I'd never encountered this style before but I use it now myself. The interviewer role played an actual troubleshooting scenario and would accept actual unix commands and return the appropriate data. I was being tested on my breadth of technical/troubleshooting knowledge as well as duress under fire (as if the interview isn't enough, now I'm dealing with a virtual outage in realtime). I think the actual statement was along the lines of "Your peer approaches you outside as you enter the building. He hands you the paper with the new root password on it and says 'Server xyz is acting funny and noone can use the service. I need to run out to deal with an emergency but will be back as soon as I can'. As your peer turns and steps into the road he is hit by a bus. What do you do?"
