010-160 Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A junior administrator is documenting the governance of a Linux distribution for an internal wiki. She needs to describe how a community-driven distribution typically makes technical decisions, contrasting it with a single-vendor model. Which statement accurately describes the community-driven governance model?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Decisions are made through elected or appointed councils and open mailing-list discussion, with contributions from many independent developers and organizations. Community-driven distributions distribute authority through open mailing lists, project constitutions, technical committees, and elections, with contributors from many independent organizations. This transparency and shared control contrast with single-vendor models, where one company sets the roadmap and holds decisive authority. The accurate description is therefore the one emphasizing councils, open discussion, and broad independent participation, not concentrated ownership by a sponsor or a non-developer user panel.

Answer

A single paid maintainer owns the source tree and approves every commit before release

Answer

Decisions are made exclusively by the distribution's largest corporate sponsor, which also owns the trademark

Answer

Technical direction is set by a rotating committee of end users who are not developers and cannot modify source code

Question 2

A junior Linux administrator is documenting the origins of the software running on company servers. The administrator notes that the Linux kernel is developed and released by a large, distributed community rather than a single company. Which statement best describes how the Linux kernel project is governed and maintained?

Accepted Answer

Linus Torvalds acts as the final maintainer and releases official kernel versions, while subsystem maintainers review and merge patches into their areas before changes reach the mainline tree.. The kernel follows a layered maintainer model. Contributors submit patches, subsystem maintainers review and merge them into their trees, and Linus Torvalds pulls those trees to produce official releases. This structure combines open participation with disciplined review, allowing a global community to collaborate while maintaining a single, coherent mainline kernel that distributions can package.

Answer

Kernel development is managed by a rotating committee of distribution vendors who vote on each patch before it is accepted into any release.

Answer

The Linux Foundation owns the copyright to all kernel code and directly employs every developer who contributes patches to the mainline tree.

Answer

Any contributor may push code directly to the mainline kernel repository without review, since the kernel is a purely decentralized project with no release authority.

Question 3

Which THREE of the following represent ways to refer to the home directory?

Accepted Answer

~. Option A (~) is correct because the tilde is the shell's standard shorthand for the current user's home directory, expanded by the shell before command execution. Option C ($HOME) is correct because HOME is the environment variable that stores the absolute path of the current user's home directory, and referencing $HOME resolves to that path. Option D (/home/user) is correct because on typical Linux systems the home directory for a user named 'user' is literally located at /home/user, making it a valid absolute path reference. Option B (..) is not correct because it refers to the parent directory of the current working directory, not the home directory. Option E (/) is not correct because it denotes the root of the filesystem, which is distinct from a user's home directory.

Answer

..

Answer

/

Question 4

Which TWO of the following commands can be used to redirect input from a file?

Accepted Answer

cat file | command. Option B (cat file | command) is correct because piping the output of cat file into another command feeds that file's contents to the command's standard input, effectively redirecting input from the file. Option C (<) is correct because the input redirection operator < explicitly redirects a command's standard input to come from a file, as in command < file. The unmarked options do not belong: && is a logical AND operator that conditionally chains commands based on exit status, while > and >> are output redirection operators that send standard output to a file (truncating and appending, respectively), not input.

Answer

&&

Answer

>

Answer

>>

Question 5

Which symbol represents the current user's home directory in the shell?

Accepted Answer

~. The tilde symbol (~) is a shell metacharacter that expands to the absolute path of the current user's home directory (e.g., /home/username on Linux or /Users/username on macOS). It is recognized by the shell before command execution, so commands like cd ~ or ls ~/Documents work regardless of the current working directory. This is a standard feature in POSIX shells like Bash, Zsh, and Dash.

Answer

.

Answer

..

Answer

$

Question 6

Which TWO of the following are commands to delete files or directories?

Accepted Answer

rmdir. Option A, rmdir, is correct because it is the standard Linux/Unix command used to remove empty directories from the filesystem. Option B, rm, is correct because it is the standard command for deleting files and, with the -r (recursive) flag, directories and their contents. The other options do not delete anything: ls lists directory contents, cp copies files or directories, and mv moves or renames files or directories without removing them.

Answer

ls

Answer

cp

Answer

mv

Question 7

A user is at the shell prompt and wants to display the current working directory. Which command should be used?

Accepted Answer

pwd. The pwd command prints the absolute pathname of the current working directory. Other commands like cd change directories, ls lists contents, and dir is not the standard tool for this purpose. pwd is a fundamental command for orientation in the filesystem.

Answer

dir

Answer

ls

Answer

cd

Question 8

Which command is used to clear the terminal screen?

Accepted Answer

clear. The `clear` command is the standard Unix/Linux utility that clears the terminal screen by sending the appropriate escape sequence (typically `\033[H\033[2J` or `\033[3J`) to the terminal emulator. It is part of the ncurses package and works by consulting the `TERM` environment variable to determine the correct control characters for the current terminal type. This makes it the correct and portable choice for clearing the screen in a shell session.

Answer

clean

Answer

wipe

Answer

reset

Question 9

While troubleshooting a service, a technician runs `ps aux` and sees a process in state `Z`. The process's parent is PID 1. Which statement best describes what the technician is observing?

