Solaris Administrator Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. Explain About Admin Command?

Answer :

Local Kerberos services can be managed by administering policies, key tabs and principles by managing the admin command. Admin.local is used to master KDC and it does not require any authentication. On the server login information is passed through a secured server. It checks the principle name by the value of the user environment variable.

Question 2. Explain About The Command Prof_attr?

Answer :

This forms the RBAC profile database. It displays the relationship between among the profiles in the database. It also gives authorizations between navigation for those files. One of the samples is Solaris.admin.fsmgr.read.solaris.admin.serialmgr.read.

Question 3. Explain The Differences Between Setting Files Using Octal Codes And Symbolic Codes?

Answer :

The main difference between setting files using octal and symbolic code files is symbolic codes are relative whereas octal codes are numeric codes. These settings will remain unless you change the settings explicitly by using symbolic codes. If group execute access gets executed it automatically removes write access permission.

Question 4. What Is The Best Solution To Avoid Large Number Of Groups?

Answer :

The best solution for not creating large number of groups lies with the system administrator. It is best to use structural group membership which reflects organizational divisions. To manage file access a system admin can use access control lists.

Question 5. What Is Umask?

Answer :

Wide set permissions can be set by using umask which can set write, read and execute permissions on new files created by the user. These settings can be made from the command line to reflect broad settings. It can also be set from the global system settings file. Umask command displays all the settings made with that command.

Question 6. How Can You Determine Whether A File Is Setuid?

Answer :

The easiest way to determine whether a file is setuid or not by checking for files which are owned by the root and after checking for files that are owned by root you can check for s flag files assigned to the user permissions. In the permission table the first s refers to setuid root.

Question 7. Explain About Sticky Bit Permissions?

Answer :

This command helps the network administrator to relax a bit. This command will not allow the deletion of the common files present in the common area. This command helps the users by not allowing them to rewrite on other files. Certain permissions can be set which will restrict users to delete files created by them.

Question 8. Explain About The Command Ls?

Answer :

Ls command gives a way to the main directory and also gives access permissions for files in Solaris. It displays and prints user and group ownerships, file access permissions, filename and files size and creation date.

Question 9. Explain About The Limitations Present In Sudo?

Answer :

There are some limitations for sudo which makes RBAC popular they are

1. It is not possible to assign a user to work on specific file or profile.
2. It is also not possible to assign a user to work on a specific command.
3. By using shell commands and certain functions it is possible to have some restrictions on a user but it would consume time for a larger setup.

Question 10. What Is Sudo?

Answer :

Sudo maintains database of all the privileges assigned to a user name. These privileges can be identified by different commands present in the database. This feature helps a user to format a disk but the root system cannot be changed.

Question 11. What Are The Different Ways To Execute Profiles?

Answer :

Profiles can be executed in many different ways some of them are

1. Pfexec executes a single command in profile.
2. With some restrictions pfsh and pfcsh can be executed.
3. By directly logging into the account using su.

Question 12. What Are The Three Different System Management Roles?

Answer :

There are three different roles specified by Solaris they are

1. Primary administrator who is responsible for security.
2. System administrator is responsible for day to day roles.
3. Operator is responsible for data back up and maintenance.

Question 13. What Is Solaris Roles?

Answer :

RBAC implementation depends upon the role specified in the administrator profiles. Roles are implemented according to the profile. Also access to certain files and configuration can be assigned by the user profile. It also allows RBAC to differentiate high technical knowledge roles from low ones.

Question 14. What Is Rbac?

Answer :

RBAC is introduced into Solaris for managing specific tasks. These specific tasks are based and defined in the administrator profile. It is based on the standard developed by NIST. RBAC is a very important tool for performing multiple tasks. It also separates tasks which require high technical knowledge from low ones.

Question 15. Describe About Logical Domains And Its Functions?

Answer :

LDOMS system administrator center provides resources and links to developers who are trying to install Ldoms technology. It gives you flexibility to group system resources and discrete systems within a computer system physically. It allows you to group system resources physically within its own operating system, identity and resources.

Solaris UNIX version runs on Intel, AMD and SPARC platforms. It has migrated from solely a SPARC platform to include other platforms from leading companies. It provides interoperability across various technologies such as developer products, desktop applications, data center, etc.

Question 16. Explain About Solaris?

Answer :

Solaris is a UNIX based operating system which is available for free. It supports workstations and servers from sun. It is widely recognized for its scalability. This product is almost supported by many server vendors. It is the famous successor to sun operating systems.

Question 17. Set The Display Automatically For The Current New User?

Answer :

– export DISPLAY=`eval ‘who am i | cut -d”(” -f2 | cut -d”)” -f1’`Here in above command, see single quote, double quote, grave accent is used. Observe carefully.

Question 18. Display The Processes, Which Are Running Under Your Username?

Answer :

– Ps .aef | grep Mahesh vjHere, Mahesh vj is the username.

Question 19. List Some Hot Keys For Bash Shell?

Answer :

Ctrl+l . Clears the Screen. Ctrl+r . Does a search in previously given commands in shell. Ctrl+l – Clears the typing before the hotkey. Ctrl+a . Places cursor at the beginning of the command at shell. Ctrl+e . Places cursor at the end of the command at shell. Ctrl+d . Kills the shell. Ctrl+z . Places the currently running process into background.

Question 20. How To Know The Date And Time For . When Script Is Executed ?

Answer :

Add the following script line in shell script. Eval echo “Script is executed at `date`” >> time info.inf Here, .timeinfo.inf. Contains date & time details ie. When script is executed and history related to execution.

Question 21. What File Do You Put The Umask Setting In?

Answer :

The UMASK value for Bourne and korn shell users can be modified system wide by editing the “umask” entry in the “/etc/profile” file. To change the default UMASK for the C shell, modify the UMASK variable in “/etc/default/login” file.

Question 22. Which Nfs Daemons Are Found On The Nfs Server?

Answer :

• Nfsd
• Mounted
• Locked
• Statd
• Nfs Lockd

These five daemons will be in NFS server.
Statd and locked will be in NFS client too.

Question 23. What Is “piping” Solaris?

Answer :

Piping:- sending the output of a command to the input of another is called piping.

Some examples are:

$cal | WC

Will output total lines, words and character’s

$cal | WC | wc

Will output total lines, words and character’s

A UNIX pipe provides a one-way flow of data.

For example, if a UNIX users issues the command

$who | sort |lpr.

Then the UNIX shell would create three processes with two pipes between them:

A pipe can be explicitly created in UNIX using the pipe system call. Two file descriptors are returned–filedes [0] and filedes [1], and they are both open for reading and writing. A read from filedes[0] accesses the data written to filedes[1] on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis and a read from filedes[1] accesses the data written to filedes[0] also on a FIFO basis.

When a pipe is used in a UNIX command line, the first process is assumed to be writing to stdout and the second is assumed to be reading from stdin. So, it is common practice to assign the pipe write device descriptor to stdout in the first process and assign the pipe read device descriptor to stdin in the second process. This is elaborated below in the discussion of multiple command pipelines.

Question 24. How Do We Know How Many Lan Cards We Have In Server?

Answer :

Just Type in the following command at prompt#ifconfig -a. That shall give the LAN Cards as well as total Physical and Logical IP Addresses

dmesg – It displays all configured items on systems.

Question 25. How Can I Disable Stop+a Utility On Sun Machines, Which Brings System Into Ok> Prompt?

Answer :

in /etc/system set abort enable=0 will disable STOP-A 

There are several ways to disable “STOP-A”

1. Edit the /etc/default/kbd file KEYBOARD ABORT=disabled.
2. Use the “kbd -a disable” command.
3. Edit /etc/system file set abort enable = 0.

Question 26. Consider The Following Crontab Entry: ?59 23 13 * 5 /wipe. Disk? What Time Will This Cronjob Run?

Answer :

That means: on Black Friday, your hard drive will get wiped out.

==> (on 13th and Friday) 23:59, /wipe. disk will be running If the 13’Th Day of the month is Friday, the job will run. (week day starts from Sunday day 1).

Question 27. What Is The Command To Do An Interactive Boot From The Ok Prompt?

Answer :

The Interactive Boot Process:

At the ok prompt, type boot -a and press Enter. The boot program prompts you interactively.

After Power on,

Press,

STOP+A

At the ok prompt type,

Ok>boot –a

Question 28. What All Does The Nvram Store?

Answer :

Ethernet Address / Host ID / Time of Day (TOD) clock and EEPROM Parameters.

Question 29. Where Are All The Port Numbers Stored?

Answer :

Port numbers are stored in /etc/services.

Question 30. Controlling The Tape Drive?

Answer :

Mt –f /dev/rmt/0n à ‘n’ indicates no rewind.

Question 31. What Are The Network Utilities?

Answer :

1. Snoop à To capture network packets & display contents.
2. Netstat –i à Displays state of Ethernet address.
3. Ndd command à Set & examine kernel parameters namely TCP/IP drivers.