Behavioral BSD Interview Questions & Answers:

1. How did you find initial support for a new distro?

The support from the community was awesome! As one of the first real Desktop oriented FreeBSD systems on the market, there was a ton of interest.

2. You are told that the permissions of a file are 645. Quick, how do you calculate what it means?

The permissions value are always 4 for read, 2 for write, 1 for execute. The three numbers are always for owner, group, and everybody on the system. Therefore 645 means: owner - read and write, group - read only, everybody - read and execute. You'll rarely see such a permission set, but for interview question it might just work.

3. Explain the difference between SIGHUP, SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2?

Those are application specific and therefore are not defined on the OS level.

4. Explain the difference between SIGTERM and SIGKILL?

SIGTERM asks the application to terminate in a polite way, it warns about the pending closure and asks the app to finish whatever it is doing. SIGKILL will kill the process no matter what. This is telling the application that it will be shut down no matter what.

5. How do you change your shell to bash?

% chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

6. Who maintains the OpenBSD?

OpenBSD is maintained by a development team spread across many different countries. The project is coordinated by Theo de Raadt, located in Canada.

7. What is in the file /etc/ttys?

Configuration for virtual consoles for the startup. By default FreeBSD has 8 virtual consoles.

8. Why is/is not ProductX included?

People often ask why a particular product is or isn't included with OpenBSD. The answer is based on two things: the wishes of the developers and compatibility with the goals of the project. A product will not be included simply because it is "neat" -- it must also be "free" for use, distribution and modification by our standards. A product must also be stable and secure -- a bigger version number does not always mean a better product.

9. Is OpenBSD really free?

OpenBSD is all free. The binaries are free. The source is free. All parts of OpenBSD have reasonable copyright terms permitting free redistribution. This includes the ability to REUSE most parts of the OpenBSD source tree, either for personal or commercial purposes. OpenBSD includes NO further restrictions other than those implied by the original BSD license. Software which is written under stricter licenses cannot be included in the regular distribution of OpenBSD.

10. What is new in OpenBSD 4.3?

The complete list of changes made to OpenBSD 4.2 to create OpenBSD 4.3 can be found on plus43.html, and highlights on the OpenBSD 4.3 Information page, however here are a few changes the OpenBSD team anticipate will require or warrant some special note to people upgrading or installing OpenBSD 4.3 who are familiar with older versions.