Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part-8

1. Display all the files in current directory sorted by size?
ls -l | grep '^-' | awk '{print $5,$9}' |sort -n|awk '{print $2}'

2. Write a command to search for the file 'map' in the current directory?
find -name map -type f

3. How to display the first 10 characters from each line of a file?
cut -c -10 filename

4. Write a command to remove the first number on all lines that start with "@"?
sed '\,^@, s/[0-9][0-9]*//' < filename

5. How to print the file names in a directory that has the word "term"?
grep -l term *
The '-l' option make the grep command to print only the filename without printing the content of the file. As soon as the grep command finds the pattern in a file, it prints the pattern and stops searching other lines in the file.

6. How to run awk command specified in a file?
awk -f filename

7. How do you display the calendar for the month march in the year 1985?
The cal command can be used to display the current month calendar. You can pass the month and year as arguments to display the required year, month combination calendar.
cal 03 1985
This will display the calendar for the March month and year 1985.

8. Write a command to find the total number of lines in a file?
wc -l filename
Other ways to pring the total number of lines are
awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum=sum+1} END {print sum}' filename
awk 'END{print NR}' filename

9. How to duplicate empty lines in a file?
sed '/^$/ p' < filename

10. Explain iostat, vmstat and netstat?

• Iostat: reports on terminal, disk and tape I/O activity.
• Vmstat: reports on virtual memory statistics for processes, disk, tape and CPU activity.
• Netstat: reports on the contents of network data structures.

11. Write a command to print the lines that has the the pattern "july" in all the files in a particular directory?
grep july *
This will print all the lines in all files that contain the word “july” along with the file name. If any of the files contain words like "JULY" or "July", the above command would not print those lines.

12. Write a command to print the lines that has the word "july" in all the files in a directory and also suppress the filename in the output.
grep -h july *

13. Write a command to print the lines that has the word "july" while ignoring the case.
grep -i july *
The option i make the grep command to treat the pattern as case insensitive.

14. When you use a single file as input to the grep command to search for a pattern, it won't print the filename in the output. Now write a grep command to print the filename in the output without using the '-H' option.
grep pattern filename /dev/null
The /dev/null or null device is special file that discards the data written to it. So, the /dev/null is always an empty file.
Another way to print the filename is using the '-H' option. The grep command for this is
grep -H pattern filename

15. Write a command to print the file names in a directory that does not contain the word "july"?
grep -L july *
The '-L' option makes the grep command to print the filenames that do not contain the specified pattern.

16. Write a command to print the line numbers along with the line that has the word "july"?
grep -n july filename
The '-n' option is used to print the line numbers in a file. The line numbers start from 1

17. Write a command to print the lines that starts with the word "start"?
grep '^start' filename
The '^' symbol specifies the grep command to search for the pattern at the start of the line.

18. In the text file, some lines are delimited by colon and some are delimited by space. Write a command to print the third field of each line.
awk '{ if( $0 ~ /:/ ) { FS=":"; } else { FS =" "; } print $3 }' filename

19. Write a command to print the line number before each line?
awk '{print NR, $0}' filename

20. Write a command to print the second and third line of a file without using NR.
awk 'BEGIN {RS="";FS="\n"} {print $2,$3}' filename

21. How to create an alias for the complex command and remove the alias?
The alias utility is used to create the alias for a command. The below command creates alias for ps -aef command.
alias pg='ps -aef'
If you use pg, it will work the same way as ps -aef.
To remove the alias simply use the unalias command as
unalias pg

22. Write a command to display todays date in the format of 'yyyy-mm-dd'?
The date command can be used to display todays date with time
date '+%Y-%m-%d'

Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part-7

1. How to display the processes that were run by your user name ?
ps -aef | grep <user_name>

2. Write a command to display all the files recursively with path under current directory?
find . -depth -print

3. Display zero byte size files in the current directory?
find -size 0 -type f

4. Write a command to display the third and fifth character from each line of a file?
cut -c 3,5 filename

5. Write a command to print the fields from 10th to the end of the line. The fields in the line are delimited by a comma?
cut -d',' -f10- filename

6. How to replace the word "Gun" with "Pen" in the first 100 lines of a file?
sed '1,00 s/Gun/Pen/' < filename

7. Write a Unix command to display the lines in a file that do not contain the word "RAM"?
grep -v RAM filename
The '-v' option tells the grep to print the lines that do not contain the specified pattern.

