Unix Interview Questions

What is UNIX?
Files and processes
The Directory Structure
Starting an UNIX terminal

Listing files and directories

Making Directories
Changing to a different Directory
The directories . and ..
Pathnames

About home directories and pathnames

Copying Files
Moving Files
Removing Files and directories
Displaying the contents of a file on the screen
Searching the contents of a file

Redirection
Redirecting the Output
Redirecting the Input
Pipes
Wildcards

Filename Conventions
Getting Help
File system security (access rights)
Changing access rights

Processes and Jobs

Listing suspended and background processes
Killing a process

UNIX variables
Environment variables
Shell variables
Using and setting variables

Listed below are frequently asked Interview Questions in Unix

1. What is the command to list directories and files?

2. What is redirection?
3. How to kill a process?
4. How to run a process in background?
5. What command can be used for searching files?
6. What does fork() command do?
7. How can I get/set an environment variable from a program?
8. Given a pid, how can I tell if it's a running program?
9. How do I compare strings using wildcards?

Whats $# in a shell script

Whats a $* in shell script
Explain nohup with an example
If $1 is the first parameter, whats $0
How do you see the return code of the last executed command
Explain Cron with an example
what is rsync
Whats the advantage of using ssh over telnet?
Have you used vi? provide example of searching an expression across multiple
files (say *.sh) from within vi
How can i find all /tmp/*.zip and move them to, say, /home/to_examine
(assuming the target already exists?)
Whats the kill command used for? Whats the difference between kill and kill -9
Whats the "nice" command used for
Provide a regular expression for searching email addresses within a script file
Compare /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab
What do you know of inodes?
Compare Unix FS with, say, Windows/DOS FS
Does UNIX FS require defraging? If yes, whats the command. If no, why? ;-)
How do you redirect std error to std output?
whats the command line for listing the names of the 10 biggest files under
/home/