SadServers - Linux & DevOps Troubleshooting Interviews

Troubleshooting Scenarios

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Php

Scenarios with applications using PHP

#	Name	Level	Time	Type
1	"Toulon": Denied Lamp	Medium	15 m	Fix	"Toulon": Denied Lamp Scenario: "Toulon": Denied Lamp Level: Medium Type: Fix Access: Business Description: The security team has asked again Mary and John to implemente more security measures. Unfortunately, this time they have broken the LAMP stack (Apache with PHP) so the frontend is unable get an answer upstream, thus, they need your help again to fix it. The fixed application should be able to serve the content from the webserver, the problem is a network connectivity, although the logs have valuable informatiion, it has nothing to do with the configuration of the apache server. Test: `curl localhost \| head -n1` returns `SadServers - LAMP Stack` The "Check My Solution" button runs the script /home/admin/agent/check.sh, which you can see and execute. Time to Solve: 15 minutes.
2	"Marseille": Rocky security	Medium	15 m	Fix Pro	"Marseille": Rocky security Scenario: "Marseille": Rocky security Level: Medium Type: Fix Access: Paid Description: As the Christmas shopping season approaches, the security team has asked Mary and John to implemente more security measures. Unfortunately, this time they have broken the LAMP stack; the frontend is unable get an answer from upstream, thus they need your help again to fix it. The application should be able to serve the content from the webserver. Note for Pro users: direct SSH access is not avaiable (yet) for this scenario. Test: `curl localhost \| head -n1` returns `SadServers - LAMP Stack` The "Check My Solution" button runs the script /home/admin/agent/check.sh, which you can see and execute. Time to Solve: 15 minutes.
3	"Bern": Docker web container can't connect to db container.	Hard	20 m	Fix	"Bern": Docker web container can't connect to db container. Scenario: "Bern": Docker web container can't connect to db container. Level: Hard Type: Fix Access: Email Description: There are two Docker containers running, a web application (Wordpress or WP) and a database (MariaDB) as back-end, but if we look at the web page, we see that it cannot connect to the database. `curl -s localhost:80 \|tail -4` returns: `<body id="error-page"> <div class="wp-die-message"><h1>Error establishing a database connection</h1></div></body> </html>` This is not a Wordpress code issue (the image is :latest with some network utilities added). What you need to know is that WP uses "WORDPRESS_DB_" environment variables to create the MySQL connection string. See the ./html/wp-config.php WP config file for example (from /home/admin). Test: `sudo docker exec wordpress mysqladmin -h mysql -u root -ppassword ping` . The wordpress container is able to connect to the database in the mariadb container and returns `mysqld is alive`. Time to Solve: 20 minutes.

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Updated: 2026-01-24 19:45 UTC – 4bde780

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