Linux, AWS, and DevOps Fresher Interview Questions &

Answers

Section 1: Basic Commands

1. What is the command to display the contents of a file?

2. Use the cat filename command to display the contents of a file.

3. How do you create a new directory?

Use the command mkdir new_directory to create a new directory.

4. How can you copy a file from one location to another?

Use the command cp /path/to/source /path/to/destination.

5. What command would you use to move or rename a file?

Use the command mv old_filename new_filename.

6. How do you remove a file?

Use the command rm filename.

Section 2: Intermediate Commands

1. How do you search for a specific string in a file?

Use the command grep 'string' filename to search for a string.

2. What command shows the current processes running on the system?

Use the command ps aux to display current processes.

3. How do you check the available disk space?

Use the command df -h to check disk space in a human-readable format.

4. How can you check memory usage?

Use the command free -m to display memory usage in megabytes.

5. Scenario: You need to find all files larger than 100MB in a directory. What
command would you use?

Use the command find /path/to/directory -type f -size +100M.

Section 3: Advanced Commands

1. How do you check network connectivity to a remote server?

Use the command ping hostname_or_ip to check connectivity.

2. What is the command to change file ownership?

Use the command chown user:group filename to change ownership.

3. Scenario: You need to find and kill a process that is consuming too much CPU.
How would you do that?

First, use top or htop to identify the process ID (PID). Then use kill -9 PID to terminate
the process.

4. How can you schedule a command to run at a specific time?

Use cron jobs by editing the crontab with crontab -e and specifying the schedule.

5. Scenario: You need to create a backup of a directory and compress it into a tar
file. What command would you use?

Use tar -czvf backup.tar.gz /path/to/directory.

AWS Interview Questions and Answers

Section 1: Basic AWS Concepts

1. What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a web service that provides resizable compute
capacity in the cloud.

2. What is the purpose of Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is used for storing and retrieving any amount of data at
any time.

3. How do you secure your AWS account?

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), use IAM roles for permissions, and regularly
rotate access keys.

4. What is an Availability Zone?

An Availability Zone is a distinct location within an AWS region, designed to be isolated

from failures in other zones.

5. Scenario: You need to ensure high availability for your web application hosted
on EC2. What strategies would you implement?

Deploy your application across multiple Availability Zones and use Elastic Load Balancing
to distribute traffic.

Section 2: Intermediate AWS Services

1. What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that allows you to run code without
provisioning or managing servers.

2. How do you monitor AWS resources?

Use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor AWS resources and set up alarms based on metrics.

3. What is the purpose of AWS IAM?

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps you manage access to AWS services
and resources securely.

4. Scenario: You have a large dataset that needs to be processed using AWS.
Which service would you choose and why?
Use Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) for processing large datasets quickly and cost-
effectively.

5. How do you implement security best practices in S3?

Use bucket policies, enable versioning, and set up logging to secure S3 data.

Section 3: Advanced AWS Scenarios

1. Scenario: Your application is experiencing latency issues. How would you

diagnose and address this?

Use CloudWatch to monitor metrics such as CPU usage, network latency, and application
logs to identify bottlenecks. Consider using Amazon CloudFront for content delivery.

2. What strategies can be used for data backup in AWS?

Use AWS Backup, S3 versioning, and cross-region replication to ensure data durability and
availability.

3. Scenario: You need to migrate a database to AWS with minimal downtime.

What service would you use?

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate databases while keeping the source
database operational.

4. How can you optimize costs in your AWS environment?

Regularly review AWS Cost Explorer, use reserved instances for predictable workloads,
and right-size your instances.

5. Scenario: Your application needs to scale automatically based on traffic. How

would you achieve this?

Use AWS Auto Scaling to automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on
demand.
DevOps Interview Questions and Answers

Section 1: Basic DevOps Concepts

1. What is DevOps?

DevOps is a cultural shift that promotes collaboration between development and

operations teams to deliver software faster and more reliably.

2. What are CI/CD pipelines?

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines automate the

process of code integration, testing, and deployment.

3. What tools are commonly used in DevOps?

Common tools include Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, and Terraform.

4. Scenario: You need to set up a CI/CD pipeline for a web application. What steps
would you take?

Use a tool like Jenkins to automate the build process, run tests, and deploy to production
or staging environments.

5. What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Infrastructure as Code is the practice of managing and provisioning infrastructure through

code and automation.

Section 2: Intermediate DevOps Practices

1. How do you manage configuration in a DevOps environment?

Use tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet for configuration management to ensure
consistency across environments.

2. Scenario: You need to containerize an application using Docker. What steps

would you follow?

Create a Dockerfile to define the application environment, build the Docker image, and run
the container.
 3. What is the purpose of monitoring in DevOps?

Monitoring helps ensure application performance, availability, and helps identify issues
before they affect users.

4. How do you handle secrets in a DevOps environment?

Use tools like AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or environment variables to
securely manage secrets.

5. Scenario: Your application has performance issues. How would you approach
troubleshooting this?

Use monitoring tools to analyze application performance metrics, check logs for errors,
and perform load testing to identify bottlenecks.

Section 3: Advanced DevOps Scenarios

1. Scenario: You need to implement blue-green deployments. What approach

would you take?

Set up two identical environments (blue and green), deploy the new version to the inactive
environment, and switch traffic to it after testing.

2. What are microservices, and how do they relate to DevOps?

Microservices are an architectural style where applications are developed as a collection

of loosely coupled services, enabling faster deployments and better scalability.

3. Scenario: Your team is facing issues with deployment failures. How would you
ensure more reliable deployments?

Implement automated testing in the CI/CD pipeline, use canary releases to gradually roll
out changes, and ensure proper monitoring and rollback procedures.

4. How do you implement logging in a DevOps environment?

Use centralized logging solutions like ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or
Splunk to collect and analyze logs from various services.

5. Scenario: You need to implement version control for your infrastructure. What
tool would you use?
Use Terraform or AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure as code and keep track of
changes in a version control system like Git.