010-160 Practice Questions 2 — 50 Questions

Question 1

Which THREE of the following are environment variables commonly seen in a Linux shell?

Accepted Answer

USER. USER is a standard environment variable that holds the username of the currently logged-in user, so option A is correct. HOME is a standard environment variable that specifies the current user's home directory path, making option C correct. PATH is a standard environment variable that lists the directories the shell searches for executable commands, so option E is correct. ROOT (B) is not a standard environment variable; it is a common username or directory name, not a shell variable. FILE (D) is not a standard environment variable either; it is only a special variable inside Makefiles, not a general Linux shell environment variable.

Answer

ROOT

Answer

FILE

Question 2

A community college is designing an introductory course on Linux and open source culture. The instructor wants to include activities that reflect the collaborative practices of the open source community. (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Asking students to fork a project on a public hosting platform and open a pull request with improvements.. Open source collaboration centers on transparent, public participation. Filing bug reports and patches through public trackers, and forking repositories to submit pull requests, are authentic activities that teach the tools and social norms of community development. Reverse engineering proprietary code, hoarding changes, and requiring paid licenses contradict those practices.

Answer

Requiring students to reverse engineer a proprietary application and publish its source code.

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Having students purchase a commercial license before reading any project documentation.

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Instructing students to keep all modifications private and never share changes with the upstream project.

Question 3

You are hardening a server and must ensure that ordinary users cannot read the contents of `/etc/shadow`. Which two statements about `/etc/shadow` access are correct? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Its permissions are typically 640 with owner root and group shadow, so only root and members of the shadow group can read it.. On typical Linux systems /etc/shadow is mode 640 with owner root and group shadow, leaving the others category with no access, which is what keeps ordinary users from reading password hashes. Those hashes are salted but still vulnerable to offline cracking if exposed, so read restriction is the key control. Direct reads happen through privileged programs, not through ordinary user access.

Answer

It is readable by all users because the passwd command must consult it during a normal login.

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It can be read by any user who supplies the correct password through the sudo prompt.

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Its contents are encrypted with a system-wide key stored in /etc/crypttab, so permissions are largely irrelevant.

Question 4

A firm wants to contribute back to the open source community to improve their internal Linux tools. What is the best practice for submitting these improvements?

Accepted Answer

Submit patches or pull requests to the original project's repository.. The best practice for contributing improvements back to an open source project is to submit patches or pull requests to the original project's repository. This allows the maintainers to review, test, and merge the changes, ensuring the improvements benefit the entire community and are maintained in future releases. It also respects the project's governance and licensing.

Answer

Post the code on a private internal company wiki.

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Rename the software and sell it as a proprietary product.

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Fork the code and never release the changes publicly.

Question 5

You are copying a directory named 'source' to 'destination' and want to ensure all subdirectories and file attributes are preserved. Which flag is essential?

Accepted Answer

cp -a. The `-a` (archive) flag is a combination of `-dR --preserve=all`, which recursively copies directories while preserving symbolic links, file permissions, ownership, timestamps, and extended attributes. This makes it the only option that ensures all subdirectories and file attributes are preserved in a single command. While `-p` preserves some attributes, it does not recurse into subdirectories, and `-r` recurses but does not preserve attributes. Therefore, `cp -a` is essential for a complete archive copy.

Answer

cp -p

Answer

cp -v

Answer

cp -r

Question 6

A system administrator wants to check the partition table of a specific disk. Which tool is used for this?

Accepted Answer

fdisk. fdisk is the classic interactive tool for viewing and editing a disk's partition table, invoked as 'fdisk -l /dev/sda' to list partitions. It reads the MBR or GPT structures on the device and displays partition start/end sectors, sizes, types, and IDs. This makes it the correct tool for inspecting partition layout.

Answer

fsck

Answer

df

Answer

mkfs

Question 7

What is the purpose of the /proc directory in Linux?

Accepted Answer

To provide information about kernel and processes.. The /proc directory is a virtual filesystem (procfs) that provides a real-time interface to kernel data structures and running process information. It does not exist on disk — the kernel generates its contents dynamically, exposing details like CPU info (/proc/cpuinfo), memory usage (/proc/meminfo), and per-process data under /proc/[PID]/. This makes it the correct answer for providing kernel and process information.

Answer

To store configuration files for boot.

Answer

To store user passwords.

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To store temporary system files.

Question 8

You are logged into a terminal and want to identify your current working directory. Which command should you execute?

Accepted Answer

pwd. The pwd (print working directory) command displays the absolute path of the current working directory. It is the standard Linux command for identifying where you are in the filesystem hierarchy.

Answer

whoami

Answer

ls

Answer

cd

Question 9

To see the contents of a directory, which command is standard?

Accepted Answer

ls. `ls` is the standard POSIX/Linux command for listing directory contents, and it is present on every Linux distribution as part of coreutils. It reads directory entries via the readdir() system call and prints them to stdout, with options like -l, -a, and -h for formatting. It is the canonical answer for 'list directory contents' on Linux.

Answer

dir

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list

Answer

cat

Question 10

Which TWO of the following commands can be used to display the contents of a text file?

Accepted Answer

cat. Option C, cat, is correct because the cat command concatenates and prints file contents directly to standard output, making it the standard way to display a text file's contents. Option D, less, is correct because it is a pager that displays a text file's contents one screen at a time, allowing scrolling and searching through the file. The unmarked options do not belong: cd changes the current working directory, mkdir creates a new directory, and mv moves or renames files or directories—none of these display file contents.

