Top 30 Linux System Admin Interview

Questions & Answers

In this article we will discuss top 30 linux system admin interview questions with the
answers for experience professionals. Below mentioned questions may help the
readers to clear Linux interviews. If you like these questions , please dont hesitate to
share on Facebook, google+ and Twitter.

Q:1 Why LVM is required ?

Ans: LVM stands for Logical Volume Manager , to resize filesystems size online we
required LVM partition in Linux. Size of LVM partition can be extended and reduced
using the lvextend & lvreduce commands respectively.

Q:2 How To check Memory stats and CPU stats ?

Ans: Using free & vmstat command we can display the physical and virtual
memory statistics respectively.With the help of sar command we see the CPU
utilization & other stats.

Q:3 What does Sar provides and at which location Sar logs are stored ?

Ans: Sar Collect, report, or save system activity information. The default version of
the sar command (CPU utilization report) might be one of the first facilities
the user runs to begin system activity investigation, because it monitors major
system resources. If CPU utilization is near 100 percent (user + nice + system), the
workload sampled is CPU-bound.

By default log files of Sar command is located at /var/log/sa/sadd file, where the dd
parameter indicates the current day.

Q:4 How to increase the size of LVM partition ?

Ans: Below are the Logical Steps :

Use the lvextend command (lvextend -L +100M /dev/<Name of the LVM Partition>
, in this example we are extending the size by 100MB.
resize2fs /dev/<Name of the LVM Partition>
check the size of partition using df -h command

Q:5 How to reduce or shrink the size of LVM partition ?

Ans: Below are the logical Steps to reduce size of LVM partition :
-Umount the filesystem using umount command,
-use resize2fs command , e.g resiz2fs /dev/mapper/myvg-mylv 10G
-Now use the lvreduce command , e.g lvreduce -L 10G /dev/mapper/myvg-mylv

Above Command will shrink the size & will make the filesystem size 10GB.
Q:6 How to create partition from the raw disk ?

Ans: Using fdisk utility we can create partitions from the raw disk.Below are the steps
to create partition from the raw dsik :
fdisk /dev/hd* (IDE) or /dev/sd* (SCSI)
Type n to create a new partition
After creating partition , type w command to write the changes to the partition
table.

Q:7 Where the kernel modules are located ?

Ans: The /lib/modules/kernel-version/ directory stores all kernel modules or

compiled drivers in Linux operating system. Also with lsmod command we can see
all the installed kernel modules.

Q:8 What is umask ?

Ans: umask stands for User file creation mask, which determines the settings of a
mask that controls which file permissions are set for files and directories when they
are created.

Q:9 How to set the umask permanently for a user?

Ans: To set this value permanently for a user, it has to be put in the appropriate
profile file which depends on the default shell of the user.

Q:10 How to change the default run level in linux ?

Ans: To change the run level we have to edit the file /etc/inittab and change
initdefault entry ( id:5:initdefault:). Using init command we change the run level
temporary like init 3 , this command will move the system in runlevl 3.

Q:11 How to share a directory using nfs ?

Ans: To share a directory using nfs , first edit the configuration file /etc/exportfs ,
add a entry like
/<directory-name> <ip or Network>(Options) and then restart the nfs service.

Q:12 How to check and mount nfs share ?

Ans: Using showmount command we can see what directories are shared via nfs
e.g showmount -e <ip address of nfs server>.Using mount command we can mount
the nfs share on linux machine.

Q:13 What are the default ports used for SMTP,DNS,FTP,DHCP,SSH and squid
?
Ans: Service Port
SMTP 25
DNS 53
FTP 20 (data transfer) , 21 ( Connection established)
DHCP 67/UDP(dhcp server) , 68/UDP(dhcp client)
SSH 22
Squid 3128

Q:14 What is Network Bonding ?

Ans: Network bonding is the aggregation of multiple Lan cards into a single bonded
interface to provide fault tolerance and high performance. Network bonding is also
known as NIC Teaming.

Q:15 What are the different modes of Network bonding in Linux ?

Ans: Below are list of modes used in Network Bonding :

balance-rr or 0 round-robin mode for fault tolerance and load balancing.

active-backup or 1 Sets active-backup mode for fault tolerance.
balance-xor or 2 Sets an XOR (exclusive-or) mode for fault tolerance and load
balancing.
broadcast or 3 Sets a broadcast mode for fault tolerance. All transmissions are
sent on all slave interfaces.
802.3ad or 4 Sets an IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation mode. Creates
aggregation groups that share the same speed & duplex settings.
balance-tlb or 5 Sets a Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) mode for fault tolerance &
load balancing.
balance-alb or 6 Sets an Active Load Balancing (ALB) mode for fault tolerance &
load balancing.

