These are some exercises that will help you get the feel for processes running on your system.
Run top in one terminal while you do the exercises in another.
Run the ps command.
Read the man pages to find out how to display all your processes.
Run the command find /. What effect does it have on system load? Stop this command.
In graphical mode, start the xclock program in the foreground. Then let it run in the background. Stop the program using the kill command.
What does kill -9 -1 do?
Open two terminals or terminal windows again and use write to send a message from one to the other.
Issue the dmesg command. What does it tell?
How long does it take to execute ls in the current directory?
Based on process entries in /proc, owned by your UID, how would you work to find out which processes these actually represent?
How long has your system been running?
Which is your current TTY?
Name 3 processes that couldn't have had init as an initial parent.
Name 3 commands which use SUID mode. Explain why this is so.
Name the commands that are generally causing the highest load on your system.
Can you reboot the system as a normal user? Why is that?
According to your current runlevel, name the steps that are taken during shutdown.
How do you change the system runlevel? Switch from 3 to 5 and vice versa.
Which kernel does GRUB currently load at startup?
Suppose you have to start some exotic server at boot time. Up until now, you logged in after booting the system and started this server manually using a script named deliver_pizza in your home directory. What do you have to do in order to have the service start up automatically in run level 4, which you defined for this purpose only?
Use sleep to create a reminder that your pasta is ready in ten minutes.
Create an at job that copies all files in your home directory to /var/tmp within half an hour. You may want to create a sub-directory in /var/tmp.
Make a cronjob that does this task every Monday to Friday during lunch.
Check that it works.
Make a mistake in the crontab entry, like issuing the nonexistent command coppy instead of cp. What happens upon execution of the task?