Why not? It's (should be) the programming skills that matter, not the knowledge of the tools in a particular version of a particular OS. As long as there is someone who can tell me about sar I don't really need to know about it myself. Tool developer != admin.

It takes no time to read the docs of such a tool, but it does take a lot of time to learn to design and write decent code.

The interview should include concepts like flocking, pipes, non-blocking IO, semaphores/mutexes, sockets, ...

If you were hiring a carpenter, you'd ask about how they would build different things, not the design of different types of hammers.

I agree completely with this sentence, I just think you ARE asking about the design of a hammer.

Jenda
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
   -- Rick Osborne

Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature