Scenario Based Questions & Answers

Scenario :1
If the Unix server is not accessible(Mean to say not able to ssh/telnet the server) then what are things you will
check it in first shot.
Answer:
1.Try to ping the server to check whether server is responding or not.If not responds,then login to console for
further troubleshooting.
2. Login to hardware console(ILOM or XSCF) and try to access the OS from there(console -d 0 ).If server is up ,then
login to server and check the IP address flags(ifconfig -a) and router connectivity.
3.If the address flag is "up; running" and router connectivity also fine ,then check the ssh/telnet services.(Ex: svcs
-xv)
4.If everything is fine ,then check the system load.("w" or "uptime")
5.You will get fork errors in OS console if the system is running out resource.In these cases,you may not able to
access the system and you need to free up some memory and reduce CPU usage.
Scenario :2
Application team is requesting you to reboot the Solaris global zone.Will you reboot it immediately ? will you wait
for stakeholders approval ?
Answer:
1.You should not reboot the server without proper stake holders approvals.You need to involve incident
management team and SDM prior to rebooting the server.
2.You need to snooze the monitoring alerts from monitoring system to stop false alerts being generated while
rebooting .
3.If any cluster service is running ,please make sure you are halting the cluster properly.
4.Last but not least ,you should take all the configuration backup prior to the system rebooting.
5.Its better to have root disk details (eeprom) prior to rebooting it.
Scenario :3
Application team is complaining about system performance issue.What are the things you check in the first shot ?
Answer:
1.Run vmstat command to identify the system bottle neck.
2.Run iowait command to determine the disk I/O issue.
3.Check the NIC card status (dladm show-dev).If any link is down,then we need to involve network team to check
it .
4.Perform hardware check .(fmadm faulty)
5.Get the list of high memory & CPU consuming process list and inform the process owner to check it.
6.If you are having many local zones on that global,identify which local zones consuming more resources. (prstat
-Z) and fix the issue on that local zone first.
Scenario:4
System is totally hung. How do you reboot the server after getting proper approval. ?
Answer:
1.If the server is hung,you should not perform hard reboot in first shot.you need to force the system to panic.
2.You need to raise support case with oracle to find the root cause using the generated crashdump .
Scenario:5
In some situations,system will not respond properly. (Ex:Unable to kill the process,Unable to umount the
filesystem,local zone went to shutting_down state and never halted)
Answer:
1.Most of the Unix admins will be faced such a situation in their experience. In these cases

you need to generate the live crashdump using "savecore -L" command and upload to oracle support to find the
root cause. In most of the cases you need to end up with rebooting the system to fix these kind of issues.
Scenario:6
What are the challenges you have faced in Unix Administration ?
Answer:
You can impress the interviewer by saying couple of tough challenge which you have faced in the past.Here are the
some of the challenges for you.
1.Recovered vxfs filesystem with help of Symantec.
2.Recovered the Solaris 10 using ZFS snapshot.
3.Recovered the destroyed zpool
4.Fixed the Strange issue with ifconfig
5.Find the root cause for high kernel usage using Dtrace.
6.Plumbed New IP address on the local zone.
7.Completed successful migration from UFS to ZFS.
8.Liveupgrade issues with local zone sitting on top of ZPOOL.
9.Patched Solaris global zone with ZFS and Non-global zone's root FS with VXFS
Scenario:7
For an example,If you are keep on getting incidents from one server.Those may be false alerts or there is an issue
within server which needs UnixAdmin attention.What are the process you will follow to fix the repetitive alerts ?
Answer:
1.In these kind of situations ,you need to involve problem management team to fix these repetitive alerts.Problem
management team will involve multiple teams if required to fix this issue.

1. What are some commands that you can use to create a new user to your system?
A: There are three commands you can use to add a user. The three commands are useradd,
adduser, and linuxconf.
2. What is the total number of primary partitions you can have on one drive in Linux
Red Hat?
A: you can have four primary partitions in Linux. This includes Red Hat and any other operating
system.
3. When you install Apache, what is the default web port used to serve web pages to
public viewers?
A: Most web servers run on port 80, and Apache defaults to port 80 when you install the
software. You can use an alternative port, but this forces the user to type a port into the browser
when they access the website. The other popular port for web applications is port 8080.
4. What type of remote software can you use to encrypt communication but control
your server?

A: SSH is a remote desktop software that lets you remotely control the Red Hat server using a
command line but also encrypts the information across the Internet. SSH uses port 22, so you
must open this port when you set up Red Hat.
5. What is the standard directory used to store user HTML website files?
A: First, you need to install Apache, and Apache sets a default directory for public HTML files.
The standard directory is /var/www/html.
6. How do you access MySQL on Red Hat?
A: Go to the shell prompt and type mysql. Linux looks up the information contained in
/var/mysql/mysql.sock and connects to the port listed in the sock file. If the port is blocked or
mysql isnt installed on the system, Red Hat Linux returns an error.
7. How can you rename a file in Red Hat Linux?
A: Open the Red Hat Linux shell command line and use the mv command. The mv command
takes the path to the original file and the path to the newly named file in the parameters. If you
dont specify the parameters, the mv command will ask you for them.
8. Which layer in the OSI model is responsible for the users application when working
with an application over the network?
A: Layer 7 is the layer responsible for application support including support for user passwords
and file sharing.
9. How do you identify which version of Red Hat is installed on the server?
A: Open a Red Had shell command line and type /etc/redhat-release to identify the release
version for Red Hat.
10. How do you identify the IP address assigned to the box?
A: The ipconfig command tells you the IP for the computer.
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Install the RHEL in dell server
then enable security and KDUMP in linux

Before installing the OS, you have to plan the file system and space required details and RAM
capacity.
Install the given packages by linux(packages are preinstalled just select them and install in
system)
set users(root, any of your choice), partition(SWAP, Home, /, etc)
set the location of your system and set time
File system is / ,/boot,swap, is important.
Describe how you can use strace/ptrace to debug a program that keeps core
dumping.

If you faced kernel panic what shoud you do to explain what happened?
A panic may occur as a result of a hardware failure or a software bug in the
operating system. In many cases, the operating system is capable of continued
operation after an error has occurred. However, the system is in an unstable state
and rather than risking security breaches and data corruption, the operating system
stops to prevent further damage and facilitate diagnosis of the error.
go to runlevel 1 > change the selinux mode=permissive > reboot > now go to
runlevel 5 (graphics mode) and again change the selinux mode=enforcing and now
reboot.
done.