Hi Dipesh,

HPUX Administrator Interview Questions

Which RAID Levels supported by LVM?

Commands to configure RAID 1 in LVM?
How do you use tar command for network backup?
How would you roll back the patch?
What is /var/adm/inet.sec ? What does it do?
How to set default password policies?
Steps in kernel re-config, boot into single user mode etc
What is a patch database (IPD etc.)?
How to check machine LAN is half duplex or full duplex?
What are the steps to create new VG??s?
How to break the mirror and change root disk?
How to check root disk failed?
How to add default route?
How to take OS backup?
How to restore whole OS backup and selected single file?
What are the fields of the password file?
How to tar and untar files?
Which log files are useful in testing and debugging an MC/ServiceGuard?
How to halt the cluster?
How to add a new disk, volume group, and logical volume to the MC/ServiceGuard?

Regards,
Asif Sharif

Check this out,( updated one..),

Here is few question that can help evaluating the skills :

1) Describe the boot sequence of a hp-ux system .?

2) How a system gets the default runlevel.?

3) What is the difference between init s , and init S. ?

4) How do you calculate the free space available , to increase/extend a

filesystem.?

5) What is the procedure to mirror the root disk?

6) How to set kernel parameter from command line.?

7) What to do , if the newly built kernel doesnot boot.?

7.a) what is SGA ? how to find out active shared memory segments and semaphores?

7.b) How to check open ports/sockets on hp-ux ?

8) How to make sure if the patch going to install will take a system reboot.?

9) How to extend a filesystem online ? Can you extend the root filesystem if yes
how?
10) Can you reduce filesystem size? If yes , how? Any risk ?

11) How to measure performance of a system , if the connected users are saying
server performance is very slow ?

12) How many entry can be added in resolv.conf?

13) what is the command to see the default gateway?

14) How to sort as per the uid , from /etc/passwd file.?

15) A server is rebooted and came up, but you dont know if its planned or unplanned
, how to check about it ?

16) How to find 10 largest file in the filesystem /user/sap/trans ?

17) How to check the error logs in the system.?

18) How to add a local/remote printer in the system?

19) How to write a function within a shell script?

20) How to disable the ftp service in the system for some particular user ?

21) How to multiply two numeric value , from the command prompt and to get the
result. ( ex: 12 * 15 Result to be display = 180 ). ?

22) How to check how many cpu installed in the system ?

23) What is the command to find out Total memory installed. ?

24) What is the command to find out the bootdisk from which the system booted
currently?

25) How to pull the glance report in text format?

26) What is a Lock disk?

27) How to find out the MC/SG lock disk?

28) What is the command to halt and TOC a vpar?

29) which command is used to load all the virtual partitions?

29.a) How to backup a vpar ?

30) How to see total amount of memory in a complex which contains 4 vpar , and
without rebooting the complex?

31) How to find out if the two physical volumes are belongs to same VG , when they
are not listed in lvmtab. ?

32) What is the command to find out the VGID of a PV?

33) Which command will show the CPU Speed?

34) How do you find out the cause of the 'flashing LED' on the server, that found
during the floor check activity?
35) How to find out all the files that are created today ?

36) How do you setup a local NTP server?

37) What does this error message means SCSI: Target detected parity error - lbolt"
from syslog.log ?

38) How will you check hp-ux system table usage.?

39) What does this error message indicates : "file table full" in syslog.log ?

40) How will you configure MC/SG 2 node cluster?

41) How will you create hard npar?

42) What is the procedure for replacing a failed lan card on a cluster environment?

43) What is a genesis partition? And how to create it and to install the OS ?

44) How wil you convert the content of a file , containing all lowercase to all
uppercase ?

45) What is metadata ?

46) What is BIB in Superdome servers?

47) Which command will show the tcp/ip supported parameters ?

48) How to check if ip_forwarding has enabled or not ? if not how to set/enable it?

49) How to find out all the 'pid's of all process with telnetd and to kill in a
single command ?

50) How to get decimal output upto 3 digit from bc command from a command line?
( i.e ex: 2/3 = 0.666 ) ?

-------------------------------------------

Hope this will help...