Answer

cd

Answer

mkdir

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mv

Question 11

A Linux administrator is reviewing user account files and needs to understand where user information is stored. Which TWO of the following files contain user account details? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

/etc/shadow. User account details are primarily stored in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. The former holds general account information, while the latter holds encrypted passwords and aging data. Other files like /etc/group and /etc/gshadow pertain to groups, and /etc/login.defs provides configuration defaults, not actual account records.

Answer

/etc/login.defs

Answer

/etc/group

Answer

/etc/gshadow

Question 12

Which THREE of the following items are typically found in the /etc directory?

Accepted Answer

/etc/fstab. /etc/fstab (B) is correct because it is the standard configuration file listing filesystems to be mounted at boot, including mount points, filesystem types, and mount options. /etc/passwd (C) is correct because it is the traditional system file storing user account information such as usernames, UIDs, GIDs, home directories, and login shells. /etc/hosts (D) is correct because it provides static hostname-to-IP-address mappings used by the system resolver before DNS. The other options do not belong: /etc/tmp (A) is not a standard file or directory in /etc, and /etc/bin (E) is not standard since executable binaries reside in /bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin, not under /etc.

Answer

/etc/tmp

Answer

/etc/bin

Question 13

Which command removes a group named 'tempgroup' from the system?

Accepted Answer

groupdel tempgroup. The groupdel command is the standard Linux utility used to remove a group from the system. It deletes the group entry from /etc/group and /etc/gshadow, and is the correct tool for this task.

Answer

usermod -r tempgroup

Answer

grouprm tempgroup

Answer

removegroup tempgroup

Question 14

A technician needs to identify the amount of RAM installed in a server without opening the chassis. Which command provides this information from the command line?

Accepted Answer

free -m. `free -m` reads memory statistics from /proc/meminfo and displays total, used, free, shared, buff/cache, and available RAM in mebibytes. It is the standard command-line tool for reporting installed and currently used physical memory without touching the hardware.

Answer

uptime

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lsblk

Answer

df -h

Question 15

What is the primary role of the 'Free Software Foundation' (FSF)?

Accepted Answer

Advocating for computer user freedom and maintaining the GNU project.. The Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded by Richard Stallman in 1985, exists to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of free software users. It is the principal organizational sponsor of the GNU Project, which develops much of the userland software (bash, coreutils, GCC, Emacs) that forms a GNU/Linux system.

Answer

Manufacturing servers and hardware for Linux.

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Providing commercial support for Linux users globally.

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Developing Linux distribution patches for security.

Question 16

A junior administrator is reading documentation for a command-line utility and sees that it is licensed under the GPLv3. The administrator wants to modify the code and distribute the modified version to a colleague outside the company. Which statement best describes the obligation imposed by the GPLv3 in this situation?

Accepted Answer

The modified version must be distributed under the same GPLv3 license, with the complete corresponding source code made available.. The GPLv3 uses copyleft to ensure that modified versions distributed to others remain free software. When the administrator shares the modified utility with someone outside the company, that act of distribution triggers the requirement to license the derivative under GPLv3 and provide the corresponding source code. Internal use without distribution would not trigger these obligations, but external sharing does.

Answer

The modified version may be kept proprietary as long as the original author is credited in the documentation.

Answer

No obligations apply because the colleague is an individual rather than a company or legal entity.

Answer

The modified version can be relicensed under any OSI-approved license, including a permissive one such as MIT.

Question 17

You want to search for a file named 'notes.txt' starting from the root directory. Which command is most efficient?

Accepted Answer

find / -name notes.txt. The `find` command is purpose-built for filesystem traversal and can search by name, size, time, permissions, and more. Running `find / -name notes.txt` starts at the root directory and recursively descends every subdirectory, matching files whose basename is exactly 'notes.txt'. It is the most efficient and correct tool because it operates directly on directory entries via the kernel, without spawning extra processes per file.

Answer

grep -r notes.txt /

Answer

search notes.txt /

Answer

ls -R / | grep notes.txt

Question 18

You want to replace every occurrence of 'old' with 'new' in the file 'data.txt' and view the result in the terminal. Which command achieves this?

Accepted Answer

sed 's/old/new/g' data.txt. The sed command with the 's/old/new/g' expression performs a global substitution, replacing every occurrence of 'old' with 'new' on each line of data.txt. By default, sed writes the modified content to standard output, which displays the result in the terminal without altering the original file. The 'g' flag is essential because without it, only the first occurrence per line would be replaced.

Answer

sed 's/old/new/' data.txt

Answer

grep 's/old/new/g' data.txt

Answer

sed 'r/old/new/g' data.txt

Question 19

If you want to view a long text file page by page, which command is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

less filename. The less command is a pager that displays a file one screenful at a time, allowing the user to scroll forward and backward with arrow keys, Page Up/Down, and search with '/'. It reads the file lazily and does not load the entire content into memory, making it ideal for viewing long text files interactively. This is the canonical tool for page-by-page file inspection on Linux.

Answer

tail filename

Answer

cat filename

Answer

grep filename

Question 20

A system administrator needs to check the version of the Linux kernel installed on a production server. Which command is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

uname -r. The `uname -r` command prints the kernel release version, which is exactly what the administrator needs. `uname` is a standard Unix/Linux utility that displays system information, and the `-r` flag specifically outputs the kernel release. This is the most direct and appropriate command for checking the kernel version on a production server.

Answer

check-kernel

Answer

ls /boot

Answer

cat /etc/version