux. This is done mainly
for the security, as some users have only limited access to files."
What?  What the bloody hell does a quota have to do with filesystem
permissions?

Then there's the second one.  While dmesg is, in certain system
configurations, a file stored in /var/log that stores kernel messages,
dmesg is firstly a command that displays (and optionally clears) the
kernel's ring buffer.  Wow.

Next! There is nothing unique to Linux about its security model in the
default configuration, and for that matter PAM is neither kernel-space
nor is it Linux-only.  And one could make a perfectly valid argument
that the design of PAM is in fact detrimental to the goal of having a
secure system---at least in the default configuration where shadow
password files are used---because applications can only authenticate if
they have the ability to read the shadow file!  Either that or you have
to have to fuss around with permissions and the odds of screwing that up
aren't exactly zero.

Alright, someone REALLY needs to hit this idiot on the head.  THIS KIND
OF STUPIDITY IS EXACTLY WHY WE HAVE SUCH A HARD TIME EXPLAINING
NETWORKING TO PEOPLE:

> Yes a Linux machine can be made a router. This is called "IP
> Masquerade." IP Masquerade is a networking function in Linux similar
> to the one-to-many (1: Many) NAT (Network Address Translation) servers
> found in many commercial firewalls and network routers. The IP
> Masquerade feature allows other "internal" computers connected to this
> Linux box (via PPP, Ethernet, etc.) to also reach the Internet as
> well. Linux IP Masquerading allows this functionality even if the
> internal computers do not have IP addresses.

WHAT?!  The kernel can route, and it can also do NAT, but one doesn't
have any bloody thing to do with the other!

And NAT isn't a server!  UGH!

Minimum number of partitions?  1.  Period.  You can put swap on a
filesystem.  It's not as efficient.  It's not as safe.  But it can be
done.  Hell, for that matter, one can use LVM and boot directly onto a
logical volume---logical volumes aren't partitions!

Oh, finally they mention the ring buffer.  And then they go and say that
pipes allow things to be viewed one screen at a time.  Oops.

logrotate, sure.  But it's not the only game in town.  Oy.

"the mail server"?  'scuse me, which one are we talking about?

nice does not make a process use less CPU time.  It makes it get less
CPU time slices as compared to other processes.  That just means that
its job is going to take longer than it did before; it won't use any
more or less CPU time, just wall-clock time.

"How to change window manager by editing your home directory?"  I heard
that some older UNIX systems let you view and edit directories directly,
but I'm pretty sure that Linux does not allow that type of behavior...

And is ~/.xinitrc even used anymore, anyway?  I was pretty sure that
things are all done with .desktop files now, unless you go out of your
way to do it differently.

And why is this page saying *anything* about whether or not
documentation is installed at the time of a package's installation?
Yeah, sure, for some things.  For others, the documentation is freakin'
huge and is either not packaged at all or is packaged separately.

I can't even make it through the rest.  It hurts too much.  I mean,
seriously.  What is this supposed to be, as accurate as a CompTIA exam?

	--- Mike