Sample questions for Exam #1

  1. Write a script that is set to run once a week on Sunday at midnight as a cronjob and rotates the messages log from messages -> messages.1 -> messages.2 and then deletes the log after the second week.

  2. What are the benefits of automating the installation process?

  3. During the boot process, how does the operating system know which services it needs to run at different runlevels? How does it determine the order in which these services are started?

  4. Why is it a good idea to put some partitions (such as /var, /home, and swap) on a separate drive from other data files and programs? What about /tmp? Give specific reasons for each of the filesystems listed.

  5. When logged in as root, why is it important to use the full path?

  6. a) What are the differences between the various RH/Fedoras 6 run levels?
    b) Generically state (without leaving out detail) the actions performed when changing between run-levels. Note: your discussion should include discussion or /etc/rc.d/

Additional suggested questions from prior years:
  1. Explain runlevels 0 through 6 for init in Fedora.

  2. Name some reasons to keep servers in a data center.

  3. Create an fstab entry that will add a hard drive connected as a slave on the second ide, and mount it to /home.

  4. Why would you want to use (or allow someone else to use) the sudo command? and what are some advantages by using sudo over su?

  5. What is n+1 redundancy and why should it be used? Give an example of n+1 redundancy.

  6. Why should you include the complete path when running su?

  7. What are the standard device file names for the third IDE device and the second SCSI device?

  8. How would you change your default editor (e.g., for use with crontab -e)?

  9. What is the difference between /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin in terms of their usage or the files they contain?

  10. What are the differences between IDE/ATA, SCSI, and SATA?

  11. Consider a file on your / partition with two hard links to it, by the names of file1 and file2. What happens when root runs mv file1 /tmp, where /tmp is a different partition?


Last revised: 14 February 2008, Prof. Davison.