8. How to print the squares of numbers from 1 to 10 using awk command
awk 'BEGIN { for(i=1;i<=10;i++) {print "square of",i,"is",i*i;}}'

9. Write a command to display the files in the directory by file size?
ls -l | grep '^-' |sort -nr -k 5

10. How to find out the usage of the CPU by the processes?
The top utility can be used to display the CPU usage by the processes.

11. Write a command to display your name 100 times.
The Yes utility can be used to repeatedly output a line with the specified string or 'y'.
yes <your_name> | head -100

12. Write a command to display the first 10 characters from each line of a file?
cut -c -10 filename

13. The fields in each line are delimited by comma. Write a command to display third field from each line of a file?
cut -d',' -f2 filename

14. Write a command to print the fields from 10 to 20 from each line of a file?
cut -d',' -f10-20 filename

15. Write a command to print the first 5 fields from each line?
cut -d',' -f-5 filename

16. By default the cut command displays the entire line if there is no delimiter in it. Which cut option is used to supress these kind of lines?
The -s option is used to supress the lines that do not contain the delimiter.

17. Write a command to replace the word "bad" with "good" in file?
sed s/bad/good/ < filename

18. Write a command to replace the word "bad" with "good" globally in a file?
sed s/bad/good/g < filename

19. Write a command to replace the word "apple" with "(apple)" in a file?
sed s/apple/(&)/ < filename

20. Write a command to switch the two consecutive words "apple" and "mango" in a file?
sed 's/\(apple\) \(mango\)/\2 \1/' < filename

21. Write a command to display the characters from 10 to 20 from each line of a file?
cut -c 10-20 filename

Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part-6

     1.       How do you write the contents of 3 files into a single file?

cat file1 file2 file3 > file

2.       How to display the fields in a text file in reverse order?

awk 'BEGIN {ORS=""} { for(i=NF;i>0;i--) print $i," "; print "\n"}' filename

3.       Write a command to find the sum of bytes (size of file) of all files in a directory.

ls -l | grep '^-'| awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum = sum + $5} END {print sum}'

4.       Write a command to print the lines which end with the word "end"?

grep 'end$' filename

The '$' symbol specifies the grep command to search for the pattern at the end of the line.

5.       Write a command to select only those lines containing "july" as a whole word?

grep -w july filename

The '-w' option makes the grep command to search for exact whole words. If the specified pattern is found in a string, then it is not considered as a whole word. For example: In the string "mikejulymak", the pattern "july" is found. However "july" is not a whole word in that string.

6.       How to remove the first 10 lines from a file?

sed '1,10 d' < filename

7.       Write a command to duplicate each line in a file?

sed 'p' < filename

8.       How to extract the username from 'who am i' comamnd?

who am i | cut -f1 -d' '

9.       Write a command to list the files in '/usr' directory that start with 'ch' and then display the number of lines in each file?

wc -l /usr/ch*

Another way is

find /usr -name 'ch*' -type f -exec wc -l {} \;

10.   How to remove blank lines in a file ?

grep -v ‘^$’ filename > new_filename

11.   Write a command to remove the prefix of the string ending with '/'.

The basename utility deletes any prefix ending in /. The usage is mentioned below:

basename /usr/local/bin/file

This will display only file

12.   How to display zero byte size files?

ls -l | grep '^-' | awk '/^-/ {if ($5 !=0 ) print $9 }'