Cheers,
Raj

Unix Administrator Interview Questions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some quizzing about the various flavors of UN*X worked with. Command line vs GUI
(SAM). Experience with backup/recoveries - what applications. Any disk array work?
Scripting experience and preference.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I generally divide the questions into different areas. If the candidate is new this
field (sat 2-3 yrs experience), my questions would relativley easy and would aim at
getting the basic understanding of a candidate. For experienced sys admin, I would
ask wuestions in details.

User, Group Management

1. How would you add a user?? For experienced admin, I would ask alternate ways to
do it.
2. How many groups a user can belong to???

Disk/SAN/NAS management.
1. What are the steps involved in creating a volume?? About mirroring the root
disk. How SAN is different from NAS. About stripped LVs.
2. What is JFS, what advantages it offers over HFS?? About VxVM.

Secuity Access and Control.

1. What precautions/methos will you follow to secure the system??
For experienced admin, I would access him a little further. User level security, at
file level, user of third party products, use of ssh/tcp wrappers etc.

Kernel tuning, Performance monitoring and tuning.

1. Is a queue of four is Ok on a system with 6 cpus and questions like that???

How shmmax can be set for oracle. about dynamic buffer cache.
2. How would you check disk bottleneck?? How would you acertain the swap space use,
dynamic buffer cache etc.
3. Steps in kernel re-config, boot into single user mode etc.

Print, Application, Patch Management

1. What is a patch database (IPD etc.)??
2. How would you roll back the patch??

Backups and Recovery

1. What products??
2. About Ignite??
3. Systems tools and their usage.

Network Administration
1. About having two ips on same subnet?
2. Calculation of subnet.
3. About ipfilter, adding routes, deleting it. USer of net stat. About ndd.

In order to access the psyche of the candidate.

Which is more powerful? The pen, the sword, or the prompt?

I depend more on how candidate re-acts. I prefer tolet him do the talking.
Sometimes it happens that hey may not know correct optins, syntaxes, but it is
important to know that he knos how to do this and that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I completely forgot about adding few things.

About NIS, NIS+, DNS and NFS.

1. What advantages nfs 3 offers?? How??
2. The different records in DNS.

HP-UX INTERVIEW QUESTION FOR L1 & L2

General Question hpux

1. how to add user

2. what is different types of file type
3. how to find a file in root directory
4. how to find file size in current directory
5. how to check the list running process
6. how to run a process in background
7. what is sticky bit
8. what is password aging
9. how to check out kernel bit
10. how to split large file into 1MB pieces
11. How to monitoring server.
12. what is the exact path of system log files and which daemon is working for
this?
13. how to block the ftp or telnet services , where you will put entry
14. what is operating system hardening
15. what is ACL and ACE
16. how to check system performance monitoring?
17. how to check cpu utilization

Expected question from PA-RISC Booting procedure

1. Explain boot process of hpux operating system in PA-RISC

2. what is PDC,why we are calling PDC
3. what is ISL and IPL
4. what is lif area and its contain what?
5. how to create lif area in boot disk
6. lif header size of bootdisk
7. which command is used for checking lif area
8. how to edit auto file in bootdisk
9. where is kernel is located
10. what is /etc/inittab file
11. how to check the content of auto file
12. What you do in case of /etc/ioconfig is corrupted.
13. what steps are performed in bcheckrc script
14. which is the default run level of server
15. how to boot the server in single usermode and what will happened in single
user mode
16. how to boot server in lvm maintance mode and what will happened in lvm
maintance user mode
17. how to boot server in leased quarm mode and what will happened in lq mode
18. how to boot system from old kernel and alternate boot disk
19. how many run levels in hpux os
20. if you forgot root password what you have to do
21. how to shutdown and restart the server

