CIS 90, Introduction to UNIX/Linux

 Fall 2011
CIS 90 Home
Calendar
Outline
FAQ
Links
Instructor Home
 
  

Review Questions

Lesson 1 - The UNIX Operating System

  1. What is an operating system, and why would someone want Unix as their OS?
  2. Name four functions of an operating system
  3. What are three major components of a Unix operating system
  4. Name three types of user interfaces offered by UNIX/Linux systems
  5. What three pieces of information are required to logon to a Unix system?
  6. What is meant by a login session? How many can you have on a UNIX system?
  7. When and how do you log off of a Unix system?
  8. What are the characteristics of a "Good" password?
Lecture Archive
VpxClient.rdp and PuTTYHowTo
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 2 - UNIX Commands

  1. What does Unix call the program that allows you to issue commands and interact with the computer?
  2. What program finds the location of the commands you enter on the command line?
  3. What is the name of the variable that holds the places to search for a command?
  4. How would you display the contents of the above variable on the screen?
  5. What command would you use to change your prompt to a smiley face?
  6. Why doesn't Unix allow spaces in any of its command names or filenames?
  7. Name five characters that should not be used in command arguments?
  8. When issuing a command, which comes first: the options or the arguments?
  9. Name four pieces of information you could get about a command by using its name as an argument to the man command?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 3 - UNIX Mail

  1. What is the behavior of the mail program when invoked with no arguments?
    When invoked with one or more arguments?
  2. How do you get out of the input mode of mail? How do you get out of mail’s command mode?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 4 - The UNIX File System

  1. What are the three parts of every file on a Unix filesystem? And where is each stored?
  2. What Unix command allows us to view the contents of directories?
  3. What is kept in a Unix directory in addition to the names of files? What command is used to see this information?
  4. Give four useful options to the ls command.
  5. What information about a file is kept in the inode that you can view in a long listing (ls -l)?
  6. What Unix command prints out your current working directory?
  7. What is the name of that directory when you log in?
  8. What Unix command can change your current working directory?
  9. What does this command do if you give it no arguments?
  10. What two files are in every Unix directory, and why don’t they normally show up with the ls command?
  11. Give an example of an absolute pathname and a relative pathname.
  12. What option to the ls command lets you see a long listing of a directory file?
  13. Unix filenames do not normally tell you whether a file is a program, directory, text, data, etc.
    What Unix command can you use to find a file’s type?
  14. What are the three special characters used by the shell to collectively access groups of files?
    What are the pattern matching characteristics of each?
  15. What are two reasons you may want to use these filename expansion characters?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 5 - Managing Files

  1. What command is used to create directories?
  2. What is the syntax for the cp and mv commands?
  3. Why does UNIX support file linking?
  4. Give two ways to remove a directory and all the files it contains.
  5. What are the different types of files supported under UNIX?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 7 - File Permissions

  1. What are the three categories of users that apply to file permissions?
  2. What command is used to change the owner of a file? Who can do this?
  3. What command is used to change the group of a file? Who can do this?
  4. What command is used to change the permissions of a file? Who can do this?
  5. What do each of the permissions rwx mean for files and directories?
  6. How does the umask work?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 8 - File Input and Output

  1. What are stdin, stdout, and stderr?
  2. With what command could you create a file called walrus that contained the line: "I am the walrus."
  3. What would the following command do: cat letter > mail
  4. What does the following command do:
    history -100 | grep ls | wc -l
  5. What does the following command do:
    find /home/CIS190 | sort | tee files | wc -l
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 9 - UNIX Processes

  1. What is a UNIX process? What is a daemon process?
  2. What information about each process does the kernel keep in the process table?
  3. How do you run a process in the background?
  4. What are the most common signals used to interrupt UNIX processes?
  5. What two pieces of information does the at command need, and where does it get this information?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 11 - VI a Text Editor

  1. Why wouldn't you want to use vi for drafting a resume?
  2. How do you create an empty file using vi?
  3. How do you read another file into your vi session?
  4. How does vi implement Save and Save As?
  5. What vi commands are there for moving around in a file?
  6. How do you delete a word in vi?
  7. How do you delete 3 lines? Copy 5 lines to the clipboard?
  8. How do you paste whatever is on the clipboard?
  9. How do you search for a string within a file?
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 12 - The Shell Environment

  1. What is the name of the file that sets up the shell environment for Bash or Bourne shell users?
  2. How would you know if your shell had the LPDEST environment variable set?
  3. When should you put commands in your .bashrc file rather than in your .bash_profile?
  4. What is the purpose of the shell's source (.) command?
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides

Lesson 13 - UNIX Shell Scripts

  1. What two files setup the login environment for Bash shell users? Bourne Shell?
  2. How do you assign an environment variable in the Bash Shell?
  3. What must you do with a shell variable to make it available to child processes?
  4. Give two ways to invoke a shell script. What permissions are required for each?
  5. Name two ways that shell variables may be initialized.
Lecture Archive
PowerPoint slides
Lecture Archive

Miscellaneous

  1. Find the file linux.words and give me it's absolute pathname.
  2. Is the cron daemon running, and if so, what is its pid?
  3. Print to your screen the line from the /etc/passwd file that contains your login name. Explain what each field represents.
  4. How many children of the init process are currently running?
  5. What happens when you redirect the standard output of a shell?
  6. What command will tell you how long the system has been up?
  7. Use the finger command to find what shell the super-user uses.
back to top