1) Port number of different servers {cat /etc/services}

2) Linux Installation(through FTP,HTTP,NFS)

3) Boot process
4) Diff b/w ext3 and ext2
5) RAID LEVELS and Selection of raid
6) backup methods
7) Package management such as Yum server
8) Kernel Tuning
9) IPTABLES
10) TCP WRAPPERS
11) DIFFERENT RUN LEVELS
12) USER AND GROUP MANAGEMENT
13) QUOTA SETTING(user and group)
14) DIFF B/W CRON AND AT
15) BASIC SHELL SCRIPTING
16) Troubleshooting different issues.
17) Tell me why we should hire you?
18) DAILY ACTIVITES IN YOUR CURRENT COMPANY
19) RECENTLY SOLVED CRITICAL ISSUE
20) LVM (Very Imp)
21) vertias Volume manager
22) cluster basic like HAD , GAB , LLT , HEARTBEAT , CONFIG FILES , RESOURSE , S
ERVICE GROUPS etc
23 ) kernel panic troubleshooting
24) Process management
25)Configuration part of NFS , NIS , Samba , DHCP , DNS,Apache, Sendmail etc.
26)Remote administration experience.
DNS
Root DNS configuration
DNS work flow (Including how does root server responds?)
Explain Resource Records
What is SOA ? its different fields
Why use contact email info in DNS zone file?
What is forward lookup?
What is reverse lookup?
What is non-authoritive dns?
Types of DNS server
What is use of Caching DNS server?
What is TTL and Why it is used?
What is CNAME? Its use
Tell me content of Zone file?
What are dif types of DNS records?
DNS port no?
What if we assign 2 ip address for a single FQDN (A record)?
What if we assign 2 Diff A record (FQDN) to 1 IP address?
What is MX record? What does its priority value signifies?
How many root server are there?
How does slave server come to know whether a particular zone file on master dns
server is updated?
How does slave dns server transfer zone data from master server?
What is diff between recursive query and iterative query?
List all DNS relted commands
How to debug dns server?
ON DN server itself, you are able to resolve every website but when you try to r
esolve any webite from client machine using tha DNS server you are not able to r
esolve any of the website. Also you can connect to port 53 from client machine t
o the DNS server. So what may be the problem and how will you debug?

How to take cache dump of DNS?

Dns Working ? what is R R recorad ? what is mx record & how does you set priori
ty for multiple mx records ?
MX,A,NS,PTR,SPF,SRV,DKIM and all other resource records.
When u type http://google.com what happens ? How the querry is resolved?
What is a glue record ?
what is poerdns & djbdns
what is authoritative and non authoritative server?
what is txt record in dns?
If slave server is found 180 seconds behind master, what will u do or troublesho
ot?
What is dns ? what is local resolver?
mx record priority? two mx contain priority 10 10 why? and 10 & 5 how will it w
ork?

Apache
Types of Virtual host
Is it possible to configure 3 webserver per IP and 3 ip in one server?
SSL web server configuration
Is it possible 1 IP & 3 web server & SSL confi to only 1 web server out
List apache directives
Configuration of named virtual hosting
Configuration of IP based virtual hosting
How does Authentication happened in web server and its configuration
Diff between Named and IP bsed virtual hosting
What is use of Virtual hosting?
If you find apache in critical then what you will do in apache server
where will be web site file if i used include in vhosts
Apache working , different b/w ip base & name base hosting ,htaccess ,
& worker.c mpm modules
if their is load on your apache server so how you manage it ? read how
re you apache ?
How to tune apache ?
What is Location ? diffrence between location and directory ?
Start servers, max threads and all those parameters.
What will u do if there are lot of apache logs
What is redirect? And proxy pass?
how to integrate tomcat with apache? mod_jk (load balance)
what is used for port 8009?
what is ajp13?
details about worker.property file?
where is log file locate in Apache?
how will you complie apache ?
what is maxclient?
if there is problem in apche like its taking too much memory how u find
is problem?

Postifx
How to start and stop Postfix / Qmail / Sendmail

of 3?

preforek
you secu

out what

What is mail relaying

Ports
SMTP, POP, POP, IMAP, IMAP3
How to check mail queue in qmail / postfix/ sendmail?
What is configuration file of qmail / postfix / sendmail ?
What is MTA / MDA / MUA ?
What does sendmail do?
Which is good mil server qmail/ postfix/sendmail and why?
what is port of MTA
difference of IMAP and POP3
which mail you have used?
How to check postfix queue? what is postfix log file ? and configuration file?
Where all log files are stores in centos?

Networking
Diff between TCPdump and Netstat
NFS configuration
TCP header info
SSH configuration
Open ldap config file name
Open Ldap port no
How does router work?
What info reside in routing table?
What is TTL in Ethernet frame?
How does traceroute command work?
What is masquarding, SNAT, DNAT? Example?
Where is use of diff types of nat?
What are things that may cause two linux machines on the same LAN not communicat
e with each other ?
How to configure linux server to be a part of ADS domain? what command is used t
o join linux server to domain?
Command to configure default route on linux server
What is transparent proxy server?
Can we configure username authentication based on transparent proxy server?
Various commands related to network troubleshooting?
What protocol does MTR command use?
How to check routes configured on the server
What are different security levels in Samba
How does SSH public and prvate key authentication?
What is diff between SSH1 and SSH2?
How to find apache is running or not?
In which file ip-address information is stored?
You want to etup squid proxy serverand alow only your internal network to access
internet, tell me exact acl syntax to be put in squid.conf
Is nfs secure or not
Does NFS run on TCP or UDP
How ping work, step by step
A user connect the laptop to the network which is configured to give ip address
by DHCP server. But his laptop doesn t get IP address from DHCP server, Ho will yo
u start debugging?
What is next-server parameter in dhcpd.conf
What is ssh tunneling?
What is OS level parameter in smb.conf?
if you are sitting in mumbai and datacenter in pune , you trying to connect to p
une you are getting packet loss then what will be the reason

port of telnet
purpose of nfs ? explain this process in nfs portmapper , rpc.statd , rpc.nfsd
, rpc.lockd, rpc.mountd ?
what is different b/w root_squash & no_root_squash ?
explain traceroute & tcpdump command ?
what is the port of ldap, pop imap, smtp, http, https, dns , tomcat and ssl.
how to list running services in current runlevel?
what is iptable ? how many tables in it ? how many chain in filter table and wha
t it does?
Say One client hosted 10 server in netmagic... client call you and tells you tha
t..he is not able to access one server ...how will you troubleshoot this issue?
what is the port of mysql server ?
INSERT, GRANT, DELETE, UPDATE in MySQL
InnoDB and MYIsam storage engine's difference ?
My server is in a remote location and I am not able to ping it. No ssh, telnet e
tc... What to do ? ==>> KVM shud do the trick.
OSI layers ?
How to reserve IP in DHCP ?
What is puppet ?
IPTABLES? How to check a particular record in iptables ?
In PHP haw can user override the setting for memory_limit in php.ini, how to av
oid this..?
Explain the steps to replicate a server (DNS,Apache,MySql) from (rhel4 to rhel5
, rhel5 to rhel5) also no one have informed us what are the services running on
the server we even have to analyse that .
How to migrate to replicated server with minimai downtime (say 5 to 10 mins) ?
How to upgrade mysql version of a live server?
How do you do disaster recovery in mysql ?
Difference between port and socket
What do you mean by NAT , explain how NATTING works
what is puppet,redmine & cobbler
How to take a backup of mysql? And syntax?
What is cold backup and hot backup?
What is difference between telnet and ssh?
Port of samba and how to mount samba at client?
How to make replica in mysql?
What is default gateway? And it use?
what are the different types of Backups..?
What is ip address and it range? And classes? Why is it specific?
What is iptable and its tables details?
difference between incremental and differential backup?
mysql replication?
Haproxy & heartbeat concept?
How veritas software work?
mysql clustering?
how ip packet travel, i one packet drop.
tcp vs udp

System Admin

Boot Process
ls linux or Unix same ?
Diff between RAID 5 & RAID 1 and Raid 0, which raid is faster? how?
How do you take backup through ssh without password authentication
How do you know if particular service is not responding?
How do you know if server is compromised?
Steps to troubleshoot any kind of problem
How to install a typical source package / tar ball and explain each step in brif
?
What file permission are needed on directory and files if we want to only read a
file?
What is setuid?
What is sticky bit?
What does top command show?
What is mean by load average value? what is ideal value? How do you troubleshoot
the problem if load average is high? How you will check load? why this critical
state comes?
What is use of lsmod, insmod, depmod, rmmod, modrobe?
How to check memory consumption?
How user can change himself password?
What is SAN and NAS?
What is use of LVM snapshot?
Wht is diffrance between Hardware RAID and Software RAID?
Diff between Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4
How to create encrypted file which will ask for password to open?
How to kill process
What will be steps if any process consuming more memory?
How to untar specific one file from tar file
How to find out fle is exist in ystem or not?
Which file you check for munted devices?
Which is init config file?
What you can find in inittab?
Wht is path?
How to know whih kernel is running?
Which commands show you open files in terminal?
How to access mal through telent?
Which command show current runlevel? details of runlevels?
How will you create user amit having primary group as abc and secondary grp as d
ef
How to check what PCI devices are there in your system
You want to export or share on directory to only one client / ipaddress (windows
box) how will you do it.
Where is the network information stored on linux system, i.e. whether your compu
ter is connected to network or not
/Var Partition is full, you have got new hdd and you want to add it to an existi
ng LVM group vg00, how will you do it and increase /var partition? Can it be don
e online without umounting /var?
Diff between IPtables and IPchain
Step by step procedure to configure LVM
I want to add new HDD to volume group, How can I add? Step with command
Diff between grub and Lilo
What are types of security in Linux
What is imp of xinetd services
How to restart telnet service for root
How to rename all files in one dir having extension *.htm to *.html from command
line
How to take backup of file system starting from / in linux.
How to create temporary swap space in linux
What is size of /proc filesystem?

