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linux commands( operating system, Lecture notes of Computer science

Computer science

the book is about how to use linux in a professional way

Typology: Lecture notes

2025/2026

Uploaded on 06/22/2026

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LINUX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Crack Your Next Interview with Confidence!
Author: Umar Shahzad
1. Filesystem Basics
1. What is the command to create an empty file?
โ— touch filename
2. How do you create a new directory?
โ— mkdir directory_name
3. How do you list all files in a directory?
โ— ls
4. How do you list all files, including hidden ones?
โ— ls -a
5. How do you display the current working directory?
โ— pwd
6. How do you move or rename a file?
โ— mv source_file destination_file
7. How do you copy a file?
โ— cp source_file destination_file
8. What command is used to delete a file?
โ— rm filename
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LINUX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Crack Your Next Interview with Confidence! Author: Umar Shahzad

1. Filesystem Basics

  1. What is the command to create an empty file? โ— touch filename
  2. How do you create a new directory? โ— mkdir directory_name
  3. How do you list all files in a directory? โ— ls
  4. How do you list all files, including hidden ones? โ— ls -a
  5. How do you display the current working directory? โ— pwd
  6. How do you move or rename a file? โ— mv source_file destination_file
  7. How do you copy a file? โ— cp source_file destination_file
  8. What command is used to delete a file? โ— rm filename
  1. How do you delete a directory and its contents? โ— rm -r directory_name
  2. How do you display the contents of a file? โ— cat filename
  3. How do you display the first 10 lines of a file? โ— head filename
  4. How do you display the last 10 lines of a file? โ— tail filename
  5. How do you check free disk space? โ— df -h
  6. How do you display disk usage of a directory? โ— du -sh directory_name
  7. How do you search for a file by name in a directory? โ— find /path/to/directory -name filename
  8. How do you compress a file using gzip? โ— gzip filename
  9. How do you decompress a gzip file? โ— gunzip filename.gz
  10. How do you archive multiple files using tar? โ— tar -czvf archive.tar.gz files
  11. How do you extract a tar.gz archive? โ— tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz
  12. How do you mount a filesystem? โ— mount device_name mount_point
  13. How do you unmount a filesystem? โ— umount mount_point
  14. How do you create a symbolic link? โ— ln -s target_file link_name
  15. How do you view file types in a directory? โ— file filename
  16. How do you remove an empty directory? โ— rmdir directory_name
  17. How do you check for file existence? โ— test -f filename

2. File Permissions and Ownership

  1. How do you change file permissions? โ— chmod permissions filename
  1. How do you view system logs for a process? โ— journalctl -u service_name
  2. How do you create a custom alias for a command? โ— alias alias_name='command'
  3. How do you remove an alias? โ— unalias alias_name
  4. How do you run a command as another user? โ— sudo -u username command
  5. How do you list all environment variables? โ— printenv or env
  6. How do you export a variable in Linux? โ— export VAR=value

4. Networking

  1. How do you find the IP address of your system? โ— ip addr or ifconfig
  2. How do you check active network connections? โ— ss -tuln or netstat -tuln
  3. How do you ping a host to check connectivity? โ— ping host
  4. How do you test port connectivity? โ— telnet hostname port
  5. How do you display routing information? โ— route
  6. How do you check open ports on your system? โ— lsof -i
  7. How do you download files from the internet? โ— wget URL
  8. How do you transfer files between systems using SCP? โ— scp source_file user@remote_host:/destination_path
  9. How do you use SSH to connect to a remote server? โ— ssh user@remote_host
  10. How do you set up a static IP address? โ— Edit the network configuration file (e.g., /etc/network/interfaces )
  1. User Management
    1. How do you create a new user in Linux? โ— adduser username
    2. How do you delete a user? โ— userdel username
    3. How do you lock a user account? โ— passwd -l username
    4. How do you unlock a user account? โ— passwd -u username
    5. How do you switch to another user? โ— su - username
    6. How do you view currently logged-in users? โ— who or w
    7. How do you check user account information? โ— id username
    8. How do you list all users on the system? โ— cat /etc/passwd
    9. How do you create a group in Linux? โ— groupadd group_name
    10. How do you add a user to a group? โ— usermod -aG group_name username
    11. How do you change a userโ€™s default shell? โ— chsh -s /bin/bash username
    12. How do you change a userโ€™s home directory? โ— usermod -d /new/home/dir username
    13. How do you create a system user without a home directory? โ— adduser --system --no-create-home username
    14. How do you set or reset a userโ€™s password? โ— passwd username
    15. How do you check group memberships of a user? โ— groups username
  2. Package Management
    1. How do you install a package on Debian-based systems? โ— apt install package_name
    2. How do you update all packages on a Debian-based system? โ— apt update && apt upgrade
  1. How do you check currently mounted filesystems? โ— mount or df -h
  2. How do you list active cron jobs? โ— crontab -l
  3. How do you check log files? โ— tail -f /var/log/syslog or journalctl
  4. How do you analyze disk usage by directories? โ— du -h --max-depth=

