System Administration
Course Code: 610207
(Sample Questions. Feel free to add questions as you study.)
1. What is System Administration? System Administration Roles, Basics of Unix/Linux, History,
System Administration Topics.
What is system administration? What are the essential roles and responsibilities of a
system administrator?
What are the skills required for being a system administrator?
What type of OS is UNIX? Describe the elements /layers of UNIX architecture.
What type of OS is Linux? List out the basic features of the Linux operating system.
Write down the differences between UNIX and Linux.
What are the advantages of Linux over other operating systems?
What is meant by Linux distributions? Discuss some of the most common Linux
distributions.
What is Linux kernel? What is its role in system administration?
2. Basic Info and Account Management, File and Directory layout, File Systems, File
permissions.
6. Files, Directories and Memory Management, Permissions.
What are file and directory in Linux? Describe the Linux file hierarchy structure
briefly.
What are the advantages of ext4 over ext2 and ext3?
Describe the Linux directories.(e.g. root, bin)
Write down the differences between root directory and home directory.
Describe the importance of root user in Linux.
How to Use sudo to Assign Root Access to a User on a Linux Server?
What are the ways to log in as a root user in Linux?
What are three file permission groups in Linux?
Exemplify the use of chmod command in Linux to change the security permission on
files.
3. Basic Linux/Unix Commands and tools, Command Line vs. GUI, Start up (booting) and
Shutdown, Task Manager, More Account Management.
Define shell. Write down the differences between sh and bash.
Study basic Linux commands.
Study Linux man(manual) page.
How can you manage users and groups in Linux?
Write down the differences between Command Line Interface (CLI) and Graphical
User Interface (GUI).
Define booting. Describe the stages of Linux boot process.
4. System Processes, Scheduling jobs (scheduler/cron), job monitoring, (event viewer/ps), start
and stop jobs, At command vs. Scheduled Tasks, GUI tool, More Task Manager.
Define process. How is the fork( ) system call used to create a new process?
Define signals in terms of process communication in Linux.
Describe various signals.
What is the difference between the at command scheduler and the cron scheduler?
Study Linux ps command.
Use ps command to do the following:
(i) View All Running Processes in Linux.
(ii) List Processes Not associated with a Terminal in Linux
(iii) List All Processes Associated with a Terminal in Linux
(iv) View All Processes Owned By You
5. Disk administration. File systems/partitions, Disk Defragmentation, RAID, Basic client/server
file sharing.
Define the following:
(i) Niceness of a process
(ii) Renice
(iii) /proc file system
(iv) Runaway processes
Why is managing disk partitions a crucial aspect of system administration?
What is an NFS server in Linux? How to create NFS share on Linux server?
What is disk defragmentation? Does Linux need defragmentation? Justify.
What is the difference between SMB and NFS?
Why is RAID crucial for data storage on Linux, and what are the common RAID
levels available?
8. Automating System Admin Tasks, Scripts, Shell programming, Perl programming.
9. Performance Monitoring and Optimization.
What is a script? What is the role of scripting in system administration?
Define shell program. What are the general characteristics of shell programs?
List out some advantages and disadvantages of shell programming.
What is performance monitoring? How do you monitor system performance in
Linux?
What is optimization in Linux? How to optimize Linux server performance?
10. Misc. and Advanced Topics. Other Control Panel and Admin Tools Items, Computer
Management GUI tool.
11. Security and Backups. Patches, passwords, kerberos, enigma, Tools (tcpwrappers and
others), Backup methods.
Why are Linux system backup strategies crucial for administrators?
Describe the following types of backup methods:
(i) Full system backup
(ii) Differential Backup
(iii) Incremental backup.
What is Kerberos in Linux? How to enable Kerberos authentication on Linux?
Write short notes on following back up tools :
(i) Resync
(ii) Tar
(iii) TCP Wrappers
What is your preferred admin GUI interface ( Webmin, Cockpit, etc.) and why?
7. Networking. TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, Domains/NIS, File Sharing, Client/Server. Setting up a
file server (and client/server network), Ethernet Addresses, Hostnames.
12. Installing/upgrading hardware/software, email server, web server, dns/dhcp server,
telnet/ftp/ssh, Unix-Windows interoperability (samba), user communications and documentation,
problems resolution and solutions, raid, san, nas.
State the purpose of basic Linux networking commands.( ping , ipconfig)
What is Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software? What are the
components of BIND?
Write down the steps of configuring Domain Name System (DNS) server / Dynamic
Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) in Linux.
Write down steps for setting up a file server with samba.
What is Samba? Write down the differences between samba and Network File
System (NFS).
What are the differences between Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network
Attached Storage (NAS) in Linux?