How to increase tty console from default 1 to 6 & 7 for X11

One HDD in LVM failed. Can you recover data after replacing and adding New HDD?
In Which file you set all Kernel parameter you wat to pass to kernel?
If you want to check statistics load of your server for last 5hour then how you
will check
What is umask?
how you will change file permission? ownership? group?\
how you give permission for RW to only one specific user?
how you rate your self in linux command line ?
unable to log in your lino box with root & what are the possibilites ?
different between ext3 & resizerfs ?
what is raid 10 & raid 60 ?
how many runlevels in Linux and define all ? How to check running runlevel?
tell me commands to shutdown system ? difference between init 0 and shutdown?
how to reset root password
How to disable alt+ctrl+del
where init runlevel defined?
What is the use of LVM? how to create lvm partition ? how to extend lvm partitio
n? how to check lvm partition size?
How will you secure your servers?
where passwords store and which format ? can we edit that file?
How will you set cron jobs ? how many types of cron files ?
What is the 1st field of ls -l ? what will hapen if i set 755 permissions?
I have one script, I can execute it but another user cant. Why?
What is the difference between ext2 and ext3? What is Inode table ?
What is journaling ?
How to convert from ext2 to ext3
Logrotate
Crontab, How to schedule task on crontab and its field?
How do I hard reboot a server at remote location?
What do you mean by load on the server and give some good tools to monitor load
.
How to manage load on server (i.e steps to be taken when load comes) also what a
re the possible reasons due to which load on server my increase?
How to check the statistics of load on server for a day?
What is ulimit and rlimit
How can we limit usage system resources (cpu,process etc...)
what is raid 60
what is glusterfs
how to collect cpu utilization for 1 day
What is GNU?
What is shell?
What is free command?
Which command gives the details of motherboard?
What is zombie process?
How to see the contain of in compress file?
How to see the history but only 5 commands ?
How to see the running process?
How to see any services or server is running?
What are RPM?
how to create user ? and also put bash and other with command line?
how to change right of particular file or directory?
how to start particular service?
what is yum? and how to configure yum if we don't have internet?
what is acl? in file permission?
what is server Hardening?
how to see swap is full?
HOWTO: Check which version or flavor of Linux a system is running
Hardlinks and Symlinks
HowTo execute the program during Linux startup

HowTo boot the system into Resuce/Single-User or Emergency Mode

Relative vs. Absolute Pathnames
How to find - Size of a directory & Free disk space
Execute more than one commands
How to clear the cache from memory
Sending email attachments from linux command line
How To disable virtual consoles (Alt+F1)
How To increase the limit for file handles
System Information
Execute command at regular intervals
Creating backup/restore images using dd
How To search for an string in a file using grep
Howto Get Hardware Information in Linux- lshw
How To Identify Which Ports (or Services) Are Listening/Open
HowTo Find out if Installed Linux is 32 bits or 64 bits

Monitoring
Nagios configuration
Client side port of nagios
have you ever configured nagios server
Nagios => Have u worked with ? What is Critical, warning in nagios ?
What are the monitoring tools that we can use to monitor multiple servers..?
Use of Nagios ?
FTP
Diff between Active FTP and Passive FTP
Port no for FTP
How to configure firewall for FTP?
What is FTP? What is it good for?
for what 20 and 21 used
Shell Scripting
Diff types of testing for files /directories
How do you locate very first character on the line with regular expression
How do you locate very last character on the line with regular expression
What does + represents in regular expression
What is $? Variable?
What is $* variable?
What is $1 variable?
How to access a value of 10th argument passed to script?
How to debug shell script, line by lie debugging without actual execution
Do you know Scripting? which have you used loop or conditions?
Do u know shell scripting ?

How to write if else, do while case ?

Why do we use break in shell script
what are your daily activities?
how do you access particular server remotely? (interviewer ask me abt our setup)
###############################################
What is the minimum number of partitions you need to install Linux?
What command can you use to review boot messages?
What command you execute to display the last five commands you have entered?
Which partitions might you create on mail server HDDs other than the root, swap
and boot partitions?
Which partitioning tool is available in all distributions?
Which two commands can you use to delete directories?
Which file defines all users on your system?
our wish to print the file vacations with 60 lines to a page. Which command will
accomplish this?
To move /home/ben/memos dir in /home/bob/memos, what is the result by mv /home/b
en/memos /home/bob
What is the command to list ALL (hidden also) files of current directory & it s su
bdirectories?
Do you know the correct sequence of fields in /etc/passwd file?
When you create a new partition, in what terms you need to designate its size
What command you use for cpio to create a backup called backup.cpio of all the u
sers home dirs?
What file defines the levels of messages written to system log files?
List all the files with .mem extension in reverse alphabetical order in a particul
ar directory?
When you issue the command ls -l, what signifies the first character of the resu
lting display file? 701 What command can you use to determine the purpose of any
command?
How can I only see the last 5 lines of a file?
How can I only see the first 14 lines of a file?
How do you change permissions on a directory of file?
How can you view a file?
Explain the read, write, and execute permissions on a UNIX directory
Where is standard output usually directed?
What account is created when you install Linux?
What can you type at a command line to determine which shell you are using?
Why you shouldn t use the root login?
How big should the swap-space partition be?
What is Write Command?
In Linux OS, what is the file server?
What is the main advantage of creating links to a file instead of copies of the
file? What are two subtle differences in using the more and the pg commands?
What is the use of thread over process?
What is segmentation fault?
What is the use of proc structure?
What are the signals we have in Linux?
Who owns data dictionary?
How Many People Use Linux?
How Does One Pronounce Linux?
How the Linux is licensed?
Who is Linus Torvalds?
What exactly is this Linux?
Is the Linux as same as Unix?
What command you execute to display the last five commands you have entered?

Which partitions might you create on mail server HDDs other than the root, swap
and boot partitions?
Which partitioning tool is available in all distributions?
Which two commands can you use to delete directories?
Which file defines all users on your system?
our wish to print the file vacations with 60 lines to a page. Which command will
accomplish this?
To move /home/ben/memos dir in /home/bob/memos, what is the result by mv /home/b
en/memos /home/bob
What is the command to list ALL (hidden also) files of current directory & it s su
bdirectories?
Do you know the correct sequence of fields in /etc/passwd file?
When you create a new partition, in what terms you need to designate its size
What command you use for cpio to create a backup called backup.cpio of all the u
sers home dirs?
What file defines the levels of messages written to system log files?
List all the files with .mem extension in reverse alphabetical order in a particul
ar directory?
######
1) How to creat swap if you dont have free partation?
this is some what tricky question if you are new to Linux Administration
here is the command to create swap if you dont have free partation
before doing this you have switchoff the swap
swapoff -a
dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/swapfile bs=1k count=1024
swapon filename
2)How to see swap details?
cat /proc/swap
free
3)How to see/get info about RAM in ur system
free
cat /proc/meminfo
4)What is the difference between ext2 and ext3
I)ext3=ext2+journaling
"journaling" is an add-on to a filesystem that records changes as they are made
.
II)ext2 files system is fast
III)less disk writes
IV)ext2 file system in less stable/secure
V)ext2 file system required to run fsck command if the system get crashed
5)How to convert ext2 file system to ext3?
tune2fs -j /dev/hda1
6)How convert ext3 file system to ext2
tune2fs -O^has-journal /dev/hda1
7)What is default block/chunk size for PV
4MB
8)what is the command to update the diskquota on file system

mount -o remount,rw /home

9)What is the partation type number for swap,RAID,LVM?
82(swap),fd(RAID),8e(LVM)
10)What is the default block site for ext2,ext3,LVM,RAID?
11)What is the difference between LVM1 and LVM2?

12)What is difference between RAID0,1,5?

###########################################
Linux admin interview questions
How do you take a single line of input from the user in a shell script?
Write a script to convert all DOS style backslashes to UNIX style slashes in a l
ist of files.
Write a regular expression (or sed script) to replace all occurrences of the let
ter f , followed by any number of characters, followed by the letter a , followed by o
ne or more numeric characters, followed by the letter n , and replace what s found wi
th the string UNIX .
Write a script to list all the differences between two directories.
Write a program in any language you choose, to reverse a file.
What are the fields of the password file?
What does a plus at the beginning of a line in the password file signify?
Using the man pages, find the correct ioctl to send console output to an arbitra
ry pty.
What is an MX record?
What is the prom command on a Sun that shows the SCSI devices?
What is the factory default SCSI target for /dev/sd0?
Where is that value controlled?
What happens to a child process that dies and has no parent process to wait for
it and what s bad about this?
What s wrong with sendmail? What would you fix?
What command do you run to check file system consistency?
What s wrong with running shutdown on a network?
What can be wrong with setuid scripts?
What value does spawn return?
Write a script to send mail from three other machines on the network to root at
the machine you re on. Use a here doc , but include in the mail message the name of t
he machine the mail is sent from and the disk utilization statistics on each mac
hine?
Why can t root just cd to someone s home directory and run a program called a.out si
tting there by typing a.out , and why is this good?
What is the difference between UDP and TCP?
What is DNS?
What does nslookup do?
How do you create a swapfile?
How would you check the route table on a workstation/server?
How do you find which ypmaster you are bound to?
How do you fix a problem where a printer will cutoff anything over 1MB?
What is the largest file system size in solaris? SunOS?
What are the different RAID levels?

##############################################
1) How do you stop a fork bomb if you are already logged into a system
2) You delete a log file that apache is using and did not restart apache yet, ho
w can you recover that log file?

How look shared library dependencies?

How trace system call and signal?
How profile app?
How print the strings of printable characters in files?
What fields are stored in an inode?
What is nscd?
What is Automake and Autoconf?
What steps to add a user to a system without using useradd/adduser?
How see look information about ELF files?
What is MAJOR and MINOR numbers of special files?
How link layer filtering?

Tell me about the last major Linux project you finished. What were some of t
he obstacles and how did you overcome them. Sometimes asking these open question
s will reveal much more then small questions that are easily answered by Google.
A great senior admin doesn't need to know everything, but they should be able t
o come up with amazing solutions to impossible projects.
Do you contribute to any Open Source projects? Doesn't matter if it's just d
ocumentation, it shows a certain dedication to the craft.

Question: Describe a scenario when you get a "filesystem is full" error, but 'df
' shows there is free space
Answer: The filesystem can run out of inodes, 'df -i' will show that.
Open ended questions:
tell me about how do you manage your knowledge database (wikis, outlines, sp
readsheets, plain text files) and why did you choose particular options
do you use version control? which one and why? are your commit messages good
looking?

I'm always a fan of

Describe the linux boot process with as much detail as possible, starting fr
om when the system is powered on and ending when you get a prompt.
I like to ask questions that demonstrate how much awareness someone has of the d
ifferences between different unixes. I also like to see how much a person unders
tands that linux does things one way which is not necessarily how everyone else
does it. Many of these questions revolve around default linux tools, for example

:
Tell me two ways to redirect both stderr and stdin at once
&> and >/dev/null 2>&1
demonstrates knowledge of bash vs. bourne shell
Another key point: for senior positions, I expect to see evidence of public writ
ing and presentation skills. If you are a senior person you should have been pub
lished multiple times on the web and in magazines. Heck, just having your own te
ch blog is sufficient. Having presented at least one paper at a conference is a
big plus. I think this in particular separates junior from senior linux admins.

Tell me about the biggest mistake you've made in [some recent time period] a
nd how you would do it differently today. What did you learn from this experienc
e?
There are a lot of
e year 10 times in
better years. And
if you should just

sysadmins with 10 years experience. Many seem to have the sam

a row. I want one on my team with 10 different, progressively
if you've never made a big mistake, one that made you wonder
pack your desk up, you haven't truly lived. :)

I don't care for the trivia questions, as interviewer or interviewee. I do like

the questions that have stumped my vendors before, or the ones that gave me "Eur
eka!" moments.

