Deck 2: Arista Linux Essentials Exam

Question 1

Which utility can be used to remove sections or columns of each line of input?

A) sort
B) cut
C) paste
D) diff
E) grep

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Ubuntu is a popular distribution from which core tree?

A) Fedora
B) Linux
C) Debian
D) Slackware

Answer 2

B

Question 3

In shell scripting, what are backticks, or backwards single quote marks, used for?

A) Shell escapes
B) Variable dereference
C) Command substitution
D) Output formatting

Answer 3

B

Question 4

an SSH private key should never be shared with other users or host systems.

Question 5

What must you do to get a complete report from the lsof command?

A) Run it at boot time
B) Make it part of systemd
C) Run it as root
D) Run it as a regular user

Question 6

On older Fedora Core systems, which dependency manager is used?

A) apt
B) deb
C) rpm
D) yum
E) dnf

Question 7

Which of these characters is not valid for filenames?

A) *
B) !
C) /
D) &
E)

Question 8

Which utility can be used to merge sequentially corresponding lines of input streams into a single output stream?

A) sort
B) cut
C) paste
D) diff
E) grep

Question 9

Which utility can be used to place a stream of input in order numerically or alphabetically?

A) sort
B) cut
C) paste
D) diff
E) grep

Question 10

On Arista switches, what object format is used for automation and scripting?

A) JSON
B) Java
C) Plain text files
D) Stream editing

Question 11

Why is it recommended for root's homedir to be in a separate location from other users' homedirs?

A) Because root doesn't want to hang out with pesky users
B) Because users are annoying
C) Because root's homedir permissions prevent user access
D) Because user homedirs are sometimes a separate filesystem that may not be mounted in single user mode

Question 12

Which loop type is the recommended way to iterate over a set of filenames?

A) a case loop
B) a for loop
C) a while loop
D) an until loop

Question 13

What are two primary variants of UNIX?

A) AT&T and Bell Labs
B) Sun and DEC
C) BSD and System V
D) Debian and Fedora

Question 14

Where will the find command look to locate files?

A) The system binary directories
B) Your $PATH
C) Recursively starting in the directory you specify in the command options
D) Recursively starting at/

Question 15

What tool is awk based on?

A) ed
B) grep
C) sed
D) emacs

Question 16

The sed utility's name is short for what?

A) stdout editor
B) stream editor
C) simple editor
D) string editor

Question 17

Where did the GECOS field in /etc/passwd come from?

A) Bell Labs DHCP lease tracking
B) Payroll name and address info
C) Bell Labs Print Service
D) Parking space assignments at AT&T

Question 18

To kill all of the jobs you have access to kill, use which command?

A) kill -1 1
B) kill 1
C) kill -9 1
D) kill -9 -1

Question 19

What is the awk tool designed to be?

A) a calculator
B) a pattern matching programming language
C) a non-interactive editing tool
D) an operating system

Question 20

What character is used as shorthand for your homedir?

A) $
B) #
C) .
D) ~

Question 21

What is the difference between bin directories and sbin directories?

A) It doesn't matter - binaries are randomly placed in one or the other
B) Executables in sbin require root access
C) Executables in bin are for all users, while sbin is for system-related executables generally used by the root user
D) They are linked, so they both hold the same executables

Question 22

Given the following directory structure, which commands would successfully remove the fubar directory?

A) rm -r fubar
B) rmdir -p fubar
C) rmdir -p fubar/bar
D) rm fubar/bar
E) rm fubar

Question 23

Who invented NFS?

A) Linus Torvalds
B) IBM
C) DEC
D) Sun Microsystems

Question 24

In file globbing, which symbol matches any single character?

A) *
B) ?
C) []
D) .

Question 25

Which if these is NOT true of symbolic, or soft, links?

A) Has its own inode
B) Is just a directory entry
C) Can cross mount points
D) Can point to a directory

Question 26

The three special file modes are

A) owner/group/world
B) read/write/execute
C) user/group/others
D) setuid/setgid and sticky

Question 27

The ps -ef command is from which UNIX variant?

A) AIX
B) System V
C) Linux
D) BSD

Question 28

In regular expressions, three quantifier operators are

A) (), [] and {}
B) (),. and *
C) (), * and ?
D) *, ? and +

Question 29

If the system is swapping, what can be done to alleviate the problem?

A) Add faster CPUs
B) Add more CPUs
C) Add more memory
D) Add a larger hard drive

Question 30

What is the MBR?

A) Microcomputer Boot Resistor
B) Master Boot Relocator
C) Master Boot Record
D) Megabyte Barometric Recombinator

Question 31

Which of the following filesystems are you most likely to see on a Linux system?

A) XFS
B) ext2fs
C) NTFS
D) exFAT

Question 32

The three classes in the file mode are

A) owner/group/world
B) read/write/execute
C) user/group/other
D) setuid/setgid and sticky

Question 33

When scripting in bash , it is recommended to always use which symbols around your variables to reference them?

A) {}
B) []
C) ()
D) ' '
E) " "

Question 34

Which commands can be used to copy a file locally?

A) cp only
B) scp pnly
C) rsync only
D) both cp and scp
E) cp, scp and rsync

Question 35

Which of these shells are POSIX compliant?

A) bash
B) ksh
C) csh
D) zsh

Question 36

According to the UNIX design paradigm, what is a file?

A) Something that stores data
B) An inode
C) A directory
D) Everything

Question 37

Which of the following performance information is considered the most important information provided by the vmstat command?

A) it reports total memory on the system
B) it reports buffer activity
C) it reports disk I/O
D) it reports memory swapping

Question 38

How much swap space is available on Arista switches?

A) 4GB
B) 0 bytes
C) 1GB
D) 640kB

Question 39

In /etc/shadow, what indicates a locked password?

A) !
B) !!
C) *LK
D) *
E) All of these

Question 40

Which of the following interpreters are included on Arista switches?

A) /usr/bin/bash
B) /usr/bin/perl
C) /usr/bin/python
D) /usr/bin/Cli
E) All of them

Question 41

To negate a set in a regular expression pattern, which character is used?

A) !
B) ^
C) ?
D) -

Question 42

In a bash script, which of the following is the most common way to send output to the screen?

A) echo
B) write
C) send
D) print

Question 43

In regular expressions, to what does greedy vs. lazy refer?

A) How many lines in a file the pattern will match
B) How many times the pattern will match on a line
C) How strict the pattern is required to be
D) Whether the pattern quantifiers will stop at whitespace

Question 44

Why is iostat not needed on an Arista switch?

A) The CPU can't see the front panel interfaces to report on traffic
B) EOS is installed on an in-memory filesystem that does not use a hard disk
C) The memory is always full on an Arista switch
D) The I/O on an Arista switch is too fast for the CPU
E) Arista switches don't support hyperthreading

Question 45

Which of the following is true when using the mv command to move a file to a new location on the same filesystem?

A) It is not recommended because the filesystem could be corrupted
B) It is slow because the data has to be read and written
C) It is not recommended, and the cp command should be used instead It is not recommended, and the cp command should be used instead
D) It is very fast because only the directory entry needs updating

Question 46

Which native system commands can be used to get help on a standard Linux system?

A) Google
B) Info
C) Man
D) Stack Overflow

Question 47

What is the two-character sequence at the top of scripts, which tells the kernel what interpreter to use, called?

A) Scripthash
B) Bangscript
C) Hashscript
D) Shebang

Question 48

Which of these is true about the MBR?

A) it contains the kernel
B) it is not OS-specific
C) it requires the Volume Boot Record
D) it is always stored in memory

Question 49

RHEL is a popular distribution from which core tree?

A) Fedora
B) Linux
C) Debian
D) Slackware

Question 50

Which special device provides a place for redirecting unneeded data?

A) /dev/null
B) /dev/zero
C) /dev/urandom
D) /dev/blank

Question 51

What does the ctime of a file indicate?

A) Creation time
B) Change time
C) Content time
D) Character time

Question 52

Which of these help documentation systems are installed on Arista switches?

A) Google
B) Info
C) Man
D) Stack Overflow

Question 53

Which of the following commands is most likely to cause you to need to restore from backup?

A) rm -rf
B) netstat -nr
C) reboot
D) ls -la

Question 54

The standard input file descriptor defaults to what?

A) Screen
B) Keyboard
C) Hard Drive
D) Null Device

Question 55

What does grep stand for?