Q:16 How to check and verify the status the bond interface.

Ans: Using the command cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0 , we can check which mode
is enabled and what lan cards are used in this bond. In this example we have one
only one bond interface but we can have multiple bond interface like bond1,bond2
and so on.

Q:17 How to check default route and routing table ?

Ans: Using the Commands netstat -nr and route -n we can see the default route
and routing tables.

Q:18 How to check which ports are listening in my Linux Server ?

Ans: Use the Command netstat listen and lsof -i

Q:19 List the services that are enabled at a particular run level in linux server ?

Ans: With the help of command chkconfig list | grep 5:on we can list all the service
that are enabled in run level5. For other run levels just replace 5 with the respective
run level.

Q:20 How to enable a service at a particular run level ?

Ans: We can enable a service using the Command chkconfig <Service-Name> on
level 3

Q:21 How to upgrade Kernel in Linux ?

Ans: We should never upgrade Linux Kernel , always install the new New kernel
using rpm command because upgrading a kenel can make your linux box in a
unbootable state.

Q:22 How To scan newly asssigned luns on linux box without rebooting ?

Ans: There are two ways to scan newly assigned luns :

Method:1 if sg3 rpm is installed , then run the command rescan-scsi-bus.sh
Method:2 Run the Command , echo > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan

Q:23 How to find WWN numbers of HBA cards in Linux Server ?

Ans: We can find the WWN numbers of HBA cards using the command systool -c
fc_host -v | grep port_name

Q:24 How to add & change the Kernel parameters ?

Ans: To Set the kernel parameters in linux , first edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf after
making the changes save the file and run the command sysctl -p , this command
will make the changes permanently without rebooting the machine.

Q:25 What is Puppet Server ?

Ans: Puppet is an open-source & enterprise software for configuration management

toll in UNIX like operating system. Puppet is a IT automation software used to push
configuration to its clients (puppet agents) using code. Puppet code can do a variety
of tasks from installing new software, to check file permissions, or updating user
accounts & lots of other tasks.

Q:26 What are manifests in Puppet ?

Ans: Manifests in Puppet are the files in which the client configuration is specified.

Q:27 Which Command is used to sign requested certificates in Puppet Server

?

Ans: puppetca sign hostname-of-agent in (2.X) & puppet ca sign hostname-of-

agent in (3.X)

Q:28 At which location Puppet Master Stores Certificates ?

Ans: /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/signed

Q:29 How to find all the regular files in a directory ?

Ans: using the command find /<directory -type f.

Q:30 What is load average in a linux ?

Ans: Load Average is defined as the average sum of the number of process waiting
in the run queue and number of process currently executing over the period of 1,5
and 15 minutes. Using the top and uptime command we find the load average of a
linux sever.

Interview Questions for Systems

Administrators
The role of the systems administrator is strong and the jobs outlook is healthy, with
the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting growth of about 11.7 percent between 2012
and 2022. That should create approximately 42,900 new positions.

What makes one sys admin stand out from others? Curiousity, according to Ski
Kacoroski, who services more than 3,000 users as assistant systems administrator
for the Northshore School District in Bothell, Wash. He also serves as vice president
for LOPSA, the League of Professional Systems Administrators.

Click here to find systems administrator jobs.

Curiosity begets in-depth troubleshooting, a deep understanding of network

architecture and proactive problem resolution, he says. Youll encounter more
problems if you settle for a quick fix like rebooting the server, Kacoroski explains.
You need curiosity to discover the root cause of problems and optimize network
performance by preventing further issues.

During interviews, Kacoroski asks these questions to identify system admins with
deep knowledge of operating systems and inquiring minds.

What happens when I type this at a shell prompt: telnet www.wikipedia.org?

What Most People Say: Youll connect to the Wikipedia server through port 80.
What You Should Say: How much time do I have to answer? Fifteen minutes?
Great. Ill walk you through every step and connection in the process.
Why You Should Say It: A systems administrator must be able to troubleshoot the
entire stack because you never know where the source of a problem lies, says
Kacoroski. You need to prove that you know where to look for problems to distinguish
yourself during an interview.

A stakeholder gives you a six-hour task that must be completed today. Later,
another user gives you a six-hour project with the same deadline. Neither user
will budge. What do you do?

