010-160 Finding Your Way ON A Linux System Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A junior administrator opens a terminal in their home directory and runs the command `cd /var/log` followed by `cd ..`. Which directory are they now in?

Accepted Answer

/var. The shell tracks a current working directory, and `cd` modifies it. An absolute path such as `/var/log` jumps directly to that location regardless of where the user started, while the special entry `..` always denotes the parent of the current directory. Applying `..` once from `/var/log` therefore lands in `/var`, the immediate parent of the log directory.

Answer

/var/log

Answer

/home

Answer

/

Question 2

A user wants to see the manual page for the 'passwd' command, but is unsure which section contains the command documentation. Which command displays the manual page for 'passwd' from section 1?

Accepted Answer

man 1 passwd. Manual pages are organized into numbered sections, and section 1 holds user commands. Because 'passwd' also appears in section 5 as a file format, explicitly specifying section 1 with 'man 1 passwd' guarantees the command documentation is shown, which is exactly what the user requested.

Answer

man -k passwd

Answer

man 5 passwd

Answer

man -f passwd

Question 3

A junior administrator needs to display the full contents of /etc/hostname and also see line numbers next to each line. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

cat -n /etc/hostname. The cat command copies file contents to standard output, and its -n option prepends a line number to every line, including empty ones. That combination displays the entire file with numbering in a single non-interactive command. The alternatives either misuse an option, open an interactive pager, or merely count lines instead of showing the content.

Answer

wc -l /etc/hostname

Answer

less -N /etc/hostname

Answer

head -n /etc/hostname

Question 4

A user has a file named notes.txt in /home/alex and wants to create a copy named notes_backup.txt in the same directory without altering the original. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

cp notes.txt notes_backup.txt. Copying a file while keeping the original is exactly what cp does. The syntax cp source destination creates a new file with the same content and leaves the source in place. Renaming with mv, linking with ln, or redirecting with cat either removes the original name, shares the same inode, or lacks the robustness of a dedicated copy utility.

Answer

ln notes.txt notes_backup.txt

Answer

cat notes.txt > notes_backup.txt

Answer

mv notes.txt notes_backup.txt

Question 5

A support technician must read a very large log file, /var/log/messages, and only wants the portion that begins with the line containing the timestamp 'Mar 14 09:15' and continues to the end of the file. Which command should the technician run?

Accepted Answer

sed -n '/Mar 14 09:15/,$p' /var/log/messages. Stream editors such as sed can select a range defined by a pattern and a terminating address. Using the timestamp as the starting address and the end-of-file symbol as the closing address prints precisely the tail portion that begins at the matching line, which is what the technician needs when the log is too large to page through manually.

Answer

grep -c 'Mar 14 09:15' /var/log/messages

Answer

tail -n 50 /var/log/messages

Answer

head -n 50 /var/log/messages

Question 6

A technician needs to locate every file under '/usr/share' whose name ends with '.conf'. Which command produces this list by searching the directory tree?

Accepted Answer

find /usr/share -name '*.conf'. Searching a directory tree for files by name pattern is the purpose of find with the -name test. The which command only checks PATH executables, locate relies on a possibly stale database and does not handle anchored globs the same way, and grep examines file contents rather than names. Quoting the pattern ensures the shell passes it literally to find.

Answer

which '*.conf' /usr/share

Answer

locate '/usr/share/*.conf'

Answer

grep -r '/usr/share' '*.conf'

Question 7

You are in the directory '/home/alex/projects' and want to switch to the parent directory of your current location using a relative path. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

cd ... In relative path notation, '..' denotes the parent directory. Executing 'cd ..' from '/home/alex/projects' changes the working directory to '/home/alex', which is exactly the parent of the current location. The other options either stay in place, jump to root, or jump to the home directory.

Answer

cd /

Answer

cd .

Answer

cd ~

Question 8

A technician needs to inspect a configuration file located at `/etc/example/app.conf` without changing the current working directory, and they want the shell prompt to keep showing their present location afterward. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

cat /etc/example/app.conf. Reading a file never requires the shell to relocate. Supplying the absolute path `/etc/example/app.conf` to `cat` lets the kernel resolve the file from the filesystem root while the process working directory stays unchanged. The prompt continues to report the original directory because no `cd` was executed, which is precisely the behavior the technician requested.

