1/25/2020 Top 48 Linux Interview Questions & Answers (Updated 2020)

Top 48 Linux Interview Questions & Answers

Are you preparing for a Linux interview? We have prepared some of the commonly asked
Linux interview questions and their answers.

If you are a beginner (with some knowledge of Linux or having certi cation) or with
professional Linux administration experience, then following Q & A help for your interview
preparation.

1. What is Linux and basic components?

Linux is a free and opensource Operating system that is based on the Linux kernel. It's one
of the widely used operating systems, especially in the server world and by developers. Its
usage extends from hosting websites and applications to being the core operating system
in smart devices like smartphones, tablets, and TVs.

Linux constitutes 4 basic components:

Kernel: This is the core of the Linux system. It's responsible for interacting with the
hardware components and ensuring the operating system communicates with hardware
devices.

Shell: A shell is an interface between the Linux user and the kernel. It's in the shell that
commands are issued by the user and are thereafter executed by the operating system.

System libraries: These are special programs or functions which are responsible for
implementing a majority of the functionalities of the operating system without relying on
the kernel modules' code access rights.

System Utilities: These are speci c programs that executed certain tasks. e.g LibreO ce,
Brasero, Gparted.

2. What is the Linux Kernel?


A Linux kernel is the core of the Linux system. It interfaces the underlying hardware with the
operating system.

3. What is the difference between Linux and Unix?

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Linux is a clone of the UNIX system from which Linux is derived from. While Linux is
opensource and free to use, UNIX is a proprietary operating system.

4. What are inodes in Linux? How to nd the inode associated

with a le?
The inode (index node) is a data structure in a Unix-style le system that describes a le-
system object such as a le or a directory. When a le is created, it is assigned both a name
and an inode number, which is an integer that is unique within the lesystem.

Explanation

File systems, in general, have two parts: the metadata or the “data” about the data and the
data itself. Metadata consist of information about the data. More precisely it includes
information such as the Access Control List (ACL), the date the le was modi ed, le owner,
le permissions, size of le, device ID, uid of the le, etc. This type of information is key to a
le system otherwise we just have a bunch of bits on the storage media that don’t mean
much. Inodes store this metadata information and typically they also store information
about where the data is located on the storage media.

In a le system, inodes consist roughly of 1% of the total disk space, whether it is a whole
storage unit (hard disk, thumb drive, etc.) or a partition on a storage unit. The inode space is
used to track the les stored on the hard disk. The inode entries only points to these
structures rather than storing the data. Each entry is 128 bytes in size.Space for Inodes is
allocated when the operating system or a new le system is installed and when it does its
initial structuring. So this way we can see that in a le system, the maximum number of
Inodes and hence maximum number of les are set. Now, the above concept brings up
another interesting fact. A le system can run out of space in two ways:

No space for adding new data is left

All the Inodes are consumed.

To get a listing of an inode number, use ls -i command.



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ls -li
total 3336
57741 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3412144 Nov 20 17:26 coreutils-8.22-18.el7.x8
6_64.rpm
57725 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 7 04:00 file
57736 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 7 04:00 new-file

# ls -li new-file
57736 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 7 04:00 new-file

# find /root -inum 57736

/root/new-file

5. What is Linux shell? How to check current shell?

A Linux shell is a command interpreter or a program that accepts commands and passes
them to the operating system for execution. To check the shell that you are using, run the
command  echo $0

6. What command to nd memory and swap usage?

Use free command

7. Differences between Softlink and Hardlink?

a) Hardlink cannot be created for directories. A hard link can only be created for a le.

b) Symbolic links (https://linoxide.com/linux-how-to/create-soft-link-linux/) or symlinks can

link to a directory.

c) Removing the original le that your hard link points to does not remove the hardlink itself;
the hardlink still provides the content of the underlying le.

d) If you remove the hard link or the symlink itself, the original le will stay intact.

e) Removing the original le does not remove the attached symbolic link or symlink, but
without the original le, the symlink is useless

8. Explain le permission in Linux?

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In Linux, there are 3 main types of le permissions: read, write and execute. These
permissions can be assigned to either a le or a directory recursively.  Being a multi-user
system, you can assign these permissions to the root user, groups or even to other users
using the system.

