Role Pack · Junior to Mid
Linux Administration Pack
Processes, filesystems, networking, systemd, scripting and troubleshooting.
Linux admin and sysadmin questions: kernel, filesystems, systemd, bash and troubleshooting.
- Questions
- 360
- Topics
- 20
- Pages
- 352pages
- 360 questions, every one with a model answer
- Command cheat sheets
- Filesystem & process model
- systemd & boot
- Troubleshooting labs
Get the Linux Administration Pack — $9
One-off. Delivered as a PDF by email the moment payment clears.
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What is inside
20 chapters, in the order the interviews tend to ask them:
- Filesystem layout, inodes and hard links
- Mounting filesystems and checking them safely
- Partitioning, logical volumes and software RAID
- Users, groups, passwords and permission bits
- Access control lists, capabilities and mandatory controls
- Process management, scheduling and signals
- systemd units, dependencies and socket activation
- The boot sequence and recovering from a bad boot
- Package management, repositories and upgrades
- Host networking and name resolution
- Logs, the journal and structured output
- Scheduled work with cron, anacron and timers
- Resource limits, cgroups and the OOM killer
- SSH hardening and key management
- Containers, namespaces and cgroups on the host
- Kernel modules, udev and device management
- Troubleshooting method and the Linux toolset
- Shell scripting and safe automation
- Text processing pipelines with grep, sed and awk
- Backups, snapshots and proving a restore
How the answers are built
Each chapter opens with the checklist the question is really testing. A few from this pack:
- A directory entry maps a name to an inode number, while the inode holds the mode bits, ownership, timestamps, link count and extent map.
- A mount attaches a whole filesystem subtree at a directory, and the namespace stays private until someone shares it.
- A partition table records fixed size or fixed offset entry points on a device, and misaligned partitions cost throughput before they cost correctness.
- The account database is plain text by design, so getent rather than grepping /etc gives the authoritative answer including nsswitch lookups.
- An access control list adds named users and groups per file, and a mask entry caps the effective permissions of the named entries.
- Standard signals are not queued one by one, so several of the same signal collapse while a different number waits separately.
Questions this pack covers
- What does a directory entry actually store about a file?
- Why does removing one hard link free no disk space?
- What does the sixth fstab field in /etc/fstab actually control?
- Why must a filesystem be unmounted before you can run a full check on it?
- Why is a partition table needed before you can build a RAID array?
- How does a linear logical volume differ from a striped one?
- Why are password hashes kept in a file separate from the account database?
- What does the setgid bit on a directory actually change?
Each one is answered in full in the pack, with the reasoning written out rather than a bullet list.
About this pack
- How many questions?
- 360, spread across 20 topics, written out in full across 352 pages.
- Do the answers just list keywords?
- No. Each answer is written as prose, because that is what you have to reproduce when someone asks you the question.
- How do I get it?
- Pay once and the PDF arrives by email immediately, with a signed download link.
- Can I get it refunded?
- Yes, if it is not what you expected. See the refund policy.