Answer

cd /etc/example && cat app.conf

Answer

less /etc/example/app.conf

Answer

cd /etc/example; cat app.conf; cd -

Question 9

A user wants to create a symbolic link named latest.conf in the current directory that points to /etc/app/versions/v2.conf. Which command creates this link correctly?

Accepted Answer

ln -s /etc/app/versions/v2.conf latest.conf. Creating a symbolic link requires the -s option, and the argument order is target first, link name second. Using the absolute target path makes the link resolve correctly regardless of the directory from which it is later accessed. Omitting -s yields a hard link, reversing the arguments misplaces the link, and -h does not select symbolic link creation.

Answer

ln -s latest.conf /etc/app/versions/v2.conf

Answer

ln /etc/app/versions/v2.conf latest.conf

Answer

ln -h /etc/app/versions/v2.conf latest.conf

Question 10

A developer working in /srv/project wants to create a symbolic link named latest that points to the file releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz, keeping the link inside /srv/project. Which command creates this link correctly?

Accepted Answer

ln -s releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz latest. Symbolic links are created with ln -s, and the operand order is target first, link name second. Naming the relative path releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz as the target and latest as the new link places the symlink in the current directory and stores the relative path, which is what the developer intended.

Answer

cp -s releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz latest

Answer

ln -s latest releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz

Answer

ln releases/v2.1/app.tar.gz latest

Question 11

While exploring a system, an administrator runs `ls -a` inside a directory and sees entries named `.` and `..` in addition to regular files. What do these two entries represent?

Accepted Answer

The current directory and its parent directory. The single dot is a reference to the directory containing it, and the double dot references that directory's parent. Both are ordinary directory entries maintained by the filesystem, hidden from default listings because their names begin with a dot. They underpin relative path resolution, allowing commands to address the current or parent directory without spelling out full absolute paths.

Answer

Symbolic links pointing to the filesystem root

Answer

Hidden configuration files created by the user

Answer

Temporary files scheduled for deletion by the system

Question 12

An administrator wants to create a hard link named 'report_link' to an existing file '/data/report.txt' on the same filesystem. Which command creates this hard link?

Accepted Answer

ln /data/report.txt report_link. A hard link is created with ln followed by the existing file and the new link name, producing two directory entries that share one inode. The -s flag would create a symbolic link instead, and the link utility lacks that flag. While cp -l can also hard-link, ln is the direct, standard command for this operation.

Answer

cp -l /data/report.txt report_link

Answer

link -s /data/report.txt report_link

Answer

ln -s /data/report.txt report_link

Question 13

A technician is examining files in /var/tmp and needs to identify which entries are directories rather than regular files. Which two commands can provide this information? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

ls -l /var/tmp. Both ls -l and file reveal the nature of each entry: the long listing encodes the type in its first character, and the file utility prints a descriptive type for every argument. The remaining commands either print raw contents, summarize total disk usage, or count bytes, none of which separates directories from regular files in /var/tmp.

Answer

wc -c /var/tmp

Answer

cat /var/tmp/*

Answer

du -sh /var/tmp

Question 14

An operator is at a prompt and types cd - after having earlier changed from /etc/nginx to /var/www/html. What is the effect of that command?

Accepted Answer

It returns the shell to /etc/nginx, the previous working directory, and prints that path.. The shell maintains the OLDPWD variable and updates it after every successful directory change. The cd builtin treats a bare dash as a request to switch to that stored path and then prints it, giving a quick toggle between two working directories without retyping long paths.

Answer

It changes to the root directory because a lone dash is interpreted as the filesystem root.

Answer

It fails with an error because cd requires a valid directory path and a dash is not a path.

Answer

It moves up one level to the parent of the current directory, /var/www.

Question 15

An administrator is reviewing how pathnames are resolved on a Linux system and wants to identify statements that correctly describe absolute and relative paths. (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

The path `../docs/report.txt` is relative and refers to a file in a sibling directory of the current one.. Absolute paths anchor at the root because of the leading slash, while relative paths are interpreted against the process working directory. The `..` component lets a relative path climb to a parent and then descend elsewhere, which is how a sibling directory can be addressed without a full path. Two statements correctly describe these behaviors, and the remaining ones misstate resolution rules.

Answer

Any path containing a dot component is treated as an absolute path by the shell.

Answer

A relative path is resolved against the root directory when the shell's current directory is unset.

Answer

Two different relative paths can never resolve to the same file.