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Unusual-tricky Troubleshooting Scenarios

Packages advent2025 ai ansible apache aws cli bash c caddy clickhouse cron csv data processing disk volumes dns docker elk envoy etcd financial finops ftp git gitea golang gunicorn hack haproxy harbor hashicorp vault helm java jenkins json kubernetes linux-other mongodb mysql nginx node.js php podman postgres prometheus python rabbitmq redis sql sqlite ssh ssl supervisord systemd terraform traefik
realistic / interviews new pro business

Unusual-tricky

Scenarios that are unrealistic or tricky/weird
# Name Level Time Type
1 "Venice": Am I in a container? Medium 15 m Do
"Venice": Am I in a container?

Scenario: "Venice": Am I in a container?

Level: Medium

Type: Do

Access: Email

Description: Try and figure out if you are inside a container (like a Docker one for example) or inside a Virtual Machine (like in the other scenarios).

Test: This scenario doesn't have a test (hence also no "Check My Solution" either).

Time to Solve: 15 minutes.

2 "Oaxaca": Close an Open File Medium 15 m Fix
"Oaxaca": Close an Open File

Scenario: "Oaxaca": Close an Open File

Level: Medium

Type: Fix

Access: Email

Description: The file /home/admin/somefile is open for writing by some process. Close this file without killing the process.

Test: lsof /home/admin/somefile returns nothing.

Time to Solve: 15 minutes.

3 "Paris": Where is my webserver? Medium 15 m Hack
"Paris": Where is my webserver?

Scenario: "Paris": Where is my webserver?

Level: Medium

Type: Hack

Access: Email

Description: A developer put an important password on his webserver localhost:5000 . However, he can't find a way to recover it. This scenario is easy to to once you realize the one "trick".

Find the password and save it in /home/admin/mysolution , for example: echo "somepassword" > ~/mysolution

Scenario credit: PuppiestDoggo

Test: md5sum ~/mysolution returns d8bee9d7f830d5fb59b89e1e120cce8e

Time to Solve: 15 minutes.

4 "Jakarta": it's always DNS. Hard 20 m Fix No Registration
"Jakarta": it's always DNS.

Scenario: "Jakarta": it's always DNS.

Level: Hard

Type: Fix

Access: Public

Description: Can't ping google.com. It returns ping: google.com: Name or service not known. Expected is being able to resolve the hostname.

Note: Currently the VMs can't ping outside so there's no automated check for the solution.
Paid accounts can ping outside and check the solution with ./agent/check.sh

Test: ping google.com should return something like PING google.com (172.217.2.46) 56(84) bytes of data.

Time to Solve: 20 minutes.

5 "Singara": Docker and Kubernetes web app not working. Hard 20 m Fix
"Singara": Docker and Kubernetes web app not working.

Scenario: "Singara": Docker and Kubernetes web app not working.

Level: Hard

Type: Fix

Access: Email

Description: There's a k3s Kubernetes install you can access with kubectl. The Kubernetes YAML manifests under /home/admin have been applied. Get the webapp Deployment in the web namespace to a Running pod that serves its HTTP response (a town/city name). Running the image with host Docker alone is not enough to pass the check.

TIP: You can use k as an alias for kubectl, and it has autocomplete enabled.

Test: curl localhost:8888 returns a value from the webapp deployed Kubernetes pod.

The "Check My Solution" button runs the script /home/admin/agent/check.sh, which you can see and execute.

Time to Solve: 20 minutes.

6 "Monaco": Disappearing Trick Hard 30 m Hack
"Monaco": Disappearing Trick

Scenario: "Monaco": Disappearing Trick

Level: Hard

Type: Hack

Access: Email

Description: There is a web server on :5000 with a form. POSTing the correct form password into this web service will return a secret.

Save this secret provided by the web page (not the password you sent to it) to /home/admin/mysolution, for example: echo "SecretFromWebSite" > ~/mysolution

TIP: a developer worked on the web server code in this VM, using the same 'admin' account.

Scenario credit: PuppiestDoggo

Test: md5sum /home/admin/mysolution returns a250aa19f16dda6f9fcef286f035ec4b

Time to Solve: 30 minutes.

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Updated: 2026-09-27 14:36 UTC – c78fe89