Read: The read permission grants uses the ability to open and read a le.

Write: Write permission allows a user to open and modify or edit the le's contents and
save the changes.

Execute: This allows a user to execute or run the le or a program or shell script which
is executable.

Please nd below linux permission table:

9. How to create and delete a directory in Linux?

To create a directory use the mkdir command as shown;

mkdir directory_name

For example to create a directory called 'data'  run the command:

mkdir data

To delete a directory in Linux, use either the rm or rmdir command.

The rmdir command is used for removing empty directories.

The rm command is mostly used with the -R ag for recursively removing directories.

10. How to create les in Linux?

To create les, use the touch command. For example to create a le le1.doc run the
command:

touch file1.doc

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You can also use cat command followed by the redirection operator or greater than sign
>
followed by the name of the le. Next, type the content of the le and lastly press CTRL +
D to exit the le.

cat > file1.doc

Type the le contents and hit CTRL + D

11. How to rename le and directory in Linux?

To rename les, use the mv command. Note that for this to work, the path of the le to be
renamed needs to be the same. For example, to rename the le le1.doc in /data/files
directory  to le2.doc execute the command:

mv /data/files/file1.doc /data/files/file2.doc

12. How to copy les and directory in Linux?

To copy les in Linux, use the cp command. The syntax is quite simple

cp /source/of/the/file /destination/of/the/file

13. How to list and mount devices in Linux?

To list mount points run the command:

df -aTh

To nd more information about the mount points on your system, execute the command:

findmnt

Additionally, you can use the cat command below

cat /proc/self/mounts 
Also, you can use the mount command as shown

mount -l

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14. How to create empty le in Linux?

To create an empty le in Linux, use the touch command as shown:

touch new_file

15. How to schedule a task in Linux? What is crontab and

explain the elds in a crontab?
The cron is a deamon that executes commands at speci c dates and times in Linux. You
can use this to schedule activities, either as one-time events or as recurring tasks. Crontab
(https://linoxide.com/how-tos/con gure-cron-job-linux-crontab-examples/) is the program
used to install, deinstall or list the tables used to drive the cron daemon in a server. Each
user can have their own crontab, and though these are les in /var/spool/cron/crontabs,
they are not intended to be edited directly. Here are few of the command line options for
crontab.

crontab -e Edit your crontab le.

crontab -l Show your crontab le.
crontab -r Remove your crontab le.

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

<Minute> <Hour> <Day_of_the_Month> <Month_of_the_Year>

<Day_of_the_Week> <command/program to execute>

The format is explained as follows:

* * * * * *
| | | | | |
| | | | | +-- Year (range: 1900-3000)
| | | | +---- Day of the Week (range: 1-7, 1 standing for Monday)
| | | +------ Month of the Year (range: 1-12)
| | +-------- Day of the Month (range: 1-31)
| +---------- Hour (range: 0-23)

+------------ Minute (range: 0-59)

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16. What are the basic Vim commands you know?

a) Save

To save a le, press ESC button and press  :wq!  OR  :ZZ

b) Exit

To exit from a le without making changes, run the command :q

c) Jump to a particular line in a le

Press ESC and press j to move down by one line.

To move up by one line press k on the keyboard

Move the cursor to the beginning of a line Press ^

Move the cursor to the end of a line Press $

Move the cursor to the beginning of a le 1G

Move the cursor to the end of a le G

Moves the cursor to the start of line number “n” in the le nG

d) Copy text

Move the cursor to the beginning of the string or text. Next hit v on your keyboard and press
cursor forward to highlight text. Once you get to the end of text that you wish to copy, hit y
short for yank, to copy the text.