Accepted Answer

The process has terminated, but its exit status has not yet been read by its parent.. A process in state Z is a zombie: it has already terminated, but its parent has not yet collected its exit status. The kernel retains a small entry until the parent calls wait(). Since the parent is PID 1, which normally reaps promptly, a lingering zombie points to a reaping problem rather than a running or stopped process.

Answer

The process is sleeping and is waiting for a signal to wake it.

Answer

The process is running in the foreground and has high CPU priority.

Answer

The process is stopped by a job control signal and can be resumed with `fg`.

Question 10

A support technician is helping a user install a new desktop environment on a Linux workstation. The user asks which organization maintains the GNOME desktop project and how its community governance generally operates. Which answer is most accurate?

Accepted Answer

GNOME is maintained by the GNOME Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the project's community and releases.. The GNOME desktop is a free software project supported by the GNOME Foundation, a non-profit that coordinates releases, infrastructure, and community activities. It is not owned by a single vendor or standards body. Understanding the role of foundations helps technicians explain how community-driven projects are sustained and governed in the Linux ecosystem.

Answer

GNOME is a proprietary product owned by Canonical and is only available on Ubuntu systems.

Answer

GNOME is maintained by the Linux Foundation, which also holds the copyright to all GNOME source code.

Answer

GNOME is governed by the IEEE under a formal standards process and is not considered open source software.

Question 11

When evaluating Linux distributions, what distinguishes a 'rolling release' distribution from a 'fixed release' distribution?

Accepted Answer

Rolling releases provide continuous updates, while fixed releases use a versioned lifecycle.. A rolling release distribution provides continuous updates to the latest software versions without distinct version numbers, while a fixed release distribution has periodic versioned releases with defined support lifecycles. This is the key distinction.

Answer

Fixed releases are only available for server environments.

Answer

Rolling releases require a complete wipe and reinstall for every update.

Answer

Rolling releases are always more secure than fixed releases.

Question 12

An administrator creates a directory `/srv/dropbox` with mode 1777 so that several contractors can deposit files. Later, one contractor reports that a file they uploaded vanished, and `ls -l /srv/dropbox` shows the directory still has its sticky bit set. Which statement best explains the situation?

Accepted Answer

The sticky bit prevents deletion only by non-owners, so the file's owner or the directory owner could still remove it.. The sticky bit on a directory limits deletion to the file's owner, the directory's owner, and root. Because contractors own their uploaded files and the administrator owns the directory, either could have unlinked the missing entry through normal means. The bit was never a guarantee against removal by those parties, so the disappearance is consistent with the directory's configured behavior.

Answer

Files in a sticky directory are moved to a hidden trash folder when the session ends.

Answer

The sticky bit only takes effect when the directory is also setgid, so it had no protective effect here.

Answer

The sticky bit was cleared by the upload and the directory now behaves as a normal world-writable directory.

Question 13

Which TWO of the following are recognized categories of Linux distributions based on their purpose?

Accepted Answer

General Purpose distributions. Linux distributions are commonly categorized by purpose, and general-purpose distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian are designed for broad desktop, server, and workstation use across many workloads. Option D (Specialized distributions) is also correct because this category covers distros built for a specific purpose, such as Kali Linux for penetration testing, pfSense for firewalling/routing, or Raspbian for Raspberry Pi hardware. Options A, B, and E are not recognized purpose-based categories: 'hardware-exclusive' is not a standard classification (hardware-targeted distros fall under specialized), the Linux kernel is open source so 'closed-source kernel distributions' is not a valid category, and 'proprietary-only' is not a recognized distribution category since most distros mix open-source and some proprietary components.

Answer

Hardware-exclusive distributions

Answer

Closed-source kernel distributions

Answer

Proprietary-Only distributions

Question 14

A junior administrator runs `chmod g+s /srv/reports` on a directory that is owned by root:finance and then creates a file inside it as the user `alice`, who is a member of the finance group. Which ownership will the newly created file have?

Accepted Answer

alice:finance, because SGID on a directory forces group inheritance from the directory. The SGID bit on a directory changes group inheritance: files and subdirectories created within it receive the directory's group rather than the creator's primary group. Because /srv/reports is owned by root:finance, alice's new file is recorded as alice:finance. This is the standard mechanism for keeping shared project directories consistently group-owned so that all members of finance retain access.

Answer

root:finance, because the directory owner's group is inherited and the owner is root

Answer

alice:root, because the file inherits the group of the parent process's effective user

Answer

alice:alice, because the creating user's primary group is always used

Question 15

A user runs `umask` and sees `0022`. They create a new regular file with `touch report.txt`. Which permissions will the new file most likely have, and why?

Accepted Answer

-rw-r--r--, because the umask is subtracted from a base of 666 for regular files.. For regular files, the requested creation mode is 666 because the kernel withholds execute bits from the base; the umask is then used to clear the corresponding bits. With umask 0022, group and other write are cleared, yielding 644, which ls shows as rw-r--r--. Directories differ because their base is 777, which is why the same umask produces rwxr-xr-x on a new directory.

Answer

-rw-------, because the umask removes all group and other access on files.

Answer

-rw-rw-r--, because the umask is added to the base mode rather than subtracted.

Answer

-rwxr-xr-x, because the umask is subtracted from a base of 777 for all new objects.