13.   How to replace the second occurrence of the word "bat" with "ball" in a file?

sed 's/bat/ball/2' < filename

14.   How to remove all the occurrences of the word "jhon" except the first one in a line with in the entire file?

sed 's/jhon//2g' < filename

15.   How to replace the word "lite" with "light" from 100th line to last line in a file?

sed '100,$ s/lite/light/' < filename

16.   How to list the files that are accessed 5 days ago in the current directory?

find -atime 5 -type f

17.   How to list the files that were modified 5 days ago in the current directory?

find -mtime 5 -type f

18.   How to list the files whose status is changed 5 days ago in the current directory?

find -ctime 5 -type f

19.   How to replace the character '/' with ',' in a file?

sed 's/\//,/' < filename

sed 's|/|,|' < filename

20.   Write a command to find the number of files in a directory.

ls -l|grep '^-'|wc -l

Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part - 5

1) What is Linux?

Linux is an operating system based on UNIX, and was first introduced by Linus Torvalds. It is based on the Linux Kernel, and can run on different hardware platforms manufactured by Intel, MIPS, HP, IBM, SPARC and Motorola. Another popular element in Linux is its mascot, a penguin figure named Tux.

2) What is the difference between UNIX and LINUX?

Unix originally began as a propriety operating system from Bell Laboratories, which later on spawned into different commercial versions. On the other hand, Linux is free, open source and intended as a non-propriety operating system for the masses.

3) What is BASH?

BASH is short for Bourne Again SHell. It was written by Steve Bourne as a replacement to the original Bourne Shell (represented by /bin/sh). It combines all the features from the original version of Bourne Shell, plus additional functions to make it easier and more convenient to use. It has since been adapted as the default shell for most systems running Linux.

4) What is Linux Kernel?

The Linux Kernel is a low-level systems software whose main role is to manage hardware resources for the user. It is also used to provide an interface for user-level interaction.

5) What is LILO?

LILO is a boot loader for Linux. It is used mainly to load the Linux operating system into main memory so that it can begin its operations.

6) What is a swap space?

A swap space is a certain amount of space used by Linux to temporarily hold some programs that are running concurrently. This happens when RAM does not have enough memory to hold all programs that are executing.

7) What is the advantage of open source?

Open source allows you to distribute your software, including source codes freely to anyone who is interested. People would then be able to add features and even debug and correct errors that are in the source code. They can even make it run better, and then redistribute these enhanced source code freely again. This eventually benefits everyone in the community.

8 ) What are the basic components of Linux?

Just like any other typical operating system, Linux has all of these components: kernel, shells and GUIs, system utilities, and application program. What makes Linux advantageous over other operating system is that every aspect comes with additional features and all codes for these are downloadable for free.

9) Does it help for a Linux system to have multiple desktop environments installed?

In general, one desktop environment, like KDE or Gnome, is good enough to operate without issues. It’s all a matter of preference for the user, although the system allows switching from one environment to another. Some programs will work on one environment and not work on the other, so it could also be considered a factor in selecting which environment to use.

10) What is the basic difference between BASH and DOS?

The key differences between the BASH and DOS console lies in 3 areas:
- BASH commands are case sensitive while DOS commands are not;
- under BASH, / character is a directory separator and \ acts as an escape character. Under DOS, / serves as a command argument delimiter and \ is the directory separator
- DOS follows a convention in naming files, which is 8 character file name followed by a dot and 3 character for the extension. BASH follows no such convention.

11) What is the importance of the GNU project?

This so-called Free software movement allows several advantages, such as the freedom to run programs for any purpose and freedom to study and modify a program to your needs. It also allows you to redistribute copies of a software to other people, as well as freedom to improve software and have it released to the public.

12) Describe the root account.

The root account is like a systems administrator account, and allows you full control of the system. Here you can create and maintain user accounts, assigning different permissions for each account. It is the default account every time you install Linux.

13) What is CLI?

CLI is short for Command Line Interface. This interface allows user to type declarative commands to instruct the computer to perform operations. CLI offers an advantage in that there is greater flexibility. However, other users who are already accustom with using GUI find it difficult to remember commands including attributes that come with it.

14) What is GUI?

