support-bandit: Operation Raptor Readiness

support-bandit is a small terminal game for learning Linux commands that show up constantly in application support work.

This version is personalized for Beck's Raptor Financial Technology interview practice for a Junior Application/Infrastructure Support role. The story is a connected mock incident that you solve during a Linux-style technical assessment. Each level gives you one clue, one realistic support task, one badge, one optional stretch challenge, and one short explanation you can practice saying out loud.

This is not generic Unix trivia. The levels focus on the tasks support engineers actually do:

• scan logs
• isolate errors
• count noisy customers or endpoints
• locate configs
• inspect snapshots from ps and ss
• work with CSV-style exports
• inspect bundles and tar files
• search a fleet recursively

Start

From this directory:

cd /home/beck/Desktop/linux_test/support-bandit
chmod +x game.sh
./game.sh brief
./game.sh play

When you think you have the answer:

./game.sh check your-answer-here

Other commands:

./game.sh brief
./game.sh hint
./game.sh explain
./game.sh status
./game.sh reset

No-Hints Tests

After you finish the guided game, use test01 as a no-hints assessment:

cd /home/beck/Desktop/linux_test/support-bandit/test01
./test.sh play

When you finish test01, create the next version as test02 with slightly harder evidence.

How To Play

Each level gives you a realistic support scenario and points you at one or more files. Your job is to use Linux commands to investigate and report the final answer token. After each correct answer, read the interview line and optional stretch challenge. The interview line helps you explain your thinking clearly instead of only typing commands silently.

Example workflow:

./game.sh play
tail -n 1 levels/level01/app.log
./game.sh check req-8842

Recommended Flow

1. Try each level without a hint.
2. If stuck, use ./game.sh hint.
3. After you solve it, read ./game.sh explain.
4. Say the interview line out loud, like you are explaining to the interviewer.
5. Try the stretch challenge if the level felt easy.
6. Keep a notebook of commands that felt useful and commands that felt awkward.
7. Replay the game later and solve faster with cleaner pipelines.

Interview Practice Angle

The Raptor Financial Technology interview for Junior Application/Infrastructure Support may include a normal conversation first, then a technical assessment. For the Linux part, this game trains you to:

• inspect logs without guessing
• filter evidence with grep
• count impact with sort and uniq
• locate config files with find
• extract fields with cut, sed, and awk
• explain a command pipeline clearly during the assessment

If Python appears in the assessment, the same mindset applies: read the file, filter rows, group values, count or average, and print only the requested answer. The current game keeps the main path in Linux because that is your Level 1 foundation.

Commands You Will Practice

• cat, less, head, tail, wc
• grep, grep -R, grep -E, grep -v
• cut, sort, uniq
• find
• sed
• awk
• tar
• log investigation pipelines

For a compact reference tied to support work, read COMMANDS.md.