Unix Interview Questions and Answers
Unix is a stable and secure operating system that is capable of handling commands from multiple users at the same time. The innermost level of the Unix environment, Kernel coordinates the computer internals and allocates all the resources. Users can communicate with the kernel through a program known as a shell, which translates commands written by the user into a language that the kernel can interpret. Want to clear interviews in one shot? Read our Unix interview questions.
Advantages of Unix
- Each big task can be split into simple commands and utilities
- Can be used on a variety of machines
- Can run many programs with less physical memory consumption
- Multiple users can perform various tasks at the same time without interfering with each other’s work. Each user’s work is protected.
- Cleanly defined permissions and access for each user for each file.
Most Frequently Asked Unix Interview Questions
| S.no | HARDLINK | SOFTLINK |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Additional name for the same existing file. Hardlink acts as a shortcut to the file that has been hardlinked. | A file that points to another file through a pointer. There is no data in the target file. |
| 2. | Preserves the contents of a file. | If the target file is deleted, softlink is rendered useless. |
A process, whose parent process terminates, finishes or crashes and doesn’t exist anymore is called orphan process. They are adopted by the init system process.
You can use the zip command to zip files in Unix.
Example – zip math.zip file1 file2 file3
To stop an infinite loop, kill the process using the ‘kill PID’ command.
Example – $ kill -9 24566
In our list of Unix interview questions, we have covered all the essential aspects of Unix. Read on to know more.
Development History
Unix was developed at AT&T Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in 1979. The first portable version of Unix was V7. Check out our Unix interview questions list to understand how Unix processes command written by the user.
Latest version
The latest version of Unix is 4.20.8 released on 12 February 2019.