What Most People Say: Id prioritize the most high profile project or the request
from the well-connected stakeholder. Or, Id stay until I finish both projects.
 What You Should Say: Id come up with a few solutions and run them by my
manager.
Why You Should Say It: Systems admins make recommendations, not decisions,
notes Kacoroski. Inexperienced professionals dont understand their role, so theyll
mistakenly try to complete both projects. Systems administrators dont understand
all the political ramifications, cost constraints or technical challenges that impact
decisions, Kacoroski says. Its better to play a supporting role and let your manager
make the tough calls.

An HTTP monitor says the website is down. You can telnet to the port. What do
you do?

What Most People Say: Id check to see if the Web page is up. If it is, Id assume
there was something wrong with the monitor and alert the hardware guys.
What You Should Say: If the Web page is up when I telnet to the port, Id ask how
long the monitor has been down. Then, Id check to see if the outage was due to
flapping, a system outage or a system overload that occurred during back-up. Ill
modify the monitor, once I identify the issue. Should I describe my troubleshooting
process?
Why You Should Say It: The best systems admins want to understand why a
problem occurred to keep it from cropping up again. Be ready to walk the interviewer
through your troubleshooting process even if they ask you to fix a simulated problem
on a virtual machine.

How have you used your knowledge of operating systems to optimize the
network?

What Most People Say: Ive connected users to the underlying hardware and used
the operating system as a resource manager.
What You Should Say: Ive used an operating systems to track files, manage data
input and output on multiple devices and allocate resources such as CPU, RAM,
disk, network, video and sound to various processes. Beyond the basics, Ive used
my knowledge of various operating systems to improve system design and
architecture and run apps more efficiently. May I share an example?
Why You Should Say It: Systems admins do more than troubleshoot: Theyre
responsible for optimizing the processing environment. The more you know about
how an operating system works, the better youll be at planning and designing a
stable and efficient network and ensuring that all components work effectively
together.

Name three characteristics of a systems admin that you possess.

What Most People Say: Im a good communicator with great troubleshooting skills.
I cant think of a third.
What You Should Say: I like helping people. Im curious about how systems work
and Im passionate about fixing things right.
Why You Should Say It: Understanding the traits that lead to success is critical.
Other desirable traits for systems admins include risk aversion, persistence and the
ability to get things done.

What do you do when your initial solution to a problem fails?

What Most People Say: I keep trying different things until the problem is fixed.
 What You Should Say: I always have a Plan B and a Plan C in case my initial
solutions fails. Heres an example.
Why You Should Say It: Systems admins cant be afraid to fail, Kacoroski believes.
You always need a back-up plan because the first fix rarely works, he says. Top
candidates can articulate their problem-solving progression and what theyve learned
from their mistakes.

[] General Questions:

What did you learn yesterday/this week?

Talk about your preferred development/administration environment. (OS, Editor,
Browsers, Tools etc.)
Tell me about the last major Linux project you finished.
Tell me about the biggest mistake you've made in [some recent time period] and how
you would do it differently today. What did you learn from this experience?
Why we must choose you?
What function does DNS play on a network?
What is HTTP?
What is an HTTP proxy and how does it work?
Describe briefly how HTTPS works.
What is SMTP? Give the basic scenario of how a mail message is delivered via
SMTP.
What is RAID? What is RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID10?
What is a level 0 backup? What is an incremental backup?
Describe the general file system hierarchy of a Linux system.

[] Simple Linux Questions:

What is the name and the UID of the administrator user?

How to list all files, including hidden one, in a directory?
What is the Unix/Linux command to remove a directory and its contents?
Which command will show you free/used memory? Does free memory exist on
Linux?
How to search for the string "my konfi is the best" in files of a directory recursively?
How to connect to a remote server or what is SSH?
How to get all environment variables and how can you use them?
I get "command not found" when I run ifconfig -a. What can be wrong?
What happens if I type TAB-TAB?
What command will show the available disk space on the Unix/Linux system?
What commands do you know that can be used to check DNS records?
What Unix/Linux commands will alter a files ownership, files permissions?
What does chmod +x FILENAMEdo?
What does the permission 0750 on a file mean?
What does the permission 0750 on a directory mean?
How to add a new system user without login permissions?
How to add/remove a group from a user?
What is a bash alias?
How do you set the mail address of the root/a user?
What does CTRL-c do?
What is in /etc/services?
 How to redirect STDOUT and STDERR in bash? (> /dev/null 2>&1)
What is the difference between UNIX and Linux.
What is the difference between Telnet and SSH?
Explain the three load averages and what do they indicate.