L2 / L3 Linux System Admin Interview Questions

L2 / L3 Linux System Admin Interview Questions
Q: - How to increase the size of KVM IMG file ?
Q: - Explain page in and page out in OS memory management ?
Q: - How to check the perfromance of NFS server in Linux ?
Q: - How to check NFS server's version ?
Q: - What is the main difference between root_sqush and no_root_squash in NFS ?
Q: - What is rpc and its role in nfs ?
Q: - What is use if sar command and location sar log files.
Q: - What is use of vmstat and explain its output & log files?
Q: - What is Network bonding and how to check status of bonding ?
Q: - What are the steps to configure network bonding in linux ?
Q: - Define the role of Luci and Ricci in redhat cluster suite ?
Q: - What is multipathing and why is it required ?
Q: - what is iostat , describe its output and log files ?

Q: - What is the difference of 2.4 and 2.6 kernel ?

Q: - What are difference between ext3 and ext4
Q: - What server need to check first - physical memory is not fully utilized but
swap is fully utilized and physical memory is fully utilized but swap memory is
free and why ?
Q: - What is chroot env in ftp and how enable chroot for ftp ?
Q: - How to scan luns on the server?
Q: - Difference between raid 3 & raid 5?
Q: - How to execute cron every 5 min from Monday to Friday?
Q: - How to check the machines status in vcs?
Q: - How to extend disk space in vcs?
Q: - Difference between -L & -l in lvcreate command ?
Q: - What activity will run in background if failover of one node occurs ?
Q: - What is "Split Brain" in cluster & is it visible in storage ?
Q: - What is dom0 in Xen ?
Q: - What is POST in Linux Booting Process ?
Q: - What is initrd or ramdisk and use of initrd while booting ?
Q: - What is soft & hard zoning ?
Q: - What is wwpn & wwnn ?
Q: - How Can we check the front & back ports on emc storage server through comma
nd line or gui ?
Q: - How can emc server be accessed through CLI ?
Linux Interview Questions:
1. What is the diffrence between RAID 5 and RAID 10.
2. What will you do if the Squid Server does not work.
3. How will you troubleshoot if the QMAIL server is not working or the client co
mplains that he is not able to send or receive emails.
4. What are Inode, Soft Link, Hard Link and the command to check the Soft Link.
5. How do you add the other computers in the NAGIOS server
6. What is the use of Squid Proxy?. Can we reset the bandwidth in Squid Proxy.
7. Why do we use YUM. What is the full-form of YUM.
8. Tell me about RPM.
9. Which backup tool you used. When do you used to take backups. What is full ba
ckup or incremental backup
10. What Restoring methods you used.
11. Difference between NFS & Samba
12. Tell me about IPtables
13. What are the supporting services for Samba

14. Scenario: I have a Linux Server installed with DNS Server and DHCP Server. I
have an Windows XP client.
Client is not able to get the IP address from the DHCP server. What is the probl
em.
Client isnot able to resolve the hostname. What is the problem
15. Scenario: Client complains that he is not able to send an email or receive e
mail. Problem is with the QMAIL server. How will you troubleshoot.
16. How do you change user's home directory
17. How do you configure Kickstart
18. How to login into a system without a password.
19. How to create a self sign-on certficate
20. Do you know what is /etc/pki
21. How do you see the memory usage
22. How do you see the system boot messages
23. Do you know about OS Hardening
24. What OS applications you know
25. How do you change the gateway permanently
26. What do you know about fencing in clusters
27. What is the difference between cp, scp, rsync
28. How do you configure Apache with SSL i.e. HTTPS
29. How do you configure DHCP, NFS, FTP, SAMBA APACHE, TOMCAT server
30. How do you check for already installed packages using RPM.
31. How do you check whether the directory is mounted or not using NFS share at
the client side
32. How do you tar and untar.
33. What is the difference between tar and gunzip
34. How much will the file be compressed
35. How many fields are there in crontab
36. How do you create a crontab file and how do you list the crontab
37. If you have 200 log files, how will you search a particular file. Use grep
38. If I have 2 servers. I want to transfer server1 2GB data to server2 without
causing any overhead on the server1 and on the network. It should be fast. Also
server1 space is full and you cannot add any more overhead on it. What is the me
thod.
39. I have some 50 servers, how will you apply a patch on all the 50 servers at
one time (using scripts) and what is the command to copy the patch on all the 50
servers at a time.
40. What is kernal panic & memory leak. Can you tell me where it happens and how
it happens.
41. How do you implement quotas on the filesystem.
42. What is Autofs.
43. What do you mean by centralize LOG server. How will you configure the client
s to that centralize Log server.
44. How will you monitor the process and memory.
45. What is inside the directory /etc/init.d
46. How to check a particular PID when ps, top are not working.
47. What type of environment are you working. Data center, etc
48. What type of storage device you are using.
49. Tell me about the types of backup strategy. and what are the different tyoes
of method.
50. What are your responsibilities as a Linux admin and which task you liked to
do the most.
51. Can you use cp to copy between 2 different systems.
52. What is Samba and can it be installed in either Linux or Windows.
53. How will you tune the system for the optimum level of performance.
54. What is the difference between Single user mode and Emergency mode.
55. Tell me about your project
56. How will you do monitoring of the system without any tools.
57. What type of logs you used to monitor. Is there any pattern you used to foll
ow in analysing the logs or just blankly see it. How do you search for any error

s in the log files

58. What is the filesystem to which the sticky bit is set by default.
59. What is the dhcp client name
60. What is umask. Why umask has 4 values. Why we set sticky bit in a Umask.
61. What is the processor you are using? Intel or Risc. What is Risc
62. Types of Administration: User/Group, Cluster, Server, Virtualization, Proces
s, Perfomance
63. How do you check the syntax of Samba server. What does it display.
64. What are the 2 daemons of Samba and what are they used for.
65. What tools you use for file sharing.
66. When using the top cmd, in the top screen - extreme right, you see 3 values.
What those 3 values indicate.
67. What is sticky bit & SGID
68. What does the command exportfs -a do. Which file does it reads
69. How to find IP address
70. Why is Kickstart used. How to use Kickstart. Explain Kickstart
71. How do you create DNS client. /etc/resolve.conf
72. What is pgrep. What is the difference between grep & egrep.
73. What type of Hardware you support - printer, switch, laptop, desktop
74. Tell me about your job role and responsibilities
75. What is the default policy of Iptables
76. Explain how does YUM works and what database does YUM use.
77. When you execute yumlistall, umcleanall, what process it will use.
78. What are the pre-requisite packages required for installing Apache -> NFS, F
TP, Portmap
79. What database does Samba use.
80. What is the default port for VNC
81. What is the difference between TCP Wrappers & IPtables (Session based Filter
ing, Packet based filtering)
82. How will you enhance more security in SSH
83. Tell me about DNS
84. What monitoring you used to do
85. What is the difference between Raid0 & Raid5
86. Scenario: I have 4 disks attached. I have configured Raid5 in them. One of t
he disk gets corrupted and fails. After removing the corrupted disk, what happen
s to the computer?. Does it resumes the activity or does it initializes the acti
vity from the beginning.
87. How to restrict users to their home directory.
88. How will you troubleshoot if you are having booting problems with Windows.
89. What is a Router, Switch, Hub
90. What is DNS, DHCP
91. Why is SAMBA used
92. What is a firewall
93. What are the different classes of IP and give their ranges
94. What are the different layers of OSI
95. Explain Linux booting process
96. What is POST, MBR
97. Where to set the runlevel in Linux
98. What is a daemon
99. What is compiling. Why do you compile. How do you compile.
100. What is the pre-requisite package required for compiling (glibc)
101. What is glibc
102. How to limit bandwidth for upload and download in FTP for users
103. What port NFS uses (dynamic)
104. How to configure WORKGROUP in Samba.
105. How to make a script as a command
106. How to make the script executable other than in the path Environment variab
le (Export the path to the Env. Variable)
107. I installed one software in a Linux machine. I lost the dump of the softwar
e. Now I want to install that same software in the other Linux machine. Can I us

e the run-time software to do that. If yes how (There is an option in RPM)

108. How to create an alias to a command for all the users (Use soft link)
109. What are the permissions set on /etc/passwd
110. Is SUID set on /etc/passwd file or on the command passwd
111. How to view the Samba share in Linux from Windows
How to know which is the Samba server & which is the Samba share from Windows.
112. What is the kernel name in Linux (vmlinuz)
113. What is the use of initrd
114. Where will you see the ports
115. If NFS server dynamically changes port, then how will you restrict or firew
all this service based on port.
116. How will you configure Printer in Samba server.
117. If I configured an ftp location /root/ftp, then can a user upload & downloa
d in this location by default. I do not want to change any permissions to this f
older /root/ftp. How can I allow the users for upload & download in that locatio
n. (Default user cannot download & upload in /root/ftp location. use softlink)
118. How do you create a soft link
119. I have configured my share in NFS. Now whenever a user request for this sha
re, it should be automatically be mounted for him and when he does not want to u
se that service, it should be automaticallt be unmounted. How do I do that. (Use
AutoFS)
120. How many types of Shell are there.
121. What is a kernel.
122. How will you scan for any network traffic.
123. Explain what all information is stored in 512 bytes (446+..)
124. If I have 3 hard-disks, all 3 harddisks have an MBR. How will the BIOS know
where the booting information is stored. If it starts looking in all the 3 hard
-disks it will take a hug amount of booting time.
125. What is NFS. What is the pre-requisite package for NFS (portmap)
126. What is the difference between compiling and installing
127. What is soft link and hard link
128. How do you do LVM extension
129. How do you change the permission of a directory and all of its contents at
once in a single command.
130. How do you define quotas for a single user.
131. What are the parameters you will set the quotas
132. Do you know Tomcat, Sendmail, Dovecot, Qmail
133. What is the port of SMTP
134. Tell me about Kickstart
135. Have you configued VNC server
136. How will you monitor if a process is taking much resource
137. How will you monitor if a memory or cpu is taking much resource
138. What is the difference between service restart & service reload
139. How will you start a service permanently so that after reboot it remains on
140. How will you check whether a particular share in NFS is available to you. H
ow will I access NFS share from client
141. How will you give access to users for commands using SUDO
142. How will you monitor a particular port
143. How will you mount a filesystem permanently & temporary by command
144. If your filesystem gets full & you get a message, then what will you do. Ho
w will you monitor and report
145. What is apatch. How do you apply patches. Is it for OS only. Why do you ins
tall patch
146. What are kernel parameters. What is in the sysctl.conf file
147. On a particular machine you are having problem with Apache. How will you ch
eck the port remotely without ssh & without remote access
148. What does ps -aux stand for. How is it different from ps -ef. What do the o
ptions stand for
149. What is the file for Ethernet interfaces
150. How will you assign IP address, Gateway

