System and Network Tools

Question 1

Define Network Interface Cards (NIC)

Answer 1

hardware components allowing communication between network and machine

they implement physical and datalink layers

Question 2

Most modern machines come with several NICs like

Answer 2

wireless, ethernet and bluetooth
virtual nics if VPN or VM is used

Question 3

What address do NIC cards have

Answer 3

48-bit (12 hex) MAC address

Question 4

However, since a NIC can have several virtual
interfaces, the OS needs other methods to identify these interfaces. On Windows, there
are four methods:

Answer 4

UUID (128-bits) (32 hex)

Name <type>_<index>
type like ethernet or wireless</index></type>

Friendly Name easier to remember than name

Description

Question 5

On Windows 11, you can get full information about the system’s NICs through

what about unix?

Answer 5

SI -> C -> N -> Adapter
or
ipconfig /all

lshw or ip commands

Question 6

This function is used to get a list of NICs, both physical and virtual, for the underlying
device.

Answer 6

socket.if_nameindex()

list of tuples (index, name)

If fails OSError

Question 7

If you have a NIC name and you want the index, then you can use the following function:

To do the reverse index and get NIC name?

Answer 7

socket.if_nametoindex(nic_name)

socket.if_indextoname(index)

Question 8

Define The platform Module

Answer 8

built-in python modules provides various system information about platform in which python is running

Question 9

platform modules is defined under what category

Answer 9

generic os services

Question 10

relevant platform functions

Answer 10

architecture()
machine()
processor()
node()
system()
platform()
win32_ver()
python_version()
python_implementation()

Question 11

what does architecture () return

Answer 11

bits and linkage format

Question 12

what does node () return

Answer 12

hostname
same as
socket.gethostname()

Question 13

what does system() return

Answer 13

operating system

Question 14

What does platform return

Answer 14

a single string representing the underlying platform

Question 15

what does win32_ver() return

Answer 15

a tuple that contains some information about the windows system like release and version

Question 16

what does python_version() return

Answer 16

a string with the version

Question 17

The os module in Python is a very large module that contains a large number of functions
to perform:

Answer 17

Miscellaneous operating system interfaces

Question 18

relevant os module functions

Answer 18

environ —-not function
getenv(key)
putenv(key)
getlogin()
listdrives()
stat(path)
system(command)
cpu_count()

Question 19

What does environ do?

Answer 19

displays environment variables in the system

-> returns a mapping object where the key is a string of variable and the value is a string for its corresponding value.

Question 20

what does getenv(key) do?

Answer 20

return the environment variable value for the key

Question 21

what does putenv(key,val)

Answer 21

sets environment variable key to the value

Question 22

getlogin() function

Answer 22

returns the name of the user logged in

whoami

Question 23

what does listdrives() return

Answer 23

a list of the drives on a windows system

fsutil fsinfo drives in cmd

Question 24

what does stat(path) return

Answer 24

information about a file

like file size, creation time

Question 25

os. system(command) does?

Answer 25

executes command in a subshell

Question 26

The Python System Library (psutil) Module does/purpose/definition

Answer 26

provides rich list of functions that can be used to collect system information not a part of built-in standard python libraries ==> pip install psutil

Question 27

description of some important functions defined in the psutil module:

Answer 27

net_if_addrs() disk_partitions() cpu_count(logical) virtual_memory() disk_usage(path) net_connections() sensors_battery() users() pids() net_if_addrs net_connections disk_usage disk_partitions users pids cpu_count sensors_battery virtual memory

Question 28

what does net_if_addrs() return

Answer 28

returns a dictionary of addresses associated with each NIC key is NIC friendly name and value is a tuple of (MAC, ipv4, ipv6, +)

Question 29

what does disk_paritions() return

Answer 29

number of disk partitions list of named tuples

Question 30

what does virtual_memory() return

Answer 30

returns a named tuple statistics about the memory like size of physical memory (RAM) used space free space

Question 31

disk_usage(path) return shit

Answer 31

returns a named tuple consisting of disk space statistics of the given path e.g. total space, available space, used space

Question 32

what does users() return

Answer 32

list of named tuples, each containing information about currently connected users

Question 33

what does net_connections() return

Answer 33

Return a list of named tuples of system-wide socket connections

Question 34

what does pids() return

Answer 34

Returns a sorted list of current running PIDs