[] Medium Linux Questions:

What do the following commands do and how would you use them?
o tee
o awk
o tr
o cut
o tac
o curl
o wget
o watch
o head
o tail
What does a & after a command do?
What does & disown after a command do?
What is a packet filter and how does it work?
What is Virtual Memory?
What is swap and what is it used for?
What is an A record, an NS record, a PTR record, a CNAME record, an MX record?
Are there any other RRs and what are they used for?
What is a Split-Horizon DNS?
What is the sticky bit?
What does the immutable bit to a file?
What is the difference between hardlinks and symlinks? What happens when you
remove the source to a symlink/hardlink?
What is an inode and what fields are stored in an inode?
Howto force/trigger a file system check on next reboot?
What is SNMP and what is it used for?
What is a runlevel and how to get the current runlevel?
What is SSH port forwarding?
What is the difference between local and remote port forwarding?
What are the steps to add a user to a system without using useradd/adduser?
What is MAJOR and MINOR numbers of special files?
Describe a scenario when you get a "filesystem is full" error, but 'df' shows there is
free space.
Describe a scenario when deleting a file, but 'df' not showing the space being freed.
Describe how 'ps' works.
What happens to a child process that dies and has no parent process to wait for it
and whats bad about this?
Explain briefly each one of the process states.
How to know which process listens on a specific port?
What is a zombie process and what could be the cause of it?
You run a bash script and you want to see its output on your terminal and save it to a
file at the same time. How could you do it?
Explain what echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward does.
Describe briefly the steps you need to take in order to create and install a valid
certificate for the site https://foo.example.com.
Can you have several HTTPS virtual hosts sharing the same IP?
What is a wildcard certificate?
 Which Linux file types do you know?
What is the difference between a process and a thread? And parent and child
processes after a fork system call?
What is the difference between exec and fork?
What is "nohup" used for?
What is the difference between these two commands?
o myvar=hello
o export myvar=hello
How many NTP servers would you configure in your local ntp.conf?
What does the column 'reach' mean in ntpq -p output?
You need to upgrade kernel at 100-1000 servers, how you would do this?
How can you get Host, Channel, ID, LUN of SCSI disk?
How can you limit process memory usage?

[] Hard Linux Questions:

What is a tunnel and how you can bypass a http proxy?

What is the difference between IDS and IPS?
What shortcuts do you use on a regular basis?
What is the Linux Standard Base?
What is an atomic operation?
Your freshly configured http server is not running after a restart, what can you do?
What kind of keys are in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and what it is this file used for?
I've added my public ssh key into authorized_keys but I'm still getting a password
prompt, what can be wrong?
Did you ever create RPM's, DEB's or solaris pkg's?
What does :(){ :|:& };: do on your system?
How do you catch a Linux signal on a script?
Can you catch a SIGKILL?
What's happening when the Linux kernel is starting the OOM killer and how does it
choose which process to kill first?
Describe the linux boot process with as much detail as possible, starting from when
the system is powered on and ending when you get a prompt.
What's a chroot jail?
When trying to umount a directory it says it's busy, how to find out which PID holds
the directory?
What's LD_PRELOAD and when it's used?
You ran a binary and nothing happened. How would you debug this?
What are cgroups? Can you specify a scenario where you could use them?

[] Expert Linux Questions:

A running process gets EAGAIN: Resource temporarily unavailable on reading a

socket. How can you close this bad socket/file descriptor without killing the process?

[] Networking Questions:

What is localhost and why would ping localhost fail?

What is the similarity between "ping" & "traceroute" ? How is traceroute able to find
the hops.
What is the command used to show all open ports and/or socket connections on a
machine?
Is 300.168.0.123 a valid IPv4 address?
Which IP ranges/subnets are "private" or "non-routable" (RFC 1918)?
 What is a VLAN?
What is ARP and what is it used for?
What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
What is the purpose of a default gateway?
What is command used to show the routing table on a Linux box?
A TCP connection on a network can be uniquely defined by 4 things. What are those
things?
When a client running a web browser connects to a web server, what is the source
port and what is the destination port of the connection?
How do you add an IPv6 address to a specific interface?
You have added an IPv4 and IPv6 address to interface eth0. A ping to the v4
address is working but a ping to the v6 address gives yout the response sendmsg:
operation not permitted. What could be wrong?
What is SNAT and when should be used?
Explain how could you ssh login into a Linux system that DROPs all new incomming
packets using a SSH tunnel.
How do you stop a DDoS?
How can you see content of ip packet?

