010-160 Timed Practice Test 2 — 10 Questions

Question 1

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?

10 minute time limit — choose an answer to begin.

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 2

A Linux system administrator notices that the /var/log directory is filling up quickly. They want to find the largest files within that directory tree to identify what is consuming space. Which command will accomplish this?

Accepted Answer

du -ah /var/log | sort -rh | head -n 10. The combination of du -ah, sort -rh, and head -n 10 provides a sorted list of the largest files and directories under /var/log. This allows the administrator to quickly identify space hogs. Other commands either filter by size, limit to one directory level, or show filesystem-wide usage, which are not as effective for this specific task.

Answer

df -h /var/log

Answer

ls -lS /var/log

Answer

find /var/log -type f -size +100M

Question 3

Which of the following commands is used to create an empty file or update the timestamp of an existing file?

Accepted Answer

touch. The `touch` command is specifically designed to create an empty file if it does not exist, or update the access and modification timestamps of an existing file to the current time. It does this by making a `utime()` system call, which sets the file's timestamps without altering its content. This is the standard Linux/Unix utility for timestamp manipulation and empty file creation.

Answer

cp

Answer

mkdir

Answer

mv

Question 4

Why do many enterprise Linux distributions choose to delay the inclusion of the absolute latest kernel version?

Accepted Answer

Because they prioritize stability and extensive testing to ensure production uptime.. Enterprise distributions such as RHEL, SLES, and Ubuntu LTS deliberately backport fixes to older, well-tested kernels rather than shipping the newest upstream release. This prioritizes stability, hardware/driver compatibility, and predictable behavior so that production workloads and certified ISV applications continue to run without regression. Extensive QA, regression testing, and vendor certification cycles take time, which is why enterprise kernels lag mainline.

Answer

Because the latest kernel is always incompatible with proprietary software.

Answer

Because they are legally required to wait 12 months.

Answer

Because they lack the technical staff to compile new kernels.

Question 5

Which TWO of the following tools allow you to manage disk partitions?

Accepted Answer

fdisk. fdisk (A) is a classic Linux command-line utility used to create, delete, resize, and manage disk partitions on MBR and (in recent versions) GPT disks, so it directly satisfies the requirement. parted (B) is another partition-management tool that supports both MBR and GPT partitioning schemes and can create, resize, move, and delete partitions, making it equally valid for this task. The remaining options do not manage partitions: cat (C) concatenates and displays file contents, sed (D) is a stream editor for text transformation, and grep (E) searches text for pattern matches.

Answer

cat

Answer

sed

Answer

grep

Question 6

You are configuring a temporary directory where multiple users save files. To ensure that users can only delete their own files and not files created by others, what must you set?

Accepted Answer

chmod +t /tmp/shared. The sticky bit (chmod +t) on a shared directory ensures that only the file's owner (or root) can delete or rename files within it, even if the directory is world-writable. This is exactly the behaviour needed for /tmp-style shared drop boxes where multiple users write files but must not remove each other's data. The kernel enforces this by checking the file owner against the deleting user before permitting unlink or rename.

Answer

chown root /tmp/shared

Answer

chmod 777 /tmp/shared

Answer

umask 077

Question 7

A junior administrator needs to let a colleague in the accounting group read and write the shared report at /srv/reports/q3.csv, but no one outside that group should have any access. The file is currently owned by the administrator. Which command accomplishes this by changing only the group ownership to 'accounting'?

Accepted Answer

chgrp accounting /srv/reports/q3.csv. Group ownership is stored as a numeric GID in the file's inode and is changed with chgrp, or equivalently with chown using a colon separator. Using chgrp accounting changes only that metadata field, so the subsequent permission bits for the group category will apply to accounting members. Tools that edit user accounts or that only touch mode bits cannot perform this change.

Answer

chmod g=accounting /srv/reports/q3.csv

Answer

usermod -g accounting /srv/reports/q3.csv

Answer

chown accounting /srv/reports/q3.csv

Question 8

A systems administrator is evaluating career paths within the Linux and open source ecosystem. The administrator is interested in roles that combine system operations with software development practices. Which two activities are most characteristic of a DevOps-oriented Linux role? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Writing and maintaining infrastructure as code using tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or shell scripts to automate provisioning and configuration.. DevOps-oriented Linux roles emphasize automation and collaboration between operations and development. Writing infrastructure as code and building CI/CD pipelines are two defining activities because they replace manual, inconsistent processes with versioned, repeatable automation. Manual installations, annual freezes, and avoiding version control represent traditional practices that DevOps seeks to move away from.

Answer

Avoiding version control systems and keeping configuration changes only in local notes on each administrator's workstation for speed.

Answer

Manually installing each server from physical installation media and configuring every service by hand to ensure unique, tailored setups.

Answer

Restricting all application changes to an annual release window and freezing the environment for the rest of the year to minimize risk.

Question 9

You need to change the ownership of a file to user 'admin'. Which command is the correct way to do this?

Accepted Answer

chown admin file. The `chown` (change owner) command is specifically designed to change the ownership of files and directories. Running `chown admin file` sets the user 'admin' as the owner of 'file'. This is the correct and standard tool for ownership changes on Linux.

Answer

usermod admin file

Answer

chmod admin file

Answer

chgrp admin file

Question 10

You want to change the primary group of an existing user named 'bob' to 'staff'. Which command should you use?

Accepted Answer

usermod -g staff bob. The usermod command modifies existing user account attributes, and the -g flag specifically sets the user's primary group (the GID stored in /etc/passwd). Running 'usermod -g staff bob' changes bob's primary group to staff while leaving his supplementary group memberships intact. This is the standard, correct way to reassign a primary group on a Linux system.

Answer

groupmod -n staff bob

Answer

chgrp staff bob

Answer

usermod -G staff bob