🐧Skill assessment · 147 questions

Linux & the Command Line skill assessment

From pwd to process signals — how fluent is your shell-fu?

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What it covers

Essential Commands

Build fluency with the everyday toolkit for moving around the filesystem, inspecting and manipulating files, and chaining commands together. These reflexes are the foundation every other Linux and DevOps skill is built on.

Navigating the filesystem: pwd, cd, ls, and absolute vs. relative pathsViewing and editing files: cat, less, head/tail, cp, mv, rm, mkdirPiping and redirection: |, >, >>, and 2>&1Getting help: man pages, --help, and aproposWildcards, globbing, and shell/command history

Operations & Packages

Learn to install, update, and remove software safely with a package manager, and keep tabs on system health through monitoring commands and log files. This is the bread-and-butter work of operating and maintaining Linux systems day to day.

Package managers: apt/dpkg on Debian-based systems, dnf/yum/rpm on RHEL-based systemsInstalling, updating, and removing packages; resolving dependenciesRepositories, package sources, and signing keysSystem health checks: uptime, free, df, and top/htopLog locations and rotation under /var/log

Service & System Config

Understand how systemd manages services, boot-time startup, and scheduled jobs so you can control what runs, when, and how it's supervised. This is essential for configuring long-running daemons and automating recurring tasks.

systemctl: starting, stopping, and checking service statusUnit files, dependencies, and service targetsjournalctl for querying logs by service, time, and priorityEnabling services at boot vs. starting them at runtimeScheduling recurring jobs: cron and systemd timers

Users, Groups & Permissions

Learn the Unix permission model and the commands that create and manage the users and groups it applies to. Together these let you grant least-privilege access and administer multi-user systems with confidence.

User, group, other and the rwx permission bitschmod symbolic vs. octal notation, chown, and chgrpsetuid, setgid, sticky bit, and umaskCreating and managing accounts: useradd, usermod, groupadd/etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and sudo/sudoers

Networking

Understand Linux networking tools to inspect interfaces, routes, and connections. These skills are essential for diagnosing connectivity from the command line.

Interfaces and ip addr / ip routeSockets and connections with ssDNS resolution and /etc/hosts, resolv.confDiagnostics: ping, traceroute, curlPorts, firewalls, and iptables/nftables

Storage & Filesystems

Understand the Linux filesystem hierarchy, mounting, and how files are stored and linked on disk. This knowledge underpins navigation, storage management, and troubleshooting disk issues.

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (/etc, /var, /proc)Inodes, hard links, and symlinksMounting, /etc/fstab, and df/duDisk usage and finding large filesFilesystem types (ext4, xfs, tmpfs)

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