This is the Linux learning track.
Common Linux Job Interview Questions
There’s a big list of basic Linux commands that you should make sure you’re EXTREMELY comfortable with first. It covers basic commands and ideas that you’ll often see in phone screens before you ever get called in for a technical interview. All of the content there should be so deeply ingrained in your soul that you should have an answer ready when someone wakes you up at 4:00 in the morning and asks you anything covered on that page.
That said, here are slightly more nuanced/advanced Linux interview questions that you’ll find in Linux job interviews:
- What is a Linux daemon?
- How are containers different from VMs? What are some advantages and disadvantages of each?
- What is a docker container “made of” in the actual implementation? What are the general outlines of how it works?
- What is a ‘service’ on Linux made of? How do you go from ‘binary’ to ‘service?’
- What are some basic Linux systemd service management commands?
- What is an inode? What fields does an inode have? How would you check for free inodes? What could be happening when you can’t write to a filesystem but there’s space on the disk remaining?
- What is init? What are some of the Linux init systems you’ve worked with?
- What’s stored in the /etc directory tree?
- What is a ‘user’ in Linux made of? How would you create one? If you weren’t allowed to use useradd on Linux, how would you create a Linux user? Which files would you have to edit?
- How would you turn a service on/off? Enable/disable it?
- What’s the difference between systemctl start and systemctl enable?
- How do you see the Linux directory you’re currently in?
- How would you check to see how much disk space is left on mounted filesystems?
- How would you check which devices are mounted in the OS? (mount)
- How would you find your primary IP address? (ip a)
- How would you copy a file to another host?
- What is a Linux symlink?
- What is a Linux hardlink?
- How do you change the file mode (permissions) on a file or directory? (chmod)
- How do you make a file executable?