151. What is the version of Linux you used

152. What ticketing tool you used
153. What is visudo
154. Why is kickstart used. How is it different from traditional installation
155. How will you check whether a service is running or not
156. What is ILO. If your ssh service does not work, then how do you connect to
the console
157. Why do you use traceroute
158. How will you add a secondary group to the user
159. How will you edit password settings for a user. For example I do not want t
he password of a particular user never to expire
160. I deletd a user, but his home directory is still there. Why and how to dele
te all information
161. What do you put in /etc/rc.d/rc/local & when
162. How to view daemons: wd, daemons
163. Apart from df, how will you monitor the filesystem space
164. What is the difference between Linux & Unix, LILO & GRUB
165. Why do we put jobs in background, foreground. What is the need. When do we
put it.
166. What will you do if the harddisk gets full. How will you know. Any message
you get
167. What is RAID 5. What is striping & parity. What is the difference between t
hem
168. How do I add a new harddisk to the Linux box. And how do I move existing fi
lesystem to the other newly added harddisk
169. What is process, memory, cpu, kernel.
170. You SSH to a server and the response time seems sluggish, but you can acces
s other servers without any speed issues. Which of the following commands is mos
t likely to help you find the source of the problem? ping, top, free, netstat
171. On your Debian system you add a network interface (eth0:4) to the /etc/netw
ork/interfaces file. Which of the following commands do you use to activate the
interface?
172. Which of the following is a valid reason to update your Linux kernel?
Increased hardware support
The ability to dual-boot the Linux system
Need to use IDE devices
Need to use SCSI devices
173. What is the purpose of the .procmailrc file?
It holds the user's procmail configuration settings
It holds the system-wide procmail configuration settings
It holds recipes to filter the user's mail
It holds a record of mail received
174. What is the significance of square brackets around a process when looking a
t a listing produced by the ps command?
The process has died
The task is a kernel task and cannot be killed
The task is sleeping
The task is being run from another virtual terminal
175. Which of the following would you say is the most important thing to do to s
ecure a server?
Regularly change server passwords
Operate a firewall
Make use of tcpwrapper
Keep all server software up-to-date
Use secure replacements like SSH instead of telnet and SCP instead of FTP
176. Which of the following commands would give you a list of the IDE hard disks
installed on your system?
dmesg | grep hd
177. What function does the /etc/skel directory provide?
It holds files that will be copied to user home directories

178. While working on the server you accidentally deleted certain files which ar
e owned by the customer. Later you are contacted by the client and he complains
his files are missing. What do you think would be the best way to handle this si
tuation draft a complete reply to the customer.
179. A server has unexpectedly crashed and it takes your team about 40 minutes t
o get it back up-and-running. A large number of customers were affected, therefo
re during this time you are inundated with queries asking what is going on with
their server, as well as a number of regular tech queries. How do you deal with
this situation? At what point would you write to the affected customers and what
would you tell them?
180. How would you be responding to a long-term customer of your company and to
a customer who recently started using your service. Would you be responding in t
he same style? If yes/no, please write a complete reply to the customer based on
the hypothetical scenario above.You SSH to a server and the response time seems
sluggish, but you can access other servers without any speed issues. Which of t
he following commands is most likely to help you find the source of the problem?
ping, top, free, netstat
181. Have you implemented any mailserver setup in the past, if so what kind of s
etup they were
182. Can you briefly explain to me if we have two servers and we want to load ba
lance between them to distribute the load, what all possible options we have to
set this up
183. Whats the benefits of RAID 10 compared to RAID 0+1 and which is better?
For high performance database server what do you recommend RAID 10 or RAID 0+1 ?
184. we have two servers, web servers and we have load balancer in front, the cu
stomer want to upload files to one node only and we want to replicate files uplo
aded on both servers. Whats the best possible solution to make them identical an
d using what technique
185. How to copy the files using crontab in a simple/automated way and in fastes
t way
186. Say the folder of uploading files is /home/user/public_html/files how to re
plicate it between the two servers
give the command you will use
187. But this will copy the entire folder again and again?. is this the best way
to copy the files between the nodes? how to make rsync secure between two nodes
?
188. Please give me example of the command using ssh with rsync.
189. what if ssh port is different not standard ssh port how to make it work?
########
katalyst partners (mape)
1. Types of kernel
2. what will u do if u get a blank page from one of the site
hosted in ur apache srv
3. mysql slows down after 2 hrs, wht can be the issue.
4. up to what extent ur apache logs can grow, is there any
5. how will increase the performance of apache
6.how will secure mountpoints
What wud u do to secure http?
What wud u do to secure ftp?
how would you create ssl based virtual hosting? explain steps

limit

How wud u create ssl certificate? explain steps and cmds.

How the process of ssl encryption and certificate works? what is the
basic idea behind it?
who issues ssl certificate from the server side when a client request
access to the website?
what wud u do if ur server crahes?
suppose if ur system is booting n halt at filesystem mounting, what wud u do?
how to repair filesystem?
why we umount filesystem before giving repairing cmds to it?What
happens when we keep the filesystem mounted and isssues a filesystem
repairing cmd like say $fsck -yk /dev/sdx
what is the cmd to format a partition?
what is the to see the exit status of a process ?
In samba, what wud u do if u want every user to create file with
ownership of 1 single user.
How to take backup of the mysql database?
How would u secure mysql database ?and how to u restrict users through
priveleges?
When was the last time you resolved a critical issue on ur own?
what is your daily routine in your present company?
How you manages a critical server?
######
SDG in NOIDA
http://www.sdgc.com
1. Why do we need Apache, Does the Tomcat can handle the same ?
2. How can we integrate Apache with Tomcat ?
3. Versions that you are using for Apache,Tomcat,Mysql ?
4. Working of Nagios ?
5. How to add a new server to Nagios for monitorng ?
6. How to create a repository in SVN ?
7. Why we remove the work folder in Tomcat while deploying new war files ?
8. Mysql replication, advantages, which all files need to be edited for replicat
ion ?
9. What is a contest ?
10.Difference between Mysql and Sql ?
11.Why and what we do for OUT OF MEMORY error ?
12.Configuration files for Tomcat ?
13.How can we increase the memory in Tomcat ?
14.Is there any diffrence between Tomcat and JBoss ?
15.How can we do Virtual hosting in Tomcat ?
16.Memory Heap ?
REDHAT - Round 1
http://www.redhat.in/
1. Two Diffrent ways to configure Apache and how ?
2. Name virtual host or IP virtual host is good ? Why?
3. What is SMARTHOST in sendmail ?
4. How can we disable a users login ?
5. Can we change the primary group of a user after creating a user?
6. How you secure a linux box?
7. Situavation in a big company - They have 2mbps leased line and 1mbps line, yo
u have to give the 2mbps line to developers and 1 mpbs line to sales peoples wit
h any controllers? How can you handle this situvation ?
8. Port numbers for telnet and pop3?
9. Diffrence between Hardlink and Softlink?

10.File systems in Linux?

11.What will you do when a file system corrupt. How you handle it?
REDHAT - Round 2
http://www.redhat.in/
1. How to take apache core dump?
2. Difference between IMAP and POP3?
3. Ext2 and Ext3 ?
4. How to point abc.com to a serverlet page ?
5. How to handle segmentation faults in apache?
6. Tcpdump ?
7. Difference between TCP and UDP ?
8. SSL ? what is its significance?
9. Which service is using UDP protocol ?
10.Which is using TCP protocol ?
11. .htaccess importance ?
12.Which one you opt - changes in apache config or change in .htaccess ?
13. Difference between RAID1 and RAID 5?
14. What is lost+found in linux ?
GOOGLE
http://google.com
1.Introduction.
2.Current work setup.
3.Most challenging job that done in life.
4.Job that i can't handle in my life.
5.Difference between windows and linux.
6.Why the need for varoius linux distributions live Debian, redhat,fedora etc.
7.Different package management in linux.
8.Purpose of Load balancer
9.How to implement load balancer
10.If a call from a loadbalancer to an application server, then the reply to tha
t call from loadbalancer to the client or directly to the client.
11.Difference between http and https.
12.Steps in SSL.
13.How the browser knows the site is https or not.
14.Kernal compilation.
15.What is GPL license
16.Whats the purpose of master-master db replication.
17.In an organization there are 1000 pupils, they need different levels of acces
s, how we can implement it. If an marketing guy in travel needs to access local
network as well as VPN, how we can implement.
######
PATNI
1. what is diff between 32bit & 64 bitos
2.Difference between su & su 3.how u mount a share from client machine in samba server
4.how you set eth0 card to eth1 for a particular ip
5.what is lsof command

6.what is the command to see open ports an ip

7.what is block file & character file (eg)
8.how you know the arch of machine when you download rpm from net
9.diff between i686 & i386
10.what is the machine type of your server
11.what is the command to know cpu info
12.what is diff between top & ps -el
13.what is multi threading.
14.Have you knowledge of system testing
15.vmware diff distribution
16.write a script inserting & deleting kernel modules
17.how you know your kernel module of ram
COGNIZANT
1.What is hda hdb & what is for scsi disk
2.Kernel compilation process
3.Whatmkproper mkdep mkclean mkbzimage does
4.What is MBR
5.What is the magic no ? why 2bytes of magic no defined seprately
6.Diff between lilo & grub
7.How to add new hdd in system What you do in bios part
8.No of ways to install linux
9.Boot process
10.What happens between init script & inittab examination
11.how you install linux
12.how to install softwares except rpm
TRIMAX
1.How you do scheduling
2.What you do when server goes slow
3.How you do perfomance tunning
4.Fullfrom of GRUB

5.What is iptables explain

6.Iptables explain
7.What is your daily routine
8.Whare passwd stores
9.Field of /etc/passwd
10.Linux filesystem type
11.How you know samba is install
12.where MBR is stored in harddisk in outerrage 0r innerrage
13.what type of shells are their & what will you use why
14.How to secure NFS
GAJSHIELD
1.How to set permisson for one of the group HR
2.How to block port 80
#######

?? How do you assign a value to a variable in your favourite shell

?? Display a routing table
?? Determine which processes are consuming resources
?? A user calls up to say their dialup connection is periodically
Freezing for 2 minutes.
?? A user calls up to say they cannot connect to the server
?? The server is slower than normal the system disk has failed. What
are the basic steps to recoverying the system.
?? your maintenance window will expire in 1 hour and you have 3 hours
Remaining in your procedure. What do you do? How could you have
prepared for this?
1) Is your current system more BSD or System IV based and why?
2) How do you boot into single user mode?
3) What are the options for the shutdown command?
4) What is the su du command used for?
5) What is a super block?
6) What command do you use to access the Super Block?
7) What is the difference between a symbolic and hard link? When
would you use each?
8) What directory holds file with the sticky bit andwhen is it used?

