Basic Bash – CKA Practice Questions

20 hands-on scenarios testing essential bash skills for the CKA exam.

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Question 1: Extract Pod Names from Specific Namespace

Task:

1. Get all pod names from the kube-system namespace
2. Output ONLY the pod names (no headers, no other columns)
3. One name per line

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Question 2: Count Running Pods

Task:

1. Count how many pods are in Running state across ALL namespaces
2. Output should be a single number

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Question 3: Find Pods on Specific Node

Task:

1. List all pod names running on node worker-1
2. Show only pod names, one per line
3. Search across all namespaces

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Question 4: Extract Container Images

Task:

1. Get all unique container images used across all pods in the cluster
2. Remove duplicates
3. Sort alphabetically

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Question 5: Filter Pods by Label

Task:

1. Get all pods with label app=nginx
2. Extract ONLY the pod name and IP address
3. Format: pod-name IP-address (space-separated)

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Question 6: Decode Secret Value

Task:

1. Given a secret named db-creds with key password
2. Decode and display the actual password value
3. Should show plain text, not base64

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Question 7: Find Failed Pods

Task:

1. List all pods that are NOT in Running or Completed state
2. Show namespace, pod name, and status
3. Format as a table with columns aligned

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Question 8: Extract Node Internal IPs

Task:

1. Get the Internal IP address of all nodes
2. Output only IP addresses, one per line
3. No headers or extra text

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Question 9: Count Pods Per Namespace

Task:

1. Show count of pods in each namespace
2. Format: count namespace-name
3. Sort by count (descending)

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Question 10: Modify Deployment Replicas (File Edit)

Task:

1. You have a file deployment.yaml with replicas: 3
2. Change it to replicas: 5 using command-line tool
3. Verify the change was made

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Question 11: Extract Events for Failing Pod

Task:

1. Get Events section from kubectl describe pod failing-pod
2. Show only the last 10 events
3. No other output

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Question 12: Find Largest Log File

Task:

1. Search /var/log directory
2. Find the largest .log file
3. Output filename and size

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Question 13: Get Pod Resource Requests

Task:

1. For pod web-app, extract CPU and Memory requests
2. Output format: CPU: <value> Memory: <value>

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Question 14: List Pods Sorted by Age

Task:

1. Get all pods with their age
2. Sort by age (oldest first)
3. Show: namespace, name, age

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Question 15: Batch Delete Pods by Pattern

Task:

1. Delete all pods whose names start with test-
2. Use a loop
3. Confirm deletion

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Question 16: Extract ConfigMap Keys

Task:

1. Given ConfigMap app-config
2. List all keys (not values) in the ConfigMap
3. One key per line

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Question 17: Find Pods Using Specific Image

Task:

1. Find all pods using image nginx:1.19
2. Show pod name and namespace
3. Search across all namespaces

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Question 18: Monitor Log File for Errors

Task:

1. Continuously monitor file /var/log/app.log
2. Show only lines containing "ERROR"
3. Display in real-time as errors occur

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Question 19: Export Running Pod YAML

Task:

1. Get the YAML definition of running pod api-server
2. Remove all status and metadata fields (clean export)
3. Save to file api-server-clean.yaml

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Question 20: Calculate Total CPU Requests

Task:

1. Get CPU requests for all pods in namespace production
2. Sum them up
3. Display total in millicores

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Quick Reference

Task	Likely Tools
Extract columns	awk, cut, custom-columns
Filter lines	grep, awk
Count occurrences	wc -l, uniq -c
JSON extraction	jsonpath, jq
Text replacement	sed
Sort/unique	sort, uniq
Loops	for, while read
Real-time monitoring	tail -f, kubectl logs -f

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