To copy text from current position to the end of the line - y$

To copy the entire line - yy

To copy 4 lines below - 4yy 

d) Paste text

To paste text, simply press p on the keyboard

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d) Delete text

To delete a line, move to the beginning of a line. Press the ESC button and press dd

To delete a single word, place the cursor in front of the word and hit dw

To delete text from the current word to the end of the line hit d$

To delete 3 lines below run 3dd

17. How to add binary to $PATH variable?

$ export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/the/binary/file

18. Explain Grep command and Regular Expressions?

Grep command is an expression used for ltering results or output. For instance, to list a
directory and only search for les with the word 'cron', run the command:

ls | grep cron

19. What is the difference between umask and ulimit?

Umask (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/umask-set-permission/) stands for ‘User le creation
mask’, which determines the settings of a mask that controls which le permissions are set
for les and directories when they are created. While ulimit is a linux built in command
which provides control over the resources available to the shell and/or to processes started
by it.

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

20. Explain output of ls command in Linux?


ls command lists the contents of a directory in Linux. It displays the les and sub-
directories inside the directory. When used with other arguments, it can list les
permissions and even display hidden les.

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21. Explain the output of the top command in Linux?

The top command is a monitoring utility that gives a user insights into the system metrics
such as uptime, load average,  %CPU and % memory utilization.

22. What are the process states in Linux?

Process States, as the name suggests refers to the current state that a Linux process is in.
There are 4 process states namely Running, waiting, stopped and Zombie.

23. How to backup or archive les in Linux (tar command)?

To back up a directory, simply run the tar command  below

$ tar -cvf tarball_name.tar /path/to/directory

For example, to create an archive in tar.gz format of a le sales.txt  in /data/reports/ path

execute:

$ tar -cvf sales.tar.gz /data/reports/sales.txt

You can also archive a whole directory as shown:

$ tar -cvf repors.tar.gz /data/reports/

24. How to stop a running process in Linux?

To stop a running process, use the kill command followed by the PID of the process.

For example, to stop a process with PID 3836, run the command

kill 3836

25. How to search les in linux?

To search les in Linux, use the locate   or find comand

26. How to check if a particular service in running?
To check if a service is running, use the syntax:

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systemctl status service_name

For instance, to check is Post x is running, run the command:

systemctl status postfix

27. How to start a service on reboot?

To start a service on reboot run use the syntax:

systemctl enable service_name

For example, to start httpd web server upon a reboot, run

systemctl enable httpd

28. How do you start and stop a service?

To start a service in a systemd system, run the command:

systemctl start service_name

For example, to start ssh service, run the command:

systemctl start sshd

To stop the service, run:

systemctl stop service_name

To stop ssh run:

systemctl stop sshd

29. How to remote login to another linux computer?

You can log in to a remote Linux computer using SSH protocol or using the VNC service.


30. How do you check disk usage?

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Use the df command to check the space used on your hard drive and the space
remaining / free space.
Additionally, use the du command to check usage by speci c les and directories.

31. Why you use export command?

Export command marks and exports environment variables.

32. How to get version from multiple Linux servers using bash
script?

#!/bin/bash
#we user variable serverlist to keep there path to file with server names
serverlist='server_list.txt'
#we write in variable all server list
servers=`cat $serverlist`
#we use variable result to keep there path to file with result
result='result.txt'

#this print header to file with resilt using \t\t to add 2 tab symbols
echo -e "Servername \t\t kernel version"> $result
#this get each line of serverlist one by one and write to server variable
for server in $servers
do
#this login to server by ssh and get uname -r
kernel=`ssh root@${server} "uname -r"`
#this write server name and kernel version separated by 2 tab to result fi
le
echo -e "$server \t\t $kernel" >> $result
#end of for loop.
done

33. What is the minimum requirement for Linux installation?

With newer Linux distributions being launched ever other week or month, there's no clear

cut minimum requirement. Newer versions will demand higher minimum requirements than
older versions due to revamped GUI features and architecture. Nevertheless, any Linux
distribution should work with a PC with the following minimum requirements:

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25 GB of hard disk space

2 GB RAM
2 Ghz dual core processor
A screen resolution of 1024x768
A CD/DVD ROM or USB port for inserting installation media

34. How do you set Linux le/directory permissions?

To set le permissions, use the chmod command followed by the octal value or symbolic
value then the le name or directory name.