9) What command do you use to change file ownership and privileges?

10) What is another name for the kill command?
11) What is the default value if you put no options on the kill command?
12) What is the letter equivalent of the -9 and -15 options?
13) What are the nice and renice commands used for?
14) What are the 7 fields in the /etc/passwd file? (on 1 line)
15) What command do you use to create a device? What are the 2
numbers associated with it?
16) What are the termcap and terminfo commands used for?
17) What is /etc/remote file used for?
18) What command or tool do you use to format a disk?
19) How do you create a mount point for a disk partition?
20) How do you create a file system on a new disk?
21) Why wouldn't you use default options on mkfs?
22) What it the lost+found directory and where does it live?
23) Name 3 tape mediums for backup
24) What is a level 0 backup? Level 1? Level 2?
25) Where is the backup info kept?
26) Other than dump, name 2 other backup commands.
27) What is SYSLOG? How does it work?
28) What is a loadable kernel module?
29) What is the difference between a classful and classless IP address?
30) What is the difference between the ARP and Reverse ARP commands?
31) What is a subnet mask?
32) What is a default router? Where is used?
33) What protocol does ping use?
34) What is the difference between a hub, a switch, and a router?
35) What is the difference between DNS lookup and reverse DNS lookup?
36) What is PPP?
37) Do you use USENET? What version of Sendmail?
38) Name 3 deamons on a UNIX system.

39) What deamon is the system master deamon?

40) What is the portmap deamon?
41) What is the difference between x-server and x-client?
1. What is the difference between .xinitrc and .xsession?
2. What is the difference between a gateway and a router?
3. Describe your experience with Microsoft Windows registry?
4. How many SCSI devices can be connected to a workstation with one
single channel SCSI-2 controller?
5. Name the basic data types in PERL.
6. What must a text file begin with to be recognized as postscript code?
7. What does the UNIX gutinteg command do?
8. What files, ownerships and permissions must be set for rsh to work
without a password?
9. How do you calculate the total number of blocks or sectors
available on a disk?
10. If a SCSI hard drive was formatted on a SUN workstation and no
data has yet been written to it, what needs to be do to use it on a
non -SUN Linux system?
11. Describe an SNMP application you have developed.
12. Describe the procedure for permanently modifying the initialization string
on a modem connected to a Cisco terminal server.
13. In what subdirectory is the X windows hardware configuration file
XF86Config found on a system configured with Linux?
14. Describe some of the software project management tools you have used.
15. What is the path to the shutdown command on a DEC Alpha running OS/F?
16. Name the seven most important tools a System Administrator uses?
17. Describe methods you have used to assure completion of projects on
schedule.
18. How would you set up cron entries for a non-priviledged account?
19. What is the path to the sendmail configuration file?
20. How would you remove all the core files on a filesystem.
21. What is the difference between Cnews and INN?
22. Briefly describe the sequence of events when printing a file under BSD..
23. What do the options 2755 mean to chmod?

24. What is RAID level 5? Level 0?

25. Describe the steps, tools and procedures you have used in project
management.
26. Describe the most complex client/server anomaly you have
encountered and how you solved it.
27. Describe your experience in forecasting server load and equipment
replacement.
28. What were your considerations in specifying a PC hardware standard?
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* *******
** *****
1) What is the first line of defense in system security?
2) What should be used to maintain the /etc/shadow file?
3) What is the default shell for the "root" logonid? What other
shells are acceptable for this logonid?
4) What is the function of the kernel?
5) Using the Bourne shell syntax, show the command that sets the PATH
environment variable to look in /usr/bin first, /usr/local/bin second,
and the current directory last.
6) Show the command to search for any files or directories with
question marks in their names.
7) Which of the following commands redirects output to a file?
rd somefile > test
cat somefile > test
cat somefile >> test
cat somefile | test
8) You are using "vi" to edit a file with multiple pages. Which
command will take you down one page the fastest?
9) What command do you use to quit "vi" without saving changes?
10) Which command do you use to display a directory listing of files,
including the file type?
11) What is the command to display on-line help for a unix command?
12) To display a list of all manual pages containing the keyword
"date", what command would you type?
13) What command will display the first 10 lines of a file called "junk"?
14) What file will tell you where system log files are being written (if any)?
15) What command diplays a full listing of processes, including headers?
16) How do you terminate a process?
17) Using symbolic mode, add group write permissions to the file "junk".

Do the same using octal mode.

18) In the following, where does the output for standard error go?
/usr/lib/sendmail -OQueueSortOrder= host -oQ/var/spool/ mqueue-8h \
-q >> /var/adm/log/ mqueue-8h 2>&1
19) What is the command to check the available free disk space on all local
filesystems? Which operating environment does the syntax used apply to?
20) You have need to configure a new network client and have been given the IP
128.194.49.48 in the 128.194.48.0/ 23 subnet. You configure the machine
with that IP and set the default router as you were told but are not
getting packets or response to pings. What is probably wrong?
21) Describe the X Window system client/server model.
22) Please list and describe 2 or more authentication mechanisms when displaying
X applications on remote displays. Which one is "better" in terms of security?
23) You added a line to /etc/aliases, but it doesn't seem to be working. Why?
24) You commented out a server in inetd.conf, but it's still active. Why?
25) What's a process? What's an inode? Describe the difference between
a symlink and a hard link.
26) Name as many shells as you can.
27) How do you plan to document changes to this environment?
28) You have a problem and you don't know how to solve it. Name all
the resources you can think of that you might consult.
29) What have you done recently that you particularly liked, or are proud of?
30) I have a file named 'dash fr' (-fr); how do I get rid of it?
31) Why did I just ask that question?
32) What's the difference between a library function and system call?
33) The command to see who is on the system is:
who
what
why
where
34) Which commercial UNIX platform dominated the computer industry?
FreeBSD
Microsoft McUnix
Solaris
HP-UX
Linux
35) In which file is the default router address kept?
/etc/resolv. conf

/etc/nsswitch. conf
/etc/hosts
/etc/defaultrouter
36) The first field field in an /etc/passwd entry is:
The
The
The
The

uid
name
gid
home directory.

37) According to POSIX.2, which of the following tests to see if file

foo exists and is readable?
test
test
test
test

-f
-r
-w
-x

foo
foo
foo
foo

38) According to POSIX.2, which option tells sort to compare the keys
in a case-insensitive manner?
-c
-f
-i
-v
39) The renice command may alter the priority of:
A single process
All process in a process group
All processes owned by a user
All of the above
40) To setup a master/slave NIS system such that the slave takes over
lookup requests when the master crashes:
run
run
run
run

ypserv on the
ypserv,ypbind
ypserv,ypbind
ypserv on the

master; ypbind
on the master;
on the master;
master; ypserv

on the slave
ypset on the slave
ypserv,ypbind on the slave
-s on the slave

41) You boot a client machine and attempt to mount an NFS drive from
the server. The NFS mount worked yesterday, and neither the server
nor its NFS export list has been modified since then. The mount
command just hangs. Where do you look for the problem?
42) Acceptable levels of bad nfs calls fall under what percentages?
10-15%
1-2%
45-55%
anything under 90%
43) When debugging a core in gdb, what does the command "bt" give?
the core memory
heap usage
the calling stack
44) Please describe the complete boot process for a Unix system (your choice,

but preferably Sun if known). Start at the moment the power switch
is turned on.
45) What is the main negative aspect of telnet/rshell/ rlogin with
respect to security?
Please list 2 or more mechanisms of overcoming that aspect.
46) How many devices can be attached to a SCSI/SCSI-2 bus? A "wide" SCSI bus?
47) A user performed a "cd;chmod 644 ." before logging out. What
problem occurs when they log in the next time, and what level of
privileged is required to correct the problem?
48) Please describe the path and types of programs that handle an
e-mail message starting from when a system receives the first packet
of information until the recipient reads it.
49) A customer has created a web page and complains that attempts to view
it result in "forbidden" messages. What is the main problem?
Directory listing is as follows:
# ls -al
total 240
drwxr-xr-x
drwx------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-r--r--rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------rw-------

2 joeuser other 8192 Apr 19 17:54 .

57 joeuser other 8192 Apr 16 14:13 ..
1 joeuser other 6311 Apr 19 17:50 back.xbm
1 joeuser other 9650 Apr 19 17:50 daemon.gif
1 joeuser other 11230 Apr 19 17:50 ferret.jpg
1 joeuser other 11925 Apr 19 17:50 giraffe.gif
1 joeuser other 32760 Apr 19 17:50 help.gif
1 joeuser other 967 Apr 19 17:46 index.html
1 joeuser other 3871 Apr 19 17:50 kewl.jpg
1 joeuser other 9018 Apr 19 17:50 luser.jpg
1 joeuser other 2143 Apr 19 17:50 news.gif
1 joeuser other 9055 Apr 19 17:50 noms.gif
1 joeuser other 3071 Apr 19 17:50 race.gif
1 joeuser other 3301 Apr 19 17:50 sailbot.jpg
1 joeuser other 10511 Apr 19 17:50 tamu.gif
1 joeuser other 19696 Apr 19 17:50 tsip.jpg
1 joeuser other 6376 Apr 19 17:50 unix.gif
1 joeuser other 2267 Apr 19 17:50 xray.gif
1 joeuser other 3858 Apr 19 17:50 zoom.jpg

50) What happens when you issue the following commands (as root):
#
#
#
#
#
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)

kill -1 1
kill -1 -1
init 0
sync
rm /dev/console
What are your responsibilities in your present job?
What has been your biggest contribution at your most recent job?
Which of your jobs have you enjoyed the most?
What type of management style do you work best for?
If you could change one thing in your current job, what would it be?
What would your manager say are your strengths?
What might your manager say as a criticism?
How do you keep up with the changes in technology?
Tell me about a time when you were not satisfied with your performance.

10) How would your co-workers describe you?