10. Advanced Networking

  1. How do you configure a network interface? โ— ip addr add IP_ADDRESS dev interface
  2. How do you bring an interface up or down? โ— ip link set interface up or ip link set interface down
  3. How do you test DNS resolution? โ— nslookup domain_name
  4. How do you display ARP table entries? โ— arp -a
  5. How do you configure a firewall using iptables? โ— iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport port -j ACCEPT
  6. How do you save iptables rules? โ— iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v
  7. How do you check open ports on a system? โ— ss -tuln
  8. How do you trace the route to a host? โ— traceroute hostname
  9. How do you monitor packet flow? โ— tcpdump
  10. How do you edit the hosts file? โ— nano /etc/hosts

11. Scripting and Automation

  1. How do you create a simple shell script? โ— #!/bin/bash
  2. How do you make a script executable? โ— chmod +x script_name
  3. How do you run a script? โ— ./script_name
  1. How do you use variables in a shell script? โ— variable=value and use with $variable
  2. How do you accept input in a script? โ— read variable_name
  3. How do you pass arguments to a script? โ— Use $1 , $2 , etc., for positional arguments
  4. How do you write an if-else condition in a script? โ— bash if [ condition ]; then commands else commands fi
  5. How do you write a for loop in a script? โ— bash for i in {1..5}; do echo $i done
  6. How do you schedule a script using cron? โ— crontab -e and add the schedule entry
  7. How do you debug a script? โ— bash -x script_name

12. Advanced Topics

  1. What is SELinux? โ— Security-Enhanced Linux for access control
  2. How do you check SELinux status? โ— sestatus
  3. How do you change SELinux mode? โ— setenforce 0 (permissive) or setenforce 1 (enforcing)
  4. How do you view running containers in Docker? โ— docker ps
  5. How do you stop a running Docker container? โ— docker stop container_id
  6. How do you create an SSH key pair? โ— ssh-keygen
  7. How do you use rsync for file transfer? โ— rsync -avz source destination
  8. How do you check the default gateway? โ— ip route
  9. How do you monitor file changes in real-time? โ— inotifywait
  10. How do you create a virtual environment in Python? โ— python3 -m venv env_name
  1. How do you check process memory usage? โ— ps aux --sort=-%mem
  2. How do you check process CPU usage? โ— ps aux --sort=-%cpu
  3. How do you check process status? โ— ps -o stat= -p PID
  4. How do you find a process by name? โ— pgrep process_name
  5. How do you check the number of processes running? โ— ps aux | wc -l

15. System Monitoring

  1. How do you monitor CPU usage? โ— top or htop
  2. How do you check system load? โ— uptime
  3. How do you monitor disk space? โ— df -h
  4. How do you monitor memory usage? โ— free -h
  5. How do you monitor swap usage? โ— swapon --show or free -h
  6. How do you check network usage? โ— ifstat
  7. How do you monitor network interfaces? โ— ip -s link
  8. How do you monitor real-time log files? โ— tail -f /var/log/syslog
  9. How do you check system uptime? โ— uptime
  10. How do you check system resource utilization? โ— vmstat

16. Cloud and Automation Tools

  1. How do you install AWS CLI? โ— pip install awscli
  1. How do you configure AWS CLI? โ— aws configure
  2. How do you create an S3 bucket using CLI? โ— aws s3 mb s3://bucket_name
  3. How do you list running EC2 instances? โ— aws ec2 describe-instances
  4. How do you create an EC2 instance? โ— aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami_id --count 1 --instance-type t2.micro
  5. How do you deploy an application using Ansible? โ— Write a playbook and run ansible-playbook playbook.yml
  6. How do you configure Ansible inventory? โ— Edit /etc/ansible/hosts
  7. How do you use Terraform to create infrastructure? โ— Write a .tf file and run terraform apply
  8. How do you start a Kubernetes cluster? โ— Use kubeadm init
  9. How do you install Docker on a system? โ— Use apt-get install docker.io or yum install docker

17. Advanced File Handling

  1. How do you copy a directory recursively? โ— cp -r source_directory destination_directory
  2. How do you move or rename a file? โ— mv old_name new_name
  3. How do you remove a file? โ— rm filename
  4. How do you remove a directory recursively? โ— rm -r directory_name
  5. How do you find files by name? โ— find / -name "filename"
  6. How do you search for text within files? โ— grep "text" file_name
  7. How do you replace text in files? โ— sed -i 's/old_text/new_text/g' file_name
  8. How do you concatenate two files? โ— cat file1 file2 > new_file
  9. How do you compress a file? โ— tar -czf file_name.tar.gz directory_name
  1. How do you add a user to a group? โ— usermod -aG group_name username
  2. How do you list groups in Linux? โ— cat /etc/group
  3. How do you secure SSH access? โ— Disable root login by setting PermitRootLogin no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  4. How do you configure SSH key-based authentication? โ— Copy the public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote machine
  5. How do you view system logs in Linux? โ— journalctl or cat /var/log/syslog

Tips for Cracking the Interview

โ— Be practical: Demonstrate how to solve real-world issues. โ— Explain clearly: Donโ€™t just list commands; explain the reasoning behind them. โ— Share scenarios: Mention situations where you applied these skills, like troubleshooting, securing systems, or optimizing performance.

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