Expected question from root disk ,vg and lvm

1. what is root disk definition

2. how to check root definitions
3. how to mirror root disk in PA-RISC architecture
4. How you check out how many physical volume and volume groups in server
5. what you do in the case of /etc/lvmtab file is corrupted and how to see the
content of file
6. where exactly volume group configuration file is residing
7. how to rename the volume group
8. how to create vg control file system
9. how to create volume group
10. how to active and deactivate the Volume group and physical volume
11. how to activate volume group in exclusive mode
12. how to import and export volume group
13. how many physical volume been supported per vg
14. maximum no. of logical volume per vg?
15. how to create new file system
16. how to extend file system size
17. how to create logical volume
18. how to extend and reduce lvm size
11.how you check file system utilization
12. what exactly vgcfgbacup will doing
13. what exactly vgcfgrestore will doing
14. boot disk replacement procedure
15. how to unmount file system and how to check file system currently is using or
not
16. what is /stand/rootconf and /stand/bootconf
17.how to update root volume group
18. how to check the content of AUTO file

Expected question from file system

1. how many file system is supported in hpux

2. how to increase JFS file system in HPUX
3. what is online JFS and its advantage
4. how to increase the file system in online JFS
5. how to check if online JFS is installed or not?
6. what is and superblock and inode
7. how to repair VXFS file system
8. how to mount file system
9. what is the advantage of JFS over HFS
10. what is intent log
11. how to create file system supporting large file system
12. how to check out file system is currently accessing which application
13. how to check file system utilization
14. what is the advantage of online JFS over JFS

Expected question from network part

1.how to check network statistics

2.how to configuring the network card and ip address
3.what is NFS, how to configure NFS and which version have you worked
4.how many daemons are worked for NFS
5.how to add a user with user id 200?
19. how to lock user password
20. how to activate user password after locking
21. how to block ftp and telnet access
22. how can you force a process to terminate
23. how to make user as a super user
24. how to configure lan card and give ip address
25. how to check the hardware address of lan card
26. how many ip address you can choose for one lan card
27. how you boot server from alternate hard disk
28. What is console. how many type of console
29. what is mp console
30. how to create kernel from running kernel

Expected Question from MC Service Guard

1. What is service guard clustering? Where you can check cluster and package
configuration file?
2. how to add volume group to package configuration file? Full procedure
3. what are component in package configuration file

4What is patching. how to installing

Expected Question from swap file system

1. what is swap file system , how many type of swap file system and how to create
swap file system
2. How many daemons are working for swap file system
2.how to create primary swap file and secondary swap file system
3. what is device swap and file system swap
4.How to mount swap file system automatically in booting time. tell me the entry
format
5. how to activate the swap file system
6. how to monitoring swap file system utilization

Expected Question from NFS and DNS

1. what is NFS and how to configure NFS server

2. which version of NFS have you worked on
3. how many daemons are working for NFS
4. how to give permission for NFS exported file system
5. how to check how many file system are exported from server
6. how to check how many client are currently accessing exported file system
7. how to configure NFS clients
8. how you put NFS entry in /etc/fstab
9. how to start NFS server
10. what is RPC
11. which version of NFS is supported in HPUX 11.00 above
12. what is DNS and how any types of DNS server
13. how to configure DNS primary server and secondary server

Common Trouble shooting question

1. I am not able to access server through telnet. it taking more time what is
the reason
2. from the console when i trying through root, its not going in
3. trying to mount NFS file system but it giving permission error ,what is the
problem
4. how to mount file system ,where you can put entry for automatic mount in
booting process
5. root user cannt able to mount NFS file system
6. how can impact the size of vmunix kernel (Itanium architecture)
7. what can you do on ISL> prompt
8. what happening when system runs out of free swap space
9. how to take backup how many types of backup levels
10. what is the command for checking software were installed properly or not
11. how to configure NFS
12. what entries are made in /etc/exports file
13. what are the causes if client is unable to access a NFS file or folder
14. how many NFS daemons
15. where you can find out which service is binded on which port
16. what is cron utility
17. how to list cron jobs
18. what is ignite unix. how to take ignite backup
19. how to configure ignite server for PA-RISC and ITANIUM architecture clients

HARDWARE

1. what is the difference between 9000 series and superdome servers

2. what is the up gradation limit of 9000 for RAM
3. what is difference between SCSI ultra160 and 320
4. how many devices we connect on single SCSI channel
5. how you check out lan card is faulty
6. In server front panel orange light is blinking ,what is the reason
7. which servers have you worked on