11) What did you like best about working at your most recent job?
12) What did you like least?
13) In your last job, when did you feel pressured? Why? How do you
handle the pressure?
14) Why did you choose this profession? What rewards does it give you?
15) o How do you know when you're doing a good job? (internal or
external standards?)
16) o Where do you see your career headed? What would you like to be
doing in five years?
17) What is your reason for wanting to leave your present job?
18) What are you looking for in a job that you haven't had before?
19) What would make you want to stay in a job?
20) Salary requirements?
1. You have 20 servers that need to be updated named
Ans: Yours is woefully unportable. For starters, you can't rely on bash.
Second, you can't rely on GNU-specific tools like seq.
?? for i in `seq -w 20`
If you're using bash, why add an extra shell invocation here?
for i in {01..20} should get the same effect in recent versions of bash2.
>
>
>
>
>
>

2. How do you findout whether a command is an aliases, bash function,

built-in like cd and type, or executable program?
Ans:
type -all yourcmd

This is, again, bash-specific. All common shells support the use of
which (either by builtin or, in some cases, by which(1)), which
will answer the same question.
> 3. What is a zombie process and how do you find them?
[...]
> ps -aux, will show all processes. Look for "Z" in that stat and defunct
> under the command.
That answer's incomplete; that's relying on BSD ps(1) syntax. On
Solaris, at least, you can use /usr/ucb/ps (though it's quite slow),
but on a true SysV system, you'll need to know how to read ps -ef
output as well.
Also, BSD ps(1) syntax has long deprecated the use of the -.
>
>
>
>

4. How do you find the version of Linux running and the version of gcc
used?
Ans:
cat /proc/version

Why would you give a Linux-specific question, much less answer, on a

test for a Unix sysadmin? The POSIX way to get this information is
uname(1).
> 5. How do you setup multiple IP address on one NIC (Network Interface
> Card)...assume ethernet.
>

>
>
>
>

Ans:
Normally, /etc/sysconfig/ network-scripts/ ifcfg-eth0 is the setup for the
first card. To add additional IP addresses, create another file
"ifcfg-eth0: 1" with the new IP address information in it.

That's disgustingly Linux-specific. BSD systems will use

/etc/ifconfig. <foo>
>
>
>
>
>
>

6. What is an inode?
Ans:
The inode contains information about the file size, file location,
ownership, etc. Plus, it contains a pointer to the first few blocks of data
in the file.

That's true, but it neglects the FS-dependent implementation details

(sysadmins should be familiar at least with the file systems they
need to manage, and should have a basic understanding of what design
decisions are made when designing a FS) and neglects to ask the
important "and why do you care?" piece of the question.
> 7. What's the difference between a hard link and a soft link?
Why do people use the term "soft link"? The correct term is
"symbolic link".
> Ans:
[...]
> fileA and fileB have the same inode. How do you know this? Issue the stat
> command "stat fileA" and "stat fileB".
stat(1) isn't defined in POSIX, but ls's -i flag is.
> One important note about hard links. Editors like emacs will create a new
> inode for a file. So if you edit the fileB above, you won't see the changes
> in fileA. Instead, that inode becames the backup.
That's a pretty irrelevant note, I think, unless you're interested
in the internal functionings of Emacs. A salient point you neglect
to mention is what kind of links one can make across file system
boundaries.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

8. How do you create a file that even root can't remove?

Ans:
You't can't really; but, the "chattr +i file" command can make a file
immutable. This file can't be removed until "chatt -i file" is performed.
True, even root can't remove a file with the immutable attribute set. But,
root can unset this attribute, then, delete the file.

chattr(1) isn't just Linux-specific, it's ext{2,3}-specific. Some

other file systems provide other ways of doing this same thing.
The real answer to the question is that you create the file and then
set a physical read-only marker on the device itself (tabs on floppy
disks and tape media, jumpers on disk devices, ro=<hostname> in
dfstab/exports on an NFS server to which the root user in question
doesn't have access).
> 9. How do you find all the programs, and there location, using sockets or

^^^^^
> pipes on your computer?
Spellcheck is insufficient. Proofread.
>
>
>
>

Ans:
"netstat -na" will give a list of listening connections; but, it doesn't do
an adequate job of listing the programs. Instead, use
"lsof"

lsof is rather portable (in that it can be built on most, if not

any, POSIX systems), but many operating systems provide a native
mechanism for this. (BSD systems have fstat(1), for instance.)
> Other items to know: What is a superblock and what kind of data is in it?
More importantly, why would you need that information?
> If someone talks about ext2 and ext3 filesystems, what are they most likely
> running Debian or Redhat?
If someone talks about ufs, what are they most likely using, SunOS
or BSD/OS?
> Using the find command, how do you find all files
> with the immunitable attribute set?
GNU-find and ext{2,3}-specific.
> How do you create a directory that's sharable to a group,
A more general question would ask what attributes can be set in a
file's mode bits and which have special implications for files that
are directories or that are executable. One should also note that
certain popular file system implementations overload certain mode
bits; for example, Sun's ufs and, because of that, Veritas's vxfs.
Explaining which of these interactions will function across NFS
between same-OS servers and clients and different-OS servers and
clients would also be desirable.
> that by default, will have each file created as sharable to a group.
This presumes changes outside of the directory's mode bits. (You
need to force a umask on the users.)
> What's an effective UID and how is it set?
Relatedly, what's a saved UID, and why would you care about them?
> Is the speed of light constant in a vacuum and does light travel
> in a straight line? Careful on this last one..don't let your formal
> education throw you off.
Heh.
?? Are these questions supposed to be focused on a low end admin? Or a
high position admin?
The former, we certainly hope, though my experience dictates that
people referring to themselves as senior couldn't answer some of the

modifications I made above.

I've attached an incomplete list of questions I would ask in an
interview for a senior Unix and Linux systems administrator. These are
based on a list of questions a friend of mine who prefers to
remain anonymous asked for my feedback on recently. I've made some
modifications to that person's questions and would prefer to make some
significant additions before I made use of this list. (My
friend also had questions specific to Windows 2000; I've elided those
here, but if you'd like to see them, let me know.)
There's a significant lack of file-system- related questions here,
which I pointed out to my friend at the time. The questions Mike
provided above aren't a bad starting point for that component of
this list.
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* *******
** *****
TCP/IP Networking
?? In an IP network, what is the function of a subnet mask?
?? Suppose you are assigned the CIDR net block 130.78.25.64/ 28.
?? How many IP addresses are useable for hosts?
?? List them.
?? Are there any IP addresses that are not useable for hosts?
?? If so, list them with the reason that that specific address is not
useable for hosts.
?? The default gateway address on a subnet is changing; the old
address is 192.168.0.254, and the new address is 192.168.0.1.
?? What changes would you need to make on a computer running as a DHCP
server on that subnet? (The DHCP server is not acting as the gateway
for this network, and the system acting as the gateway is not
receiving its IP address from the DHCP server. Assume whatever
operating system and DHCP server software you're familiar with, though
answers for a POSIX operating system and ISC dhcpd are preferred.)
?? ping(1) reports "Request timed out" when trying to check
connectivity to a host, but you're able to access other services
running on the same system. Give at least one possible
explanation for this.
?? What should be found in the /etc/hosts file? (If your answer is
specific to any particular OS, please state that. More specific
answers are preferred to more general ones.)
?? Sketch a brief history of the usage of this file in the Unix
operating system(s).
?? What is found in a DNS zone file? (Assume BIND running on a POSIX
operating system.)
?? What is the purpose of an MX record?
?? What data is permissable in a standards-compliant MX record? (Also
accepted: what standards-non- compliant data is frequentlyplaced in MX
records?)
?? What data is transferred in a DNS zone transfer?
?? In what circumstances would you permit systems outside of

your local/corporate network to perform DNS zone transfers?

?? In what circumstances would you not?
E-Mail
?? Explain in what ways each of the IMAP, POP3, and SMTP protocols are used.
?? Give at least two differences between IMAP and POP3.
?? Explain at least one way that SMTP is used that does not involve a
mail user agent. (Bonus points for creative answers.)
?? What is an open mail relay?
?? How would you test an SMTP server to see if it is an open mail relay?
?? Name at least two types of server process that can be an open mail
relay but are not SMTP server processes.
?? What are the basic commands to send a message to an SMTP server?
(Hint: Begin with HELO.)
OS-level Tools
?? What options to (GNU) tar(1) would you use to decompress and
extract everything from an archive named files.tar.gz into the
current directory?
?? How would you move a user's home directory from one mounted disk
partition to another, preserving all file metadata, with minimal
interruption to the user?
?? Can you do this with zero interruption to the user?
?? What command would you use to check available disk space on all
currently-mounted disk partitions?
?? What command(s), with what options, would you use to discover
which directory under a given disk partition was using the most space?
?? Why is there an /etc/shadow (or similar, differently- named)
file? What is in it, and how is it different from /etc/passwd?
Linux admin interview questions
1. How do you take a single line of input from the user in a shell script?
2. Write a script to convert all DOS style backslashes to UNIX style
slashes in a list of files.
3. Write a regular expression (or sed script) to replace all
occurrences of the letter 'f', followed by any number of characters,
followed by the letter 'a', followed by one or more numeric
characters, followed by the letter 'n', and replace what's found with
the string "UNIX".
4. Write a script to list all the differences between two directories.
5. Write a program in any language you choose, to reverse a file.
6. What are the fields of the password file?
7. What does a plus at the beginning of a line in the password file signify?
8. Using the man pages, find the correct ioctl to send console output
to an arbitrary pty.
9. What is an MX record?
10. What is the prom command on a Sun that shows the SCSI devices?
11. What is the factory default SCSI target for /dev/sd0?

12. Where is that value controlled?

13. What happens to a child process that dies and has no parent
process to wait for it and what's bad about this?
14. What's wrong with sendmail? What would you fix?
15. What command do you run to check file system consistency?
16. What's wrong with running shutdown on a network?
17. What can be wrong with setuid scripts?
18. What value does spawn return?
19. Write a script to send mail from three other machines on the
network to root at the machine you're on. Use a 'here doc', but
include in the mail message the name of the machine the mail is sent
from and the disk utilization statistics on each machine?
20. Why can't root just cd to someone's home directory and run a
program called a.out sitting there by typing "a.out", and why is this
good?
21. What is the difference between UDP and TCP?
22. What is DNS?
23. What does nslookup do?
24. How do you create a swapfile?
25. How would you check the route table on a workstation/ server?
26. How do you find which ypmaster you are bound to?
27. How do you fix a problem where a printer will cutoff anything over 1MB?
28. What is the largest file system size in solaris? SunOS?
29. What are the different RAID levels?
Interview questions for Linux admin
1. Advantages/disadvan tages of script vs compiled program.
2. Name a replacement for PHP/Perl/MySQL/ Linux/Apache and show main
differences.
3. Why have you choosen such a combination of products?
4. Differences between two last MySQL versions. Which one would you
choose and when/why?
5. Main differences between Apache 1.x and 2.x. Why is 2.x not so
popular? Which one would you choose and when/why?
6. Which Linux distros do you have experience with?
7. Which distro you prefer? Why?
8. Which tool would you use to update Debian / Slackware / RedHat /
Mandrake / SuSE ?
9. You're asked to write an Apache module. What would you do?
10. Which tool do you prefer for Apache log reports?
11. Your portfolio. (even a PHP guest book may work well)
12. What does 'route' command do?
13. Differences between ipchains and iptables.
14. What's eth0, ppp0, wlan0, ttyS0, etc.
15. What are different directories in / for?
16. Partitioning scheme for new webserver. Why?
Unix/Linux programming interview questions
Question 1: What is the major advantage of a hash table? (Asked by
Silicon Magic Corp. people)
Answer: The major advantage of a hash table is its speed. Because the
hash function is to take a range of key values and transform them into
index values in such a way that the key values are distributed
randomly across all the indices of a hash table.
Question 2: What are the techniques that you use to handle the
collisions in hash tables?(Asked by Silicon Magic Corp. people)
Answer: We can use two major techniques to handle the collisions. They
are open addressing and separate chaining. In open addressing, data
items that hash to a full array cell are placed in another cell in the
array. In separate chaining, each array element consist of a linked
list. All data items hashing to a given array index are inserted in