GUI, or Graphical User Interface, makes use of images and icons that users click and manipulate as a way of communicating with the computer. Instead of having to remember and type commands, the use of graphical elements makes it easier to interact with the system, as well as adding more attraction through images, icons and colors.

15) How do you open a command prompt when issuing a command?

To open the default shell (which is where the command prompt can be found), press Ctrl-Alt-F1. This will provide a command line interface (CLI) from which you can run commands as needed.

16) How can you find out how much memory Linux is using?

From a command shell, use the “concatenate” command: cat /proc/meminfo for memory usage information. You should see a line starting something like: Mem: 64655360, etc. This is the total memory Linux thinks it has available to use.

17) What is typical size for a swap partition under a Linux system?

The preferred size for a swap partition is twice the amount of physical memory available on the system. If this is not possible, then the minimum size should be the same as the amount of memory installed.

18) What are symbolic links?

Symbolic links act similarly to shortcuts in Windows. Such links point to programs, files or directories. It also allows you instant access to it without having to go directly to the entire pathname.

19) Does the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination work on Linux?

Yes, it does. Just like Windows, you can use this key combination to perform a system restart. One difference is that you won’t be getting any confirmation message and therefore, reboot is immediate.

20) How do you refer to the parallel port where devices such as printers are connected?

Whereas under Windows you refer to the parallel port as the LPT port, under Linux you refer to it as /dev/lp . LPT1, LPT2 and LPT3 would therefore be referred to as /dev/lp0, /dev/lp1, or /dev/lp2 under Linux.

21) Are drives such as harddrive and floppy drives represented with drive letters?

No. In Linux, each drive and device has different designations. For example, floppy drives are referred to as /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1. IDE/EIDE hard drives are referred to as /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, and so forth.

22) How do you change permissions under Linux?

Assuming you are the system administrator or the owner of a file or directory, you can grant permission using the chmod command. Use + symbol to add permission or – symbol to deny permission, along with any of the following letters: u (user), g (group), o (others), a (all), r (read), w (write) and x (execute). For example the command chmod go+rw FILE1.TXT grants read and write access to the file FILE1.TXT, which is assigned to groups and others.

23) In Linux, what names are assigned to the different serial ports?

Serial ports are identified as /dev/ttyS0 to /dev/ttyS7. These are the equivalent names of COM1 to COM8 in Windows.

24) How do you access partitions under Linux?

Linux assigns numbers at the end of the drive identifier. For example, if the first IDE hard drive had three primary partitions, they would be named/numbered, /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3.

25) What are hard links?

Hard links point directly to the physical file on disk, and not on the path name. This means that if you rename or move the original file, the link will not break, since the link is for the file itself, not the path where the file is located.

Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part - 4

1) What is UNIX?

It is a portable operating system that is designed for both efficient multi-tasking and mult-user functions. Its portability allows it to run on different hardware platforms. It was written is C and lets user do processing and control under a shell.

2) What are filters?

The term Filter is often used to refer to any program that can take input from standard input, perform some operation on that input, and write the results to standard output. A Filter is also any program that can be used between two other programs in a pipeline.

3) What is a typical syntax being followed when issuing commands in shell?

Typical command syntax under the UNIX shell follows the format:
Command [-argument] [-argument] [--argument] [file]

4) Is there a way to erase all files in the current directory, including all its sub-directories, using only one command?

Yes, that is possible. Use “rm –r *” for this purpose. The rm command is for deleting files. The –r option will erase directories and subdirectories, including files within. The asterisk represents all entries.

5) What is the chief difference between the –v and –x option s to set?

The –v option echoes each command before arguments and variables have been substituted for; the –x option echoes the commands after substitution has taken place.

6) What is Kernel?

Kernel is the UNIX operating system. It is the master program that controls the computer’s resources, allotting them to different users and to different tasks. However, the kernel doesn’t deal directly with a user. Instead, it starts up a separate, interactive program, called a shell, for each user when he/she logs on.

7) What is Shell?

A shell acts as an interface between the user and the system. As a command interpreter, the shell takes commands and sets them up for execution.