[] MySQL questions:

How do you create a user?

How do you provide privileges to a user?
What is the difference between a "left" and a "right" join?
Explain briefly the differences between InnoDB and MyISAM.
Describe briefly the steps you need to follow in order to create a simple master/slave
cluster.
Why should you run "mysql_secure_installation" after installing MySQL?
How do you check which jobs are running?

[] DevOps Questions:

Can you describe your workflow when you create a script?

What is GIT?
What is a dynamically/statically linked file?
What does "configure && make && make install" do?
What is puppet/chef/ansible used for?
How do you create a new postgres user?
What is a virtual IP address? What is a cluster?
How do you print all strings of printable characters present in a file?
How do you find shared library dependencies?
What is Automake and Autoconf?
./configure shows an error that libfoobar is missing on your system, how could you fix
this, what could be wrong?
What are the Advantages/disadvantages of script vs compiled program?
What's the relationship between continuous delivery and DevOps?
What are the important aspects of a system of continous integration and
deployment?

[] Fun Questions:

A careless sysadmin executes the following command: chmod 444 /bin/chmod - what
do you do to fix this?
I've lost my root password, what can I do?
 I've rebooted a remote server but after 10 minutes I'm still not able to ssh into it, what
can be wrong?
If you were stuck on a desert island with only 5 command-line utilities, which would
you choose?
You come across a random computer and it appears to be a command console for
the universe. What is the first thing you type?
Tell me about a creative way that you've used SSH?
You have deleted by error a running script, what could you do to restore it?

[] Demo Time:

Unpack test.tar.gz without man pages or google.

Remove all "*.pyc" files from testdir recursively?
Search for "my konfu is the best" in all *.py files.
Replace the occurrence of "my konfu is the best" with "I'm a linux jedi master" in all
*.txt files.
Test if port 443 on a machine with IP address X.X.X.X is reachable.
Get http://myinternal.webserver.local/test.html via telnet.
How to send an email without a mail client, just on the command line?
Write a get_prim method in python/perl/bash/pseudo.
Find all files which have been accessed within the last 30 days.
Explain the following command (date ; ps -ef | awk {print $1} | sort | uniq | wc -l ) >>
Activity.log
Write a script to list all the differences between two directories.
In a log file with contents as <TIME> : [MESSAGE] : [ERROR_NO] - Human
readable text display summary/count of specific error numbers that occured every
hour or a specific hour.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So what does nohup do?

Imagine you are logged on to another computer remotely using ssh and you want to run a
command that takes a long time and then exit the ssh session but leave the command
running even though you are no longer connected then nohup lets you do just that.

To use nohup all I have to type is nohup followed by the command as follows:

nohup wget http://mirror.is.co.za/mirrors/linuxmint.com/iso//stable/17.1/linuxmint-17.1-

cinnamon-64bit.iso &

wget How To:

Read URLs from a file

You can store number of URLs in text file and download them with -i option. Below we have
created tmp.txt under wget directory where we put series of URLs to download.
# wget -i /wget/tmp.txt

Resume uncompleted download

In case of big file download, it may happen sometime to stop download in that case we can
resume download the same file where it was left off with -c option. But when you start
download file without specifying -c option wget will add .1 extension at the end of file,
considering as a fresh download. So, its good practice to add -c switch when you download
big files.

# wget -c http://mirrors.hns.net.in/centos/6.3/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.3-x86_64-
LiveDVD.iso

Download files in background

With -b option you can send download in background immediately after download start and
logs are written in /wget/log.txt file.

# wget -b /wget/log.txt ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian-cd/6.0.5/i386/iso-dvd/debian-

6.0.5-i386-DVD-1.iso

Restrict download speed limits

With Option limit-rate=100k, the download speed limit is restricted to 100k and the logs will
be created under /wget/log.txt as shown below.

# wget -c --limit-rate=100k /wget/log.txt ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian-

cd/6.0.5/i386/iso-dvd/debian-6.0.5-i386-DVD-1.iso

Restricted FTP and HTTP downloads with username and password

With Options http-user=username, http-password=password & ftp-user=username,

ftp-password=password, you can download password restricted HTTP or FTP sites as
shown below.

# wget --http-user=narad --http-password=password

http://mirrors.hns.net.in/centos/6.3/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso
# wget --ftp-user=narad --ftp-password=password ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian-
cd/6.0.5/i386/iso-dvd/debian-6.0.5-i386-DVD-1.iso