that list.
Question 3: In Unix OS, what is the file server? (Asked by Silicon
Magic Corp. people)
Answer: The file server is a machine that shares its disk storage and
files with other machines on the network.
Question 4: What is NFS? What is its job?(Asked by Silicon Magic Corp. people)
Answer: NFS stands for Network File System. NFS enables filesystems
physically residing on one computer system to be used by other
computers in the network, appearing to users on the remote host as
just another local disk.
Question 5: What is CVS? List some useful CVS commands.(Asked by
Silicon Magic Corp.people)
Ans: CVS is Concurrent Version System. It is the front end to the RCS
revision control system which extends the notion of revision control
from a collection of files in a single directory to a hierarchical
collection of directories consisting of revision controlled files.
These directories and files can be combined together to form a
software release.
There are some useful commands that are being used very often. They are
cvs checkout
cvs update
cvs add
cvs remove
cvs commit
Unix/Linux administration interview questions
What is LILO?
LILO stands for Linux boot loader. It will load the MBR, master boot
record, into the memory, and tell the system which partition and hard
drive to boot from.
What is the main advantage of creating links to a file instead of
copies of the file?
A: The main advantage is not really that it saves disk space (though
it does that too) but, rather, that a change of permissions on the
file is applied to all the link access points. The link will show
permissions of lrwxrwxrwx but that is for the link itself and not the
access to the file to which the link points. Thus if you want to
change the permissions for a command, such as su, you only have to do
it on the original. With copies you have to find all of the copies and
change permission on each of the copies.
Write a command to find all of the files which have been accessed
within the last 30 days.
find / -type f -atime -30 > December.files
This command will find all the files under root, which is '/', with
file type is file. '-atime -30? will give all the files accessed less
than 30 days ago. And the output will put into a file call
December.files.
What is the most graceful way to get to run level single user mode?
A: The most graceful way is to use the command init s.
If you want to shut everything down before going to single user mode
then do init 0 first and from the ok prompt do a boot -s.
What does the following command line produce? Explain each aspect of this line.
$ (date ; ps -ef | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq | wc -l ) >> Activity.log
A: First let's dissect the line: The date gives the date and time as
the first command of the line, this is followed by the a list of all
running processes in long form with UIDs listed first, this is the ps
-ef. These are fed into the awk which filters out all but the UIDs;
these UIDs are piped into sort for no discernible reason and then onto
uniq (now we see the reason for the sort - uniq only works on sorted
data - if the list is A, B, A, then A, B, A will be the output of
uniq, but if it's A, A, B then A, B is the output) which produces only

one copy of each UID.

These UIDs are fed into wc -l which counts the lines - in this case
the number of distinct UIDs running processes on the system. Finally
the results of these two commands, the date and the wc -l, are
appended to the file "Activity.log" . Now to answer the question as to
what this command line produces. This writes the date and time into
the file Activity.log together with the number of distinct users who
have processes running on the system at that time. If the file already
exists, then these items are appended to the file, otherwise the file
is created.
Network developer interview questions
Pls Check the Answer I think Some Answer are not Fully Correct.
1) What ports does FTP traffic travel over?
Ans :21
2) What ports does mail traffic utilize?
Ans : SMTP 25 ,, POP3 110
3) What ports do HTTP and HTTPS use?
Ans: HTTP 80, HTTPS 443
4) Why is NTP required in an NFS network?
Ans : NFS, the Network File System, has long been known for its remote
exploits and vulnerabilities. Even secure NFS has vulnerable points.
However, NFS is also a very reliable means of copying and backing up
systems to a central backup server. In order to synchronize the backup
clients with a central backup server extremely accurate timing is
needed. That's where NTP comes in.
5) Name some common mal software on the server side
Ans: DeepThroat, BladeRunner, Hackers Paradise (Postfix, Sendmail,
Qmail, Exim)
6) What is CPAN? How do you access it?
Ans: Perl programmer's paradise!
7) What is PEAR?
Ans : PHP programmer's paradise!
8) What advantages does mod_perl have over a perl CGI?
Ans: CGI is one of the first methods of creating dynamic web content.
The problem is that it forks a new process and loads a copy
of the interpreter
for each request, using too much memory.mod_perl includes the
Perl interpreter within Apache
9) What is required to do SSL in Apache 1.x?
10) What is Tcl?
11) What is a servlet engine/container?
Ans : An application server that provides the facilities for running
Java servlets. Also called a "servlet engine" and "servlet womb,"
examples of servlet containers are JServ and Tomcat from the Apache
Jakarta Project. Today, servlet containers also support JavaServer
Pages (JSPs) by converting them to servlets. For example, Tomcat
supports JSPs, but its predecessor, JServ, did not. Full blown
J2EE-compliant application servers generally handle servlets, JSPs and
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs).

11) What is BIND?

Ans : BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is an implementation of the
Domain Name System (DNS) protocols and provides an openly
redistributable reference implementation of the major components of
the Domain Name System.
12) Name the steps to setup a slave zone in BIND
13) Name the steps to setup a primary zone in BIND
14) What commands would you use under Solaris or Linux to modify/view
an LDAP tree?
Interview questions for a sysadmin
1. Difference between layer 2 and layer 3 devices?
2. What is VLAN?
3. What is the subnet for a class C network?
4. Are you familiar with automounter?
5. Have you configured an NIS server/client?
6. Have your configured a NFS server?
7. Windows and Linux interoperability how to?
8. What is RAID 1?
Topics for a Unix/Linux sysadmin interview
1) Job Scheduling; mainly crontab, at, batch command
Ans : 1. crontab - to run a job(in background) at regular intervals of time.
crontab -l -> lists all the cronjobs running under ur login.
crontab -e -> to edit the cronjobs running under ur login.
crontab -r -> to remove all the cronjobs running under ur login.
at - command is for running a job at some point of time(given)
{at
list of jobs/scripts}
1) Backup stetegy; incremental, full system back up; diff between tar & ufsdump
Ans : Ufsdump is a flavour specific command for backup in Solaris
where as tar is a general unix command for the backup.With ufsdump we
have incremental backup and we take offline backup also where as with
tar we cant do it
2) diff between hard link & softlink
3) How to list only the directories inside a directory (Ans. ls -l|grep "^d")
4) RAID levels; pros & cons of diffrent levels; what is RAID 1+0
5) How to recover a system whose root password has lost?
6) What is a daemon?
7) How to put a job in background & bring it to foreground?
Ans : to move it to background, bg
to bring it to foreground, fg
8) What is default permissions for others in a file?
9) Questions on shell initialization scripts?
10) Questions on restricted shell
11) What is diff betwn grep & find?
12) What is egrep?
Ans : egrep - to search for multiple - patterns or expressions( stored
in a file).
13) Questions on shell programming
14) What is a pipe?
Ans : pipe - redirection operator, the output of a command will be
provided as an input to another.
15) Questions on Solaris patch management like pkgadd etc
16) Questions on file system creation; actually what happens when we
create a file system?

17) Questions on RBAC? what is a role accound & what is a profile?

18) From command line how will you add a user account? the full
command will all arguments.
19) Fs it advisable to put a swap partion in RAID1 (mirroring?) pros & cons?
Apache interview questions
1. On a fresh install, why does Apache have three config files srm.conf, access.conf and httpd.conf? - The first two are remnants
from the NCSA times, and generally you should be ok if you delete the
first two, and stick with httpd.conf.
2. What's the command to stop Apache? - kill the specific process that
httpd is running under, or killall httpd. If you have apachectl
installed, use apachectl stop.
3. What does apachectl graceful do? - It sends a SIGUSR1 for a
restart, and starts the apache server if it's not running.
4. How do you check for the httpd.conf consistency and any errors in
it? - apachectl configtest
5. When I do ps -aux, why do I have one copy of httpd running as root
and the rest as nouser? - You need to be a root to attach yourself to
any Unix port below 1024, and we need 80.
6. But I thought that running apache as a root is a security risk? That one root process opens port 80, but never listens to it, so no
user will actually enter the site with root rights. If you kill the
root process, you will see the other kids disappear as well.
7. Why do I get the message "? no listening sockets available,
shutting down"? - In Apache 2 you need to have a listen directive.
Just put Listen 80 in httpd.conf.
8. How do you set up a virtual host in Apache?
<VirtualHost www.techinterviews. com>
ServerAdmin admin@techinterview s.com
DocumentRoot /home/apache/ share/htdocs/ hostedsites
ServerName www.techinterviews. com
ErrorLog /home/apache/ logs/error/ hostedsites/ error_log
TransferLog /home/apache/ logs/access/ hostedsites/ access_log
</VirtualHost>
9. What is ServerType directive? - It defines whether Apache should
spawn itself as a child process (standalone) or keep everything in a
single process (inetd). Keeping it inetd conserves resources. This is
deprecated, however.
10. What is mod_vhost_alias? - It allows hosting multiple sites on the
same server via simpler configurations.
11. What does htpasswd do? - It creates a new user in a specified
group, and asks to specify a password for that user.
12. If you specify both deny from all and allow from all, what will be
the default action of Apache? - In case of ambiguity deny always takes
precedence over allow.
Network administrator interview questions
1) What is the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 in the OSI model?
Ans : Layer 2 is responsible for switching data whereas Layer 3 is
responsible for routing the data.
Layer3: With information gathered from user, Internet protocol make
one IP packet with source IP and Destination IP and other relevant
information. It can then route packet through router to the
destination.
Layer2: Soon after it receives IP packet from layer 3, it encapsulate
it with frame header (ATM header in case of ATM technology) and send
it out for switching. In case of ethernet it will send data to MAC
address there by it can reach to exact destination

2) What is the difference between a hub, switch, and router?