For example to assign a le permissions value of 664 run

chmod 664 filename

To assign a directory permissions, use the -R option to assign permissions recursively.

chmod -R 664 directory_name

35. How to set ownership for les/directories?

To set le owner use the chown command. For example chown user:user filename

For a directory use the -R option to assign permissions recursively. For example

chown -R user:user directory_name

36. How to create user and group in Linux?

To create a user, run the command adduser user_name For example

adduser john


37. How to nd the kernel/OS version in Linux?
Run the command uname -a

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38. How to nd the interface IP address?

You can easily nd the IP interface by running the command ifconfig
interface_name or using ip command (https://linoxide.com/linux-command/use-ip-
command-linux/) (recommended).

For example

ifconfig eth0

ip addr show

39. What is initrd image?

The initial RAM disk (initrd) is an initial root le system that is mounted prior to when the
real root le system is available. The initrd is bound to the kernel and loaded as part of the
kernel boot procedure. The kernel then mounts this initrd as part of the two-stage boot
process to load the modules to make the real le systems available and get at the real root
le system. Thus initrd image plays a vital role in linux booting process
(https://linoxide.com/booting/boot-process-of-linux-in-detail/).

40. Explain the terms suid, sgid and sticky bit?

In addition to the basic le permissions in Linux, there are few special permissions that are
available for executable les and directories.

SUID: If setuid bit is set, when the le is executed by a user, the process will have the same
rights as the owner of the le being executed.

SGID: Same as above, but inherits group privileges of the le on execution, not user
privileges. Similar way when you create a le within the directory, it will inherit the group
ownership of the directories.

Sticky bit: Sticky bit (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/stickbit-suid-guid/) was used on

executables in linux so that they would remain in the memory more time after the initial
execution, hoping they would be needed in the near future. But mainly it is on folders, to

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imply that a le or folder created inside a stickybit enabled folder could only be deleted by
the owner. A very good implementation of sticky bit is /tmp , where every user has write
permission but only users who own a le can delete them.

41. What are the run levels in linux and how to change them?
A run level is a state of init and the whole system that de nes what system services are
operating and they are identi ed by numbers. There are 7 different run levels
(https://linoxide.com/linux-command/how-do-you-change-runlevels-in-linux/) present (run
level 0-6) in a Linux system for the different purpose. The descriptions are given below.

0: Halt System (To shutdown the system)

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

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

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

42. What is SeLinux?

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

43. Choose 5 Linux commands, what are your choices?

1) rsync command

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The rsync command (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/rsync-copy/) can be used to

synchronize two directories or directory trees whether they are on the same computer or on
different computers but it can do so much more than that. rsync creates or updates the
target directory to be identical to the source directory.

rsync -aH sourcedir targetdir

The -a option is for archive mode which preserves permissions, ownerships and symbolic
(soft) links. The -H is used to preserve hard links. Note that either the source or target
directories can be on a remote host.

2) sed command

Sed command (https://linoxide.com/linux-command/sed-command/) is used when you

need to select speci c lines of a le. Sed is short for stream editor, is one way to do this.
you want to combine multiple les that all had headers or to do a bulk nd and replace a
le.
insert a blank line above every line which matches "regex"

$ sed '/regex/{x;p;x;}'

change "scarlet" or "ruby" or "puce" to "red"

$ sed 's/scarlet/red/g;s/ruby/red/g;s/puce/red/g'

3) awk command

Awk is a programming language that allows easy manipulation of structured data and the
generation of formatted reports. It is mostly used for pattern scanning and processing. It
searches one or more les to see if they contain lines that match with the speci ed

patterns and then perform associated actions. It is like sed command. If you are interested
with awk command one liner (https://linoxide.com/linux-command/awk-linux-famous-
oneliners/) makes your life easy.
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Print Speci c Field

$ awk -F':' '{ print $1 }' /etc/group

$ date | awk '{print $2 " " $6}'

4) lsof command

lsof is a command line utility which is used to list the information about the les that are
opened by various processes. In unix, everything is a le: pipes, sockets, directories,
devices, etc. So by using lsof (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/lsof-command-list-process-id-
information/), you can get the information about any opened les.

