Linux

All interview questions related to Linux

18 Questions
3 Categories
8 Beginner8 Intermediate2 Advanced
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📞 Phone Screen
Check Disk Space in Linux
Beginner

Which Linux command quickly shows disk usage for all mounted filesystems in a human-readable format?

1 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
SSH Keys vs Password Authentication
Beginner

Why are SSH key pairs generally preferred over passwords for server access?

1 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Find Top CPU Processes in Linux
Beginner

How do you quickly identify which processes are consuming the most CPU on a Linux server?

1 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Cron Expression Basics
Beginner

What does the cron expression "0 2 * * 1-5" mean, and how would you test a cron job locally?

2 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Troubleshooting High Memory in Linux
Intermediate

A server reports high memory usage. What quick checks do you perform to identify the cause?

2 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Linux File Permissions Basics
Beginner

Explain the meaning of rwx for user, group, and others, and how chmod/chown modify permissions.

2 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Find Large Files with Bash
Beginner

Which command would you use to find the largest files/directories consuming disk space in a path?

1 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
Bash Shebang & Execute Bit
Beginner

What does the shebang line do in a script, and what permission is required to run it directly?

1 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
systemd Service Basics
Beginner

How do you check, start, and enable a service with systemd, and where are unit files located?

2 min•Phone
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📞 Phone Screen
CPU Load Average Explained
Intermediate

What do the 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages indicate on Linux, and how do you interpret them relative to CPU cores?

2 min•Phone
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🔬 Technical Deep Dive
eBPF-Based Observability and Security
Advanced

Describe how you would leverage eBPF for deep observability and runtime security in production Linux systems.

5 min•Technical
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
Node Disk Full
Intermediate

One of your production nodes is reporting 100% disk usage and workloads are failing. How do you investigate and resolve this?

10 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
Node CPU Thrashing
Intermediate

One node in your cluster shows 100% CPU usage with context switching spikes. How do you troubleshoot?

10 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
du and df Show Different Disk Usage
Intermediate

On a Linux production node, `df -h` reports the filesystem nearly full, but `du -sh /` shows far less used space. How do you reconcile the discrepancy and free space safely?

10 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
EMFILE: Too Many Open Files
Intermediate

A service starts failing with EMFILE errors. Describe how you identify the cause and fix it.

10 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
High CPU Steal Time on VMs
Intermediate

Services on certain VMs show latency spikes correlated with CPU steal time. How do you investigate and mitigate?

10 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
Kernel Panic and Node Reboot Loop
Advanced

A production node repeatedly reboots due to kernel panics under load. Outline your triage and containment steps.

15 min•Scenario
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🔧 Troubleshooting Scenarios
Inode Exhaustion on Filesystem
Intermediate

Disk usage looks low, but new files cannot be created and services fail with ENOSPC. How do you confirm inode exhaustion and fix it?

10 min•Scenario
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