Linux Process Quiz: Can You Master Ps, Top & Kill?

1. Which option with 'ps' displays processes in a tree hierarchy showing parent-child relationships?

Ps -f

Ps --forest

Ps -l

Ps -e

2. To display processes sorted by memory usage in descending order using top, press which key?

M

P

T

U

Submit

4. What is the primary advantage of using 'pkill' over 'killall'?

Pkill supports pattern matching with regular expressions

Pkill is faster

Pkill works on remote systems

Pkill requires no signal specification

Submit

6. Which command combination would you use to find the PID of a process named 'apache2'?

Ps aux | grep apache2

Pgrep apache2

Pidof apache2

All of the above

7. In 'top', what does the 'load average' display at the top represent?

Current CPU usage percentage

Average number of processes in the run queue over 1, 5, and 15 minutes

Total memory usage

Network bandwidth usage

Submit

9. What does the VSZ column in ps output represent?

Virtual memory size allocated to the process

Actual physical memory used

Virtual swap zone

Very small zone memory

10. In 'top', pressing 'k' allows you to send a signal to a process. What must you provide?

Process name only

PID and signal number

Username of process owner

Process state

11. Which command displays a snapshot of all currently running processes with their PIDs and resource usage?

Ps

Top

Jobs

Systemctl

Submit

13. What does a 'Z' state in the STAT column indicate?

A running process

A zombie process (terminated but not reaped)

A suspended process

A process waiting for I/O

14. How do you list only processes owned by a specific user using ps?

Ps -u username

Ps --user=username

Ps -U username

Both a and b are correct

15. In 'top', which column shows the percentage of CPU time used by a process?

%MEM

%CPU

TIME

VIRT

16. The 'top' command updates process information in real-time. What is the default refresh interval?

1 second

3 seconds

5 seconds

10 seconds

17. What is the difference between 'kill -9' and 'kill -15'?

No difference; both terminate processes

SIGKILL (-9) forces immediate termination; SIGTERM (-15) allows graceful shutdown

SIGTERM (-15) is more forceful than SIGKILL (-9)

Only SIGTERM (-15) works on background processes

18. Which signal does the 'kill' command send by default?

SIGKILL (9)

SIGTERM (15)

SIGHUP (1)

SIGSTOP (19)

19. In the ps output, what does the STAT column indicate?

Process statistics

Process state (running, sleeping, zombie)

Start time of the process

Standard input/output status

20. What does the 'ps aux' command show that 'ps' alone does not?

Only kernel processes

All processes for all users with detailed info

Processes sorted by memory usage

Only stopped processes

Linux Process Quiz: Can You Master ps, top & kill?

1. Which option with 'ps' displays processes in a tree hierarchy showing parent-child relationships?

2.

What first name or nickname would you like us to use?

2. To display processes sorted by memory usage in descending order using top, press which key?

3. When a parent process terminates before its child process, the child becomes a ____ process.

4. What is the primary advantage of using 'pkill' over 'killall'?

5. The 'nice' value in the STAT column ranges from -20 to 19. A lower nice value means ____.

6. Which command combination would you use to find the PID of a process named 'apache2'?

7. In 'top', what does the 'load average' display at the top represent?

8. To send a SIGHUP signal to a process with PID 1234, the correct command is ____.

9. What does the VSZ column in ps output represent?

10. In 'top', pressing 'k' allows you to send a signal to a process. What must you provide?

11. Which command displays a snapshot of all currently running processes with their PIDs and resource usage?

12. The 'killall' command differs from 'kill' in that it terminates processes by ____.

13. What does a 'Z' state in the STAT column indicate?

14. How do you list only processes owned by a specific user using ps?

15. In 'top', which column shows the percentage of CPU time used by a process?

16. The 'top' command updates process information in real-time. What is the default refresh interval?

17. What is the difference between 'kill -9' and 'kill -15'?

18. Which signal does the 'kill' command send by default?

19. In the ps output, what does the STAT column indicate?

20. What does the 'ps aux' command show that 'ps' alone does not?