List processes which opened a speci c le

# lsof /var/log/syslog

lists all open les belonging to processes owned by the user

# lsof -u username

Kill all process that belongs to a particular user

# kill -9 `lsof -t -u username

List all network connections

# lsof -i


List all network les in use by a speci c process

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# lsof -i -a -c ssh

List processes which are listening on a particular port

# lsof -i :25

5) grep command

Grep is a command used to search text or for a given le for lines containing a match to the
given strings or words. By default, grep displays the matching lines
(https://linoxide.com/how-tos/linux-grep-command- nd-strings/).

print network connection used by refox

# netstat -pltnu | grep firefox

print the line which contains "root" on /etc/passwd le

# cat /etc/passwd | grep root

44. What is the difference between name based virtual

hosting and IP based virtual hosting?
Virtual hosts are used to host multiple domains on a single apache instance. You can have
one virtual host for each IP your server has, or the same IP but different ports, or the same
IP, the same port but different host names. The latter is called "name based vhosts".

On IP-based virtual hosting, we can run more than one web site on the same server
we
machine, but each web site has its own IP address while In Name-based virtual hosting,
host multiple websites on the same IP address. But for this to succeed, you have to put
more than one DNS record for your IP address in the DNS database.

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45. What is the advantage of Network Bonding?

Network Bonding (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/ethernet-bonding-on-redhat-linux/) is a
Linux kernel feature that allows to aggregate multiple network interfaces into a single
virtual link. This is a great way to achieve redundant links, fault tolerance or load balancing
networks in the production system. If one of the physical NIC is down or unplugged, it will
automatically move tra c to the other NIC card. Similar way the bonding will increase the
interface throughput to handle the tra c it is con gured in active-active mode.

46. What use of /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow le?

The /etc/shadow le (https://linoxide.com/usr-mgmt/understand-each-entries-of-linux-
shadow-etcshadow- le/) stores actual password in an encrypted format with some
additional properties related to user password. It mainly holds the account aging
parameters. All elds are separated by a colon (:) symbol. It contains one entry per line for
each user listed in /etc/passwd le (https://linoxide.com/usr-mgmt/understand-each-
entries-of-linux-passwd-etcpasswd- le/).

47. Why setup password less ssh login?

To improve system security even further, most of the organizations turned to use key based
authentications (https://linoxide.com/how-tos/ssh-login-with-public-key/) instead of
Password-based authentication. We can enforce the key-based authentication by disabling
the standard password authentication, which involves a public key private key pair. The
public key is added in the server con guration le while the private key is kept con dential
on the client-side.

48. What is swappiness in Linux?

The swappiness parameter controls the tendency of the kernel to move processes out of
physical memory and onto the swap disk. Because disks are much slower than RAM, this
can lead to slower response times for system and applications if processes are too
aggressively moved out of memory. 
swappiness can have a value of between 0 and 100

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swappiness=0 tells the kernel to avoid swapping processes out of physical memory for as
long as possible

swappiness=100 tells the kernel to aggressively swap processes out of physical memory
and move them to swap cache

Conclusion
In this tutorial, we have explained the top expected interview questions for a Linux job.
Apart from these questions, you should be prepared to explain daily Linux tasks, projects,
some critical situations you have faced. Good luck!!

Read Also:
Ansible Interview Questions & Answers for Devops (https://linoxide.com/devops/ansible-
interview-questions-answers-for-devops/)
30 Expected DevOps Interview Questions and Answers (https://linoxide.com/linux-how-
to/devops-interview-questions-answers/)
70 Shell Scripting Interview Questions & Answers (https://linoxide.com/linux-shell-script/shell-
scripting-interview-questions-answers/)

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