8 ) What are the key features of the Korn Shell?

- history mechanism with built-in editor that simulates emacs or vi
- built-in integer arithmetic
- string manipulation capabilities
- command aliasing
- arrays
- job control

9) What are some common shells and what are their indicators?

sh – Bourne shell
csh – C SHell
bash – Bourne Again Shell
tcsh – enhanced C Shell
zsh – Z SHell
ksh – Korn SHell

10) Differentiate multiuser from multitask.

Multiuser means that more than one person can use the computer at the same time. Multitask means that even a single user can have the computer work on more than one task or program at the same time.

11) What is command substitution?

Command substitution is one of the steps being performed every time commands are processed by the shell. Commands that are enclosed in backquotes are executed by the shell. This will then replace the standard output of the command and displayed on the command line.

12) What is a directory?

Every file is assigned to a directory. A directory is a specialized form of file that maintains a list of all files in it.

13) What is inode?

An inode is an entry created on a section of the disk set aside for a file system. The inode contains nearly all there is to know about a file, which includes the location on the disk where the file starts, the size of the file, when the file was last used, when the file was last changed, what the various read, write and execute permissions are, who owns the file, and other information.

14) You have a file called tonky in the directory honky. Later you add new material to tonky. What changes take place in the directory, inode, and file?

The directory entry is unchanged, since the name and inode number remain unchanged. In the inode file, the file size, time of last access, and time of last modification are updated. In the file itself, the new material is added.

15) Describe file systems in UNIX

Understanding file systems in UNIX has to do with knowing how files and inodes are stored on a system. What happens is that a disk or portion of a disk is set aside to store files and the inode entries. The entire functional unit is referred to as a file system.

16) Differentiate relative path from absolute path.

Relative path refers to the path relative to the current path. Absolute path, on the other hand, refers to the exact path as referenced from the root directory.

17) Explain the importance of directories in a UNIX system

Files in a directory can actually be a directory itself; it would be called a subdirectory of the original. This capability makes it possible to develop a tree-like structure of directories and files, which is crucial in maintaining an organizational scheme.

18) Briefly describe the Shell’s responsibilities

- program execution
- variable and file name substitution
- I/O redirection
- pipeline hookup
- environment control
- interpreted programming language

19) What are shell variables?

Shell variables are a combination of a name ( identifier), and an assigned value, which exist within the shell. These variables may have default values, or whose values can be manually set using the appropriate assignment command. Examples of shell variable are PATH, TERM and HOME.

20) What are the differences among a system call, a library function, and a UNIX command?

A system call is part of the programming for the kernel. A library function is a program that is not part of the kernel but which is available to users of the system. UNIX commands, however, are stand-alone programs; they may incorporate both system calls and library functions in their programming.

21) What is Bash Shell?

It is a free shell designed to work on the UNIX system. Being the default shell for most UNIX-based systems, it combines features that are available both in the C and Korn Shell.

22) Enumerate some of the most commonly used network commands in UNIX

- telnet – used for remote login
- ping – an echo request for testing connectivity
- su – user switching command
- ftp – file transfer protocol used for copying files
- finger – information gathering command

23) Differentiate cmp command from diff command.

The cmp command is used mainly to compare two files byte by byte, after which the first encountered mismatch is shown. On the other hand, the diff command is used to indicate the changes that is to be made in order to make the two files identical to each other.

24) What is the use of -l when listing a directory?

-l, which is normally used in listing command like ls, is used to show files in a long format, one file per line. Long format refers to additional information that is associated with the file, such as ownership, permissions, data and filesize.

Linux/Unix Interview Questions : Part-3

1) What is piping?

Piping, represented by the pipe character “|”, is used to combine two or more commands together. The output of the first command serves as input the next command, and so on.

 
2) What is a superuser?

A superuser is a special type user who has open access to all files and commands on a system. Note that the superuser’s login is usually root, and is protected by a so-called root password.

3) How do you determine and set the path in UNIX?

