Technical test for IT support role

[SFC]

Hello folks,

Help! :eek:

I'm in a mad rush to prepare a test for interviews on Thursday so I thought I'd see if some of you bright folks can help me out :thumbs:

The role is IT Support and the essential criteria are:

1 Capability of providing support to users in a range of applications
2 Good written and oral communication
3 Experience of Windows networking
4 Ability to work as part of a team
5 Experience of PC hardware, software and network installation, configuration and troubleshooting

Desirable:
6 Experience of WMI scripting
7 Experience of GIS
8 Experience of ADS
9 Knowledge of DTP
10 degree/HNC/HND/equiv

So the areas I want to cover in a written test of about 15mins are 1,3,5,6,7,8,9

Any suggestions? What nasty questions did you get asked in your interview?

Any help would be great cos we're furiously fighting the great spam/virus war at the moment. :nod:

[ATrull]

can't help with windows but if anyone ever wants help with a unix related one ;).. know who to call!

[SFC]

a couple of unix flavoured ones would be pretty useful as well actually mate cos we're still going to have some linux servers hanging around after the great change over to the evi1 corporation's products ;)

[aBoijj]

Try these out for size, they may be a little dated by now but they're good questions :)



1) You are establishing a disaster recovery plan for your network,
and are considering the following points, select the two most critical.

a) System backups.*
b) Anti-virus software.
c) Third party maintenance for critical equipment.
d) System documentation.*
e) Spare copies of software.
f) Anti-static precautions.
g) Air conditioning.
h) Uninterruptible power supplies.
i) Single points of failure.

2) You are establishing a disaster prevention plan for your network,
and are considering the following points, select the three most critical.

a) System backups.
b) Anti-virus software.*
c) Third party maintenance for critical equipment.
d) System documentation.
e) Spare copies of software.
f) Anti-static precautions.
g) Air conditioning.
h) Uninterruptible power supplies. *
i) Single points of failure.*

3) What is the main reason for using fibre optic cable for external
links (i.e. between two separate buildings) on a LAN?

a) It is much faster.
b) It won't conduct electricity.*
c) You can run it over greater distances.
d) It has a much higher bandwidth.



4) Two disks in your stripe set with parity have failed. How would
you recover from this failure?

a) Restart the computer
b) Choose the Regenerate command on the fault tolerance menu in
disk administrator.
c) Recreate the stripe set and recover from tape backup. *
d) Open disk administrator and select the recoverable stripe set
with parity.

5) When using Performance Monitor to evaluate server performance,
you suspect that a particular server may require maintenance. Upon
closer inspection you find that the server is experiencing more than
five hard page faults per second. What is the most likely cause?
a) A disk bottleneck
b) A memory bottleneck *
c) A network bottleneck
d) A processor bottleneck

6) Which acts of parliament are relevant to an employer's right to
monitor employee use of computer / email / internet systems?

a) Regulation of Investigatory Powers act*
b) Data Protection Act
c) Computer Misuse Act *
d) Computer and Internet Regulation act

7) There are three Windows NT 4.0 domains: North, East and West,
each containing user accounts. There is a resource in the West domain
that all users need to access. How should the trust relationships be
configured?

a) Configure East and West to trust North
b) Configure West to trust North and East *
c) Configure West to trust North, and North to trust East
d) Configure West to trust East, and East to trust North

8) You are an administrator for a resource domain on a Windows NT
4.0 network, and you need to add users in the account domain. What group
membership would enable you to do this?
a) You must become a server operator in the account domain.
b) You must become a server operator in the resource domain.
c) You must become an account operator in the account domain *
d) You must become an account operator in the resource domain


9) Review the sample log extract below and answer all three
questions

#Software: Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2001-09-18 10:25:21
#Fields: time c-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem sc-status
10:44:02 172.16.1.64 GET /index.html 200
10:44:07 172.16.1.64 GET /bin/frame.pl 200
10:44:07 172.16.1.64 GET /javascript/md5.js 200
10:44:07 172.16.1.64 GET /bin/login.pl 200
10:45:02 194.82.131.20 GET /scripts/..%5c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe 500

You are checking the logs for your web server when you notice the last
line (see sample above). You know it's an attempt by a web user to hack
your system. What IP address did the hack attempt come from?
Answer: 194.82.131.20

[ATrull]

ah well, a few basic general unix ones:

q) how to initiate a timed reboot in five minutes AND alert everyone about it. One command. You are already root.
a) shutdown -r 300 "rebooting in five minutes due to fresh asbestos hamsters being installed in the kernel turbo"


q) how to tar up the contents of your current directory and bzip2, in one command with on-the-fly compression.
a) tar jcvf /path/to/archive.tar.bz2 (. or * or `pwd`)


q) how to find all setuid root binaries on the system.
a) find / -perm +4000 -user root -print
q) further more, what would this be useful for ?
a) log the outputs with md5sums of each file, and diff them every day, and you have a DIY mini filesystem intrusion detection system. setuid root executables run as root, so if a binary has been hacked (and contents altered), the system is probabley compromised.


1 & 2 are on par, but the last one is a toughy. answers will never be exact, so ask the interviewee to explain their answer, and give an example of the system where it would work. unix is too flexible to expect parrot fashion stuff ;) I've given the most anal short answers here but others will find more amusing long-winded ways to achieve the same result. given all the documentation involved, as long as the person can explain a foolproof method (which they could implement with documentation) they are probabley giving a good enough answer, imo.

[SFC]

Cracking stuff guys, nice one :nod: :thumbs: :nod:

I asked this on another forum I hang out on and I got loads more replies with loads less content, SXOC kicks butt once more. :clap: