Sun Solaris Administration Interview Questions

If you're looking for Sun Solaris Administration Interview Questions for Experienced or Freshers, you are at the right place. There are a lot of opportunities from many reputed companies in the world. According to research, Sun Solaris has a market share of about 3.8%. So, You still have the opportunity to move ahead in your career in Sun Solaris Admin. Mindmajix offers Advanced Sun Solaris Administration Interview Questions 2024 that help you in cracking your interview & acquire a dream career as a Sun Solaris Administrator.

Top Solaris Interview Questions for 2024

1. How does the Solaris operating system boot?
2. Can you explain each of the phases involved in booting the operating system?
3.  What to use to use the ‘top’ command on Solaris operating system?
4. What do you understand by Solaris?
5. How many types of installation of the OS are available and explain each of them?
6. How many RAID levels are present in this operating system?
7. Do you have any idea about run levels in the Solaris operating system?
8. How can you end any process in this operating system?

 

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Solaris Interview Questions and Answers for 2021

1) How does the Solaris operating system boot?

The boot procedure of the operating system can be divided into four categories namely:

• Post
• Obprom
• Init phases
• Kernel initialization

2) Can you explain each of the phases involved in booting the operating system?

Post – As you switch on the power, it will identify the hardware and certain other information such as system ID, memory division, serial number, architecture type, and IP address. In addition, it also loads a program that is known as bootblk.

OBPROM –This abbreviation stands for an open bootable program. It helps –

• Diagnose hardware and memory of the operating system.
• Create device subdivision and load book block from 0-15 sector and it is known as secondary book programmable ufsboot.
• Initialize boot functions.

Kernel Initialization – In this stage, ufsboot loads the kernel which in turn loads all necessary modules of the device. This is further required for root partition that helps continue with the booting procedure.
Init stage – It starts as you execute the init program and begin other program reading /etc/inittab files, similar to the directory in the form of  files.

/etc/inittab

3) What to use to use ‘top’ command on Solaris operating system?

An alternative to the ‘top' command is to use it while working on the above mentioning operating system.

4) What do you understand by Solaris?

It is a UNIX based operating system which supports workstations and server operating from Sun. It can also be regarded as a recognized operating system that is widely used. Further, it is available from server vendors and also known as the successor of sun operating system.

5) How many types of installation of the OS are available and explain each of them?

There are seven types of installation of the Solaris operating system and they are as follows:

1. Solaris installation program is the general way in which you can install the OS with the help of a DVD or CD ROM.
2. Installation procedure over the network – Installing the operating system using a server that has easy access to Solaris disc images.
3. Flash installation – With the help of this process, the installation can be carried out via a master system.
4. Custom jumpstart installation – This process is known as a command-line interface in which several systems can be installed or upgraded at the same time using the profile created.
5. Solaris Live Upgrade process – This can be done even when the current operating system environment is running.
6. WAN BOOT process – This can be carried out by installing the operating system over a wide area network via HTTP.
7. Solaris zones – After the installation of the operating system is completed, ‘Zones’ can be configured and installed. One such is the global zone which can be considered as the currently running operating environment.

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6) How many RAID levels are present in this operating system?

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive or Independent Disks. It has six levels as RAID Level 0 – RAID Level 6.

7) Do you have any idea about run levels in the Solaris operating system?

There are mainly eight-run levels in this operating system, and they are as follows:

• 0 – it is used during power downstate
• s or S – for a single user
• 1 – the administrative state
• 2 – Multi-user state
• 3 –multi-use with NFS state
• 4 – alternative multi-user
• 5 – power down
• 6 – Reboot state

8) How can you end any process in this operating system?

Whether you are a superuser or root user, you should know how to terminate the process of another user on the operating system. In addition, to terminate any process, you also need to obtain PID of the process.

The syntax used is ‘$ps –fu.’ For instance, $ps –fu abc
abc 325 322 3 Jan 12 ? 11:04 /usr/openwin/bin/sun
In order to end the process with the help of ‘end’ command
$ kill pid
Default signal number is -15 {SIGKILL}
-9 {SIGTERM}

9) In this operating system, can you explain the difference between dsk and rdsk?

DSK is a block-level device. FS which is formatted is known as a block device. Rdsk is a raw-level device in this operating system.

Q10) How can you find reserve space of disk?

# fstyp –v /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0 | grep minfree
minfree 6%  

Q11) How to find out the location of alternative backup superblocks?

 # newfs –N /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2

12) Do you know how to reduce reserved disk space while working on this operating system?

Yes, the reserved space can be reduced to 2% using ‘# tunefs –m 2 /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0.’

13) What are the steps to check for installed packages?

# pkginfo |more
# pkginfo –l

14) What do you understand by NFS daemons?

In order to support NFS activities, the NFS daemons are available in various types and they are as follows:

1. Automount – It helps in mounting and unmounting requests with the help of autofs service.
2. Mounted – It takes care of mount requests and gives information regarding mounting nfs activities.
3. Locked – It helps file locking both for nfs server and clients.
4. Nfsd – It helps in file exporting within the operating system and access files from remote clients, and it is used in run level 3.
5. Nfslogd – With the help of this, the daemons help in providing logging information.
6. Nfsmapid – It gives information pertaining to User identification or any group identification for representation.
7. Statd – It helps to give recovery and crash data while working on this operating system.

15) What is the function of pkgadd command?

This command helps to install signed or unsigned software. In addition, it also helps to remove any existing packing that is present with the same file name as that of the one that you are trying to add.

Syntax - pkgadd –a admin_file –d device-name pkgid

For verifying whether the package is installed or not, you can use:

‘#pkgchk –v pkgid’

16) How does Solaris cluster work?

The cluster configuration of the operating system consists of both hardware and software components

Hardware components –

1. Servers with local storage
2. Cluster interconnections
3. Public network functions
4. Share storage
5. Administrative workstation service

Software components –

1. Data services function
2. Operating system cluster software and help in communicating with customers
3. The operating system running on each node

The server in this operating system uses private interconnections to connect with different customers. The interconnect helps in analyzing the cluster information which is also known as a heartbeat. With the help of the servers, it is able to examine the working of other servers present within the cluster and also ensure that all servers are functioning properly. In case any of the servers fail to function, it disappears and thus it is no more considered part of the cluster. In order to distinguish the failed server from the others, the ‘fail-over term is used, and the clusters are categorized according to their high rates of availability within the operating system.

17) How to login to the Solaris operating system and what is the login shell used for the same?

• Solaris can be considered a secured platform and the users need login credentials to get access to the same. Before starting the operating system, the ‘hostname console login: Rohit’ message would pop up on the screen.
• Following this, as soon as the user presses on the ‘return’ option, he or she is asked to use the password for the account. To keep the password safe, it does not come up on the screen, and instead, it is displayed in the form of dots. When the user enters a command with the help of a terminal or GUI, the user is actually providing the required information to the command interpretation system which is also called a shell. The shell takes in various inputs in the form of commands and gives the output that is executed within the operating system. The default shell for the Solaris operating system is the Bourne shell.
• Among the various types of shells available in the operating system, some of them are C shell, Korn shell, GNU Bourne shell, and many others. After logging into the system, if the user is able to see the command prompt on the screen, it indicates the functioning of the shell has been initiated in the operating system. Therefore, this is known as the login shell.

18) What do you understand by The Command ‘Ls’?

With the help of this command, you can have access to the main directory. In addition, it also permits you to access the files present in the operating system. It shows and prints different ownerships file accessibility, the file name including all its other details.

19) State the difference between setting files on the operating system with the help of octal and symbolic codes?

The primary point of difference between the two is that the former one is relative whereas the latter one is present in numeric codes. The settings remain unchanged with the help of symbolic codes in the operating system.

20) While working on the Solaris operating system, how can the user help check any process?

The system creates an independent process after reading the command, and the process comes with a PID relating to the process. In order to maintain track of each process, the PID has been created. For finding any process, the PS command is enough to help the users. After the user executes the PS command, it shows:

• PID of the concerned process
• The initiation point of any process
• The CPU time consumed by the process

21) Explain the difference between Solaris 9 and Solaris 10?

The primary difference between the two is SMF or Solaris Management Facility. Other than this, in case you are working on Solaris 9, for the malfunctioning of any service, restarting all the service is enough to resolve the issue, whereas, in Solaris 10, for any particular faulty service, you can enable and disable the same without restarting all of them.

22) Do you have any idea about LOM? How can you access it?

LOM stands for Lights out management. Some of the Sun servers try to use the server by connecting it with a rollover cable that LOM port to a laptop. The user need not turn on the server, but they only need to power it on and as said before, connect the laptop to the LOM port and then operate the connected server. In addition, you also need to use the IP address of the server to establish the required connection.

23) Which command is required to display the default boot device and re-configure the device from the reboot process?

To display the default boot device, ‘eeprom boot-device command is used. And for reconfiguring devices from the reboot process, ‘Devfsadm’ is used.

24) Why does the Solaris operating system slow down? Mention ways for its rectification?

The system can start to function slowly when there are faults in the kernel memory leak. It takes place when a process consumes a certain part of the memory which is unable to release back to the operating system. Following this, in case of any object-oriented program, the object that lies within memory, cannot be accessed. There are two reasons for memory leaks, and they are as follows.

1. NFS cache – Cache memory can result in memory leakage within the operating system. Similarly, memory leakage can also take place due to the NFS client. To rectify the same, the user has to add ‘set nrnode =1000’ to the system and then save it and reboot the system.
2. Bug – It is found inside the volume management system driver, and as this driver is unloaded, it results in memory leakage. This bug usually affects the system that fails to function smoothly. However, this bug can be used with the help of patches that are compatible to work on both SPARC and x 86 platforms.

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