Each time you enter a command, a variable named PATH or path will define in which directory the shell will search for that command. In cases wherein an error message was returned, the reason maybe that the command was not in your path, or that the command itself does not exist. You can also manually set the path using the “set path = [directory path]” command.

4) Is it possible to see information about a process while it is being executed?

Every process is uniquely identified by a process identifier. It is possible to view details and status regarding a process by using the ps command.

5) What is the standard convention being followed when naming files in UNIX?

One important rule when naming files is that characters that have special meaning are not allowed, such as * / & and %. A directory, being a special type of file, follows the same naming convention as that of files. Letters and numbers are used, along with characters like underscore and dot characters.

6) Why is it that it is not advisable to use root as the default login?

The root account is very important, and with abusive usage, can easily lead to system damage. That’s because safeguards that normally apply to user accounts are not applicable to the root account.

7) What is the use of the tee command?

The tee command does two things: one is to get data from the standard input and send it to standard output; the second is that it redirects a copy of that input data into a file that was specified.

8) Differentiate cat command from more command.

 When using the cat command to display file contents, large data that does not fit on the screen would scroll off without pausing, therefore making it difficult to view. On the other hand, using the more command is more appropriate in such cases because it will display file contents one screen page at a time.

9) What is parsing?

Parsing is the process of breaking up of a command line into words. This is made possible by using delimiters and spaces. In the event that tabs or multiple spaces are part of the command, these are eventually replaced by a single space.

10) What is pid?

Pid is short for Process ID. It is used primarily to identify every process that runs on the UNIX system, whether it runs on the foreground or runs at the background. Every pid is considered unique.

11) How does the system know where one command ends and another begins?

Normally, the newline character, which is generated by the ENTER or RETURN key, acts as the signpost. However, the semicolon and the ampersand characters can also serve as command terminators.

12) What is wild-card interpretation?

When a command line contains wild-card characters such as ‘*’ or ‘?’, these are replaced by the shell with a sorted list of files whose pattern matches the input command. Wild-card characters are used to setup a list of files for processing, instead of having it specified one at a time.

13) What is the output of this command? $who | sort –logfile > newfile

In this command, the output from the command “who” becomes the input to the “sort” command. At the same time, “sort” opens logfile, arranges it together with the output from the command “who”, and places the final sorted output to the file newfile.

14) How do you switch from any user type to a super user type?

In order to switch from any user type to a superuser, you use the su command. However, you will be asked to key in the correct superuser password before full access privileges are granted to you.

15) What would be the effect of changing the value of PATH to:
.:/usr/della/bin: /bin: /usr/bin

This would cause the shell to look in the /usr/della/bin directory after looking in the current directory and before looking in the /bin directory when searching for a command file.

16) Write a command that will display files in the current directory, in a colored, long format.

Answer: ls -l –color

17) Write a command that will find all text files in a directory such that it does not contain the word “amazing” in any form (that is, it must include the words Amazing, AMAZING, or aMAZINg)

Answer: grep –vi amazing *.txt

18) Write a command that will output the sorted contents of a file named IN.TXT and place the output in another file named OUT.TXT, while at the same time excluding duplicate entries.

Answer: sort IN.TXT | uniq > OUT.TXT

19) Write a command that will allow a UNIX system to shut down in 15 minutes, after 
which it will perform a reboot.

Answer: /sbin/shutdown –r +10

20) What command will change your prompt to MYPROMPT: ?

To change a prompt, we use the PS1 command, such as this:
PS1 = ‘MYPROMPT:’

21) What does this command do? cat food 1 > kitty

Answer: it redirects the output of cat food into the file kitty; the command is the same as:
cat food > kitty

22) What is wrong with this interactive shell script?

echo What month is this?
read $month
echo $month is as good a month as any.

Answer: Initially, the question mark should be escaped (\?) so that it is not interpreted as a shell metacharacter. Second, it should be read month, not read $month.

23) Write a shell script that requests the user’s age and then echoes it, along with some suitable comment.

Answer:
echo Hello! What\’s your age\?
read age
echo $age! I\’ll be obsolete by that age!