"Computers and networks" competition



  • So, there's apparently a nationwide competions for vocational school students about their main subjects. One of them is called as "Computers and networks". I got in semifinal (no prerequirements) that was arranged in different city. Of course, I had high exceptions. I thought I just might be able to see some non-wtf stuff in real life for change. How wrong was I...

    The problems were divided in three categories. Windows, Linux & theory. Some pick ups from Windows & Linux problems (translations):

    "Logging in the computer doesn't use 'Welcome screen' but requires username and password"
    Apparently the right answer was "Disabe welcome screen, disable showing the last username". I don't think many (if any) thought of the last part (I didn't).

    "Make a backup of users home folders to /backups folder by using only tar command and the file type must be .tar.bz2
    -Make a cron job which does this automaticly every blabla
    -Filename must include username & date, for example user1-backup-2006-01-01.tar.bz2"
    Right answer was along the lines of tar -jvcf /backups/user1-backup-date +"%Y-%m-%d".tar.bz2 (I did it that way as well since I couldn't think of anything else). Since when date wasn't a command? And yes, the "only" word was even underlined.

    "Copy www.tar.bz2 package from w2k3 server your computer and extract it. Put index.php as your computer's WEB-front page and change 'competitor' text in the main page to your name"
    I thought I had to make the index.php as my homepage so I copied the file to my document root & made apache to look for it by default. Then I made a shell script to /usr/local/bin/links that checked if any arguments was passed. If not, it would open that index.php. If yes, it would pass the arguments and wouldn't open that site.
    Another thing, the whole index.php file translated:

    <html>
    <?php
    print "This server's name is: ";
    include("/etc/hostname");
    print "<br>Welcome!";
    ?>
    </html>

    Yes, there is no "competioner" text anywhere to replace.

    I'm not even sure anymore if I want to win these so I could go in finals...

    Sorry about my English.



  • Sounds like the people making the tests for the competition need to be featured on here lol... Probably some "high profile consulting firm" consisting of a handful of new graduates... lol...



  • Probably things their client asked for that they didn't know how to do. :P


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