A) global regular expression print
B) global regular expression pattern
C) glob regex execute pattern
D) glob regex execute print

Question 56

If there are three arguments on the command line to a bash script, what will be the contents of $# builtin variable?

A) 0
B) 1
C) 2
D) 3
E) 4

Question 57

In bash scripting, which of the following comparison operators are used on strings?

A) -gt
B) -eq
C) ==
D) <=
E) -f

Question 58

What will the permissions of a regular file with octal mode 755 look like in the output of the 1s command?

A) drwxr-xr-x
B) -rw-r-r--
C) -rwx-r-r--
D) -rwxr-

Question 59

If one or more CPUs in a system is extremely busy (less than 25% idle) but the run queue is relatively low, what might the system need to improve performance?

A) Faster CPUs
B) More CPUs
C) More memory
D) Faster hard drives

Question 60

On an Arista switch, where in the filesystem is the flash drive mounted?

A) /root
B) /boot
C) /mnt
D) /etc

Question 61

What term is used for the beginning of time for UNIX?

A) Epoch
B) Zero-hour
C) Birth
D) Dawn
E) Awakening

Question 62

On a typical Linux system, where is the boot loader located?

A) BIOS
B) MBR
C) VBR
D) Kernel

Question 63

What software is contained in a Linux distribution?

A) The full operating system, including the kernel, package manager, GNU tools and libraries, documentation, a GUI, and other software.
B) Optional software that sits on top of the kernel and includes package management and a GUI.  
C) A repository of optional software available to install via the package management system.
D) A specially modified kernel designed to perform one task extremely well.

Question 64

What editor is vi based on?

A) ed
B) EMACS
C) pico
D) sed

Question 65

Which answer best describes three important system performance monitoring indicators?

A) Load avg, idle CPU and swapping
B) Uptime, load avg and idle CPU
C) Load avg, idle CPU and free memory
D) System CPU, user CPU and load avg
E) Uptime, system CPU and free memory

Question 66

The at system is used to

A) set the system clock
B) run something at a later time
C) schedule something to run at intervals
D) timestamp the system logs

Question 67

What is the standard sequence for booting a standard PC?

A) POST->BIOS->Kernel
B) BIOS->Kernel->POST->OS
C) BIOS->MBR->POST->Kernel
D) POST->BIOS->Boot Loader->Kernel

Question 68

The ps aux command is from which UNIX variant?

A) AIX
B) System V
C) Linux
D) BSD

Question 69

Which utility can be used to compare the content of two files?

A) sort
B) cut
C) paste
D) diff
E) grep

Question 70

When using the sudo command to run something as root, which password is required?

A) The user's password
B) The enable password
C) The shadow password
D) The root password

Question 71

Which of these statements is true?

A) "." And "…" are always used in absolute paths
B) Absolute paths start with a "/"
C) Best practice is to always use absolute paths in scripts and when running commands as root
D) Relative paths can start with a "/"

Question 72

What is the name of the Linux mascot?

A) Linus
B) Bell
C) Tux
D) Dennis Ritchie

Question 73

In bash, a for loop will iterate over a list of strings separated by what?

A) quotes
B) single quotes
C) backticks
D) whitespace

Question 74

Which two characters are required at the top of a script to inform the kernel on which interpreter to use? (choose two)

A) !!
B) $!
C) #$
D) #!

Question 75

Which of these statements is true about user groups on Linux?

A) A user may be a member of more than one group
B) A group may have more than one-member user
C) Groups may not be nested
D) Groups may be nested

Question 76

The cron system is used to

A) set the system clock
B) run something at a later time
C) schedule something to run at intervals
D) timestamp the system logs

Question 77

What is the default standard user prompt for Bourne-based shells?

A) >
B) $
C) #
D) enable#

Question 78

When configuring SSH, which file is needed for key-based authentication?

A) known_hosts
B) /etc/shadow
C) /etc/passwd
D) authorized_keys

Question 79

The standard output file descriptor defaults to what?

A) Screen
B) Keyboard
C) Hard Drive
D) Null Device

Question 80

Why shouldn't you use standard package and dependency management on an Arista switch?

A) Arista switches can't run package managers
B) Arista modifies the kernel to disallow it
C) Running an install could update dependencies required for the base EOS install
D) There is no reason not to use them on an Arista switch