Linux Questions & Answers

[wacky]

1) In Redhat (also Centos or Fedora) how would you list the last 10 packages installed and their installation times?

rpm -qa --last | head

2) What file contains the file system sharing table?

/etc/exports

3) In Redhat (also Centos, Fedora) what command and switches would you use to install and monitor the progress of a package?

rpm -ivh

4) What command would you use to copy MBR from /dev/hda to /dev/hdb?

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1

5) What command would you use to display the loadable kernel modules currently active?

lsmod

6) Next time the machine is rebooted we want a virtual NIC created on eth0, what file needs to be created to do this?

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:1

7) In realtime how can you stop IP forwarding?

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

8) Same as Q7 but we want it sustained after reboots. What needs to be done?

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
or
echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

9) You have been asked to decommission a Linux server and wipe all sensitive data from disk /dev/hdb. How would you do this?

shred /dev/hdb

[lambda]

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 doesn't work across reboots, unless you put it in some file like /etc/rc.local.

i think you meant "start", not "stop".

[wacky]

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 doesn't work across reboots, unless you put it in some file like /etc/rc.local.

i think you meant "start", not "stop".

Lambda, you're correct. This is my mistake. sysctl -w does not work across reboots. Also there is another glaring mistake:
net.ipv4.ip_forward=0 to disable IP forwarding not 1 as in my answer above.