Ans : Hub: 1.it is a layer1 device..used to connect various machine on Lan.
2.It forwards broadcast by default.
3.It supports one collision domain and one broadcast domain.
4.it works on Bus topolog resulting less speed.
Switch: 1. A layer2 device.
2. Forward broadcast first time only.
3. one broadcast domain & colliosion domains depends on no. of ports.
4.It is based on Star Topology giving 100mbps to every pc on Lan.
Router: 1. Does not Broadcast by default.
2. breaks up Broadcast domain.
3. Also called Layer3 switch.
3) What is a VLAN?
Ans: VLANs logically segment switched networks based on the functions,
project teams, or applications of the organization regardless of the
physical location or connections to the network.
VLANs provide segmentation based on broadcast domains.
All workstations and servers used by a particular workgroup share the
same VLAN, regardless of the physical connection or location.
VLANs are created to provide segmentation services traditionally
provided by physical routers in LAN configurations.
VLANs address scalability, security, and network management. Routers
in VLAN topologies provide broadcast filtering, security, and traffic
flow management.
4) What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
Ans TCP is a connection oriented protocol, which means that everytime
a packet is sent say from host A to B, we will get an acknowledgement.
Whereas UDP on the other hand, is a connection less protocol.
Where will it be used : TCP -> Say you have a file transfer and you
need to ensure that the file reaches intact, and time is not a factor,
in such a case we can use TCP.
UDP-> Media Streaming, question is say you are watching a movie?would
you prefer that your movie comes..perfectly?.but u need to wait a long
time before you see the next frame ?..or would you prefer the movie to
keep streaming?Yes?The second option is definely better?.This is when
we need UDP
5) How do you distinguish a DNS problem from a network problem?
Ans: The first thing to do is to ping any switches, routers, or any
other devices on the network. If your pings come back complete with 0%
lost, then it will most likely be a DNS issue. If you can ping other
devices but can not ping the switch that sits in front of the DNS,
then it will be a network issue.
6) What is a runt, Giant, and collision?
Ans : A RUNT is a packet that is too small to traverse the network.
Network protocols such as Ethernet often require that packets be a
minimum number of bytes in order to travel the network. Runts are
often the result of packet collisions along a busy network or can
result from faulty hardware that is forming the packets or from
corrupted data being sent across the network.
A giant is a packet that is too large to traverse the network. Network
protocols such as Ethernet often require that packets can not be over
a specific number of bytes in order to travel the network.
7) What is a broadcast storm?
Ans: A broadcast storm means that your network is overwhelmed with
constant broadcast or multicast traffic. Broadcast storms can
eventually lead to a complete loss of network connectivity as the

packets proliferate.
If a certain broadcast transmit threshold is reached, the port drops
all broadcast traffic. Firewalls are one of the best ways to protect
your network against broadcast storms.
A state in which a message that has been broadcast across a network
results in even more responses, and each response results in still
more responses in a snowball effect. A severe broadcast storm can
block all other network traffic, resulting in a network meltdown.
Broadcast storms can usually be prevented by carefully configuring a
network to block illegal broadcast messages.
8) What is the purpose of VRRP?
9) Ans: The purpose of the VRRP packet is to communicate to all VRRP
routers the priority and the state of the Master router associated
with the Virtual Router ID.
VRRP packets are sent encapsulated in IP packets. They are sent to the
IPv4 multicast address assigned to VRRP.
10) What is a VPN?
Ans: VPN(Virtual Private Network )? these are bascially the logical
networks on the physical line? you can have many VPN oveer same line..
Need of VPN arises when your company need to increase the network but
don't want to buy any more switches.. take an eg. your dept. your room
is packed with employees and ur company need to add 4 more persons to
ur deptt. what will they do.. the solution is to create VPN's?you can
configure the switch ports in other deptts. and create a specific VLAN
of ur deptt.so that the persons can sit there and access to the
required pcs.
11)
12)
Ans
For
For

What information about a peer would I need to establish a VPN?

What is a full-class C in CIDR notation?
: For class A ..default subnet mask is 255.0.0.0 so CIDR notation is /8
class B ..default subnet mask is 255.255.0.0 so CIDR notation is /16
class C ..default subnet mask is 255.255.255. 0 so CIDR notation is /24

13) What is a default route?

Ans : While configuring the Routers we need to give the specific
routes if we are configuring a Static route..and for Default..we need
not give the single route,, we just have to set the default route
command on the router and we set this command on the router of last
resort?that is it discovers the near by routes itself..
14) What is a metric?
Ans: Routing tables contain information used by switching software to
select the best route.
Routing algorithms have used many different metrics to determine the
best route. Sophisticated routing algorithms can base route selection
on multiple metrics, combining them in a single (hybrid) metric. All
the following metrics have been used:
?Path length
?Reliability
?Delay
?Bandwidth
?Load
?Communication cost
15) What is a MAC address?
Ans : MAC is a machines Physical address, The internet is addressed
based on a logical addressing approach. Say,when the packet reaches
say the bridge connection a LAN, the question is..how does it

identify, which computer it needs to send the packet to. For this it
uses the concept of ARP, Address Resolution Protocol, which it uses
over time to build up a table mapping from the Logical addresses to
the Physical addresses. Each computer is identified using its
MAC/Physical address ( u can use the ipconfig -all option to get ur
MAC address).
16) What is ARP/RARP?
Ans : ARP: Stands for Address Resolution Protocol?whenever a request
is sent by a node on one network to the node on another network the
Physical address(MAC) is required and for this the IP address need to
be flow over the network..whenver a router with that network (IP) gets
the msg. the required MAC address is sent through the network this
process of converting the IP address to MAC address is Called ARP..and
the reverse thats the convertion of the Mac address to the IP address
is called RARP ( Reverse Address Resolution Protocol)
RARP: RARP is a TCP/ IP protocol term similar to ARP. RARP is the
method that some machines use to determine their own IP address.
Essentially, a machine sends out a packet that includes a machine
hardware address. A server on the same network receives the packet and
looks up the hardware address. The server then sends back the
associated IP address of that machine. It is used for machines that do
not have the capability to store their own IP addresses locally.
ARP:Address Resolution Protocol. ARP is the protocol used by IP (as in
TCP/IP) for address resolution. Address resolution refers to the
ability of a station to resolve another station's MAC (hardware)
address given its IP address.
17) Describe a TCP connection sequence
18) Ans: The TCP three-way handshake describes the mechanism of
message exchange that allows a pair of TCP devices to move from a
closed state to a ready-to-use, established connection. Connection
establishment is about more than just passing messages between devices
to establish communication. The TCP layers on the devices must also
exchange information about the sequence numbers each device wants to
use for its first data transmission, as well as parameters that will
control how the connection operates. The former of these two data
exchange functions is usually called sequence number synchronization,
and is such an important part of connection establishment that the
messages that each device sends to start the connection are called SYN
(synchronization) messages.
You may recall from the TCP fundamentals section that TCP refers to
each byte of data individually, and uses sequence numbers to keep
track of which bytes have been sent and received. Since each byte has
a sequence number, we can acknowledge each byte, or more efficiently,
use a single number to acknowledge a range of bytes received
19) What is MTU?
Ans : The MTU is the "Maximum Transmission Unit" used by the TCP
protocol. TCP stands for Transmission Control Prototcol. The MTU
determines the size of packets used by TCP for each transmission of
data. Too large of an MTU size may mean retransmissions if the packet
encounters a router along its route that can't handle that large a
packet. Too small of an MTU size means relatively more overhead and
more acknowledgements that have to be sent and handled. The MTU is
rated in "octets" or groups of 8 bits. The so-called "official"
internet standard MTU is 576, but the standard rating for ethernet is
an MTU of 1500.
20) What other TCP setting can you modify besides MTU to shorten packets?

21) What is Socket?

Ans : When a computer program needs to connect to a local or wide area
network such as the Internet, it uses a software component called a
socket. The socket opens the network connection for the program,
allowing data to be read and written over the network. It is important
to note that these sockets are software, not hardware, like a wall
socket. So, yes, you have a much greater chance of being shocked by a
wall socket than by a networking socket.
Sockets are a key part of Unix and Windows-based operating systems.
They make it easy for software developers to create network-enabled
programs. Instead of constructing network connections from scratch for
each program they write, developers can just include sockets in their
programs. The sockets allow the programs to use the operating system's
built-in commands to handle networking functions. Because they are
used for a number of different network protocols (i.e. HTTP, FTP,
telnet, and e-mail), many sockets can be open at one time.
#######
NICHE SOFTWARE (PUNE) 02026434194/96(They work in Lamp)
*******************************************************
1.How to change guimode to text mode
2.Install Apache 2.0
with upgrade mysql 4.1 to 5.1
and php 4.1 to 5.1
and perl 4.1 to 5.1
complete php with Apache
3.Create a Virtual host with apache
set documentroot /var/www/html/emma
set ip 192.168.0.200
web browser find web page at 192.168.0.200
4.Install postfix 2.5.1 with rpm
configure postfix mail agent as relay server.
5.what is lilo.
6.what is the advantage of symblinks instead of copying a file.
7.How to go to a sg user mode in a superior way.
8.Print the output of following line
$(date;ps -el|awk`(print$1)`|sort|uniq|wc -l) >> activity.log
and explain the line and each and every term.
9.give the tool to update debian, slackware, redhat & suse.
10.what is the diff iptables & ipchians.
11.Explian the foll term eth0 ppp0 wlan0 ttys0.
12.what are the different dir in /.
13.Define a partition scheme for a new web server
14.If U forget root passwd then how do u login.

15.How can u disable ping reply.

QUEEN STREET (Pune)
*************
1.What are different shells.
2.What commandline argument you will pass to count a file in a script
3.what script used to start a shell
4.What is the command for checking network configuration
5.What is the command for checking network speed
6.Type of virtual host
7.How will you create virtual host for different domains
8.What is 3 tier architecture
9.What is a su & Sudo
10.What is ssh protocol
11.How you login from 1 linux box to another without passwd
12.What are different networking protocols
13.How to start & Stop apache
14.What is the port no of http & https
15.How http works
16.How you login remotely to a linuxbox
17.What are different linux distributions
18.What is tomcat edward
19.Apache is full socket or half socket ?
*********************************************************************
1.What lilo -v does (Full Explaination)
2.How to share a printer from windows to linux
3.How to find the access file for 30days
4.What is the new web server partition for webserver
5.How to check the loadable modules
6.How to do performance tuning
7.What is the use of shadow file
8.What is tomcat ? what is used for?

9.How to compile the kernel

10.How to check Load Average
11.Apache web hosting where does log file stores
12.What make commamnd does
13.How to check load Average
Reliance
*********
1.What is swap
2.What is ssh-keys
3.When system crashes Is any other option other than fsck
4.What is major file for nfs
5.Why apache runs in application layer
6.What is server aliasing in Apache
7.What is the maintainance mode in zmail
8.What is the difference between telnet & ssh
IN2M (Belapur)
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1.What file is for tcpwrappers found
2.What command to run after makex config
3.What is the maintainance mode under linux (ctrlD)
4.What is sudo used for?
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6.How to login in ssh without password
7.What is the differnce between lilo & grub