Red Hat Linux System Administration Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. How To Check The Uptime Of A Linux Server?

Answer :

Using uptime command we can determine how long a linux box has been running , also uptime can be viewed by the top & w command.

Question 2. How To Check Which Redhat Version Is Installed On Server?

Answer :

Use the command cat /etc/redhat-release , output of this command will tell you the redhat version.

Question 3. How To Install Rpm Packages In Redhat & Centos Linux ?

Answer :

rpm and yum command are used to install packages in redhat linux and CentOS.

Question 4. How To Check The Ip Address Of Lan Card?

Answer :

Using ‘ifconfig’ & ‘ip address’ command we can determine the ip address of LAN Card.

Question 5. How To Determine The Hostname Of A Linux Box?

Answer :

On typing the hostname command on terminal we can determine the hostname of a linux server.

Question 6. How To Check The Default Gatway?

Answer :

Using ‘route -n’ command we can determine the default gateway in linux.

Question 7. Which Command Is Used To Check The Kernel Version ?

Answer :

‘uname -r’

Question 8. How To Check The Current Runlevel Of A Linux Box?

Answer :

‘who -r’ and ‘runlevel’ , both of these command are used to find current run level.

Question 9. What Is Initrd ?

Answer :

Initrd stands for initial ram disk , which contains the temporary root filesystem and neccessary modules which helps in mounting the real root filesystem in read mode only.

Question 10. What Is Bootloader?

Answer :

Bootloader is a program that boots the operating system and decides from which kernel OS will boot.

Question 11. How To List Hidden Files From The Command Line?

Answer :

‘ls -a’ <Folder_Name>

Question 12. What Is Soft Link?

Answer :

Soft link is a method to create short cuts in linux. It is similar to windows short cut feature.

Question 13. How To Create A Blank File In Linux From Command Line ?

Answer :

Using the command ‘touch <file-name>’

Question 14. What Is Run Level 2?

Answer :

Run level 2 is the multi-user mode without networking.

Question 15. Why Linux Is Called Opensource?

Answer :

Because One can customize the existing code and can redistribute it.

Question 16. How To Check All The Installed Kernel Modules?

Answer :

Using the Command ‘lsmod’ we can see the installed kernel modules.

Question 17. What Is The Default Uid & Gid Of Root User?

Answer :

Default uid & gid of root user is 0.

Question 18. How To Change The Password Of User From The Command Line?

Answer :

‘passwd <User-Name>’

Question 19. What Is A Process?

Answer :

Any program in execution is called a process.

Question 20. What Is Name Of First Process In Linux?

Answer :

‘init’ is the first process in linux which is started by kernel and whose pid is 1.

Question 21. What Is The Difference Between Umask And Ulimit ?

Answer :

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. While ulimit is a linux built in command which provides control over the resources available to the shell and/or to processes started by it.

You can limit user to specific range by editing /etc/security/limits.conf at the same time system wide settings can be updated in /etc/sysctl.conf

Question 22. What Are The Run Levels In Linux And How To Change Them?

Answer :

A run level is a state of init and the whole system that defines what system services are operating and they are identified by numbers.There are 7 different run levels present (run level 0-6) in Linux system for different purpose. The descriptions are given below.

0: Halt System (To shutdown the system)
1: Single user mode
2: Basic multi user mode without NFS
3: Full multi user mode (text based)
4: unused
5: Multi user mode with Graphical User Interface
6: Reboot System

To change the run level, edit the file “/etc/inittab” and change initdefault entry ( id:5:initdefault:). If we want to change the run level on the fly, it can be done using ‘init’ command.

For example: when we type ‘init 3′ in the commandline , this will move the system from current runlevel to runlevl 3. Current level can be listed by typing the command ‘who -r’.

Question 23. What Is The Functionality Of A Puppet Server?

Answer :

Puppet is an open-source and enterprise application for configuration management toll in UNIX like operating system. Puppet is an 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 and lots of other tasks.

Question 24. What Is Selinux?

Answer :

SELinux is an acronym for Security-enhanced Linux. It is an access control implementation and security feature for the Linux kernel. It is designed to protect the server against misconfigurations and/or compromised daemons. It put limits and instructs server daemons or programs what files they can access and what actions they can take by defining a security policy.

Question 25. What Is Crontab And Explain The Fields In A Crontab ?

Answer :

The cron is a deamon that executes commands at specific dates and times in linux. You can use this to schedule activities, either as one-time events or as recurring tasks. Crontab is the program used to install, deinstall or list the tables used to drive the cron daemon in a server. Each user can have their own crontab, and though these are files in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, they are not intended to be edited directly. Here are few of the command line options for crontab.

crontab -e Edit your crontab file.
crontab -l Show your crontab file.
crontab -r Remove your crontab file.

Traditional cron format consists of six fields separated by white spaces:

The format is explained in detail below.

* * * * * *

| | | | | |

| | | | | +– Year (range: 1900-3000)

| | | | +—- Day of the Week (range: 1-7, 1 standing for Monday)

| | | +—— Month of the Year (range: 1-12)

| | +——– Day of the Month (range: 1-31)

| +———- Hour (range: 0-23)

+———— Minute (range: 0-59)

Question 26. What Are Inodes In Linux ? How To Find The Inode Associated With A File ?

Answer :

An inode is a data structure on a filesystem on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems that stores all the information about a file except its name and its actual data. When a file is created, it is assigned both a name and an inode number, which is an integer that is unique within the filesystem. Both the file names and their corresponding inode numbers are stored as entries in the directory that appears to the user to contain the files. The concept of inodes is particularly important to the recovery of damaged filesystems. When parts of the inode are lost, they appear in the lost+found directory within the partition in which they once existed.

The following will show the name of each object in the current directory together with its inode number:

# ls -i

The avialble number inodes in a filesystem can be found using the below command :

# df -i

The other way we can get the inode details of a file by using the stat commmand.

Usage : # stat

Example :

-sh-4.1$ stat note.txt

File: `note.txt'

Size: 4 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file

Device: fd05h/64773d Inode: 8655235 Links: 1

Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: (69548/nixuser) Gid: (25000/ UNKNOWN)

Access: 2014-06-29 15:27:56.299214865 +0000

Modify: 2014-06-29 15:28:28.027093254 +0000

Change: 2014-06-29 15:28:28.027093254 +0000