LPIC-1 Practice Test 29 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A Linux administrator needs to change the permissions of a directory named /shared so that only the owner can read, write, and execute, while group members can read and execute but not write, and others have no access. The administrator also wants any new files created inside /shared to inherit the group ownership of /shared. Which command sequence will achieve this?

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

Accepted Answer

chmod 750 /shared && chmod g+s /shared. Setting permissions to 750 restricts access appropriately: owner rwx, group rx, others none. The setgid bit on a directory ensures that new files and subdirectories inherit the directory's group ownership, which is essential for shared collaborative spaces. The combination of chmod 750 and chmod g+s achieves both the permission and group inheritance goals.

Answer

chmod 750 /shared && chmod u+s /shared

Answer

chmod 755 /shared && chmod g+s /shared

Answer

chmod 640 /shared && chmod g+s /shared

Question 2

A system administrator is troubleshooting a server that takes a long time to boot. The administrator wants to identify which systemd units are slowing down the boot process. Which TWO of the following commands can be used to analyze boot performance? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

systemd-analyze critical-chain. The systemd-analyze suite provides dedicated subcommands for boot performance. blame ranks units by initialization time, and critical-chain shows the dependency tree that determines total boot time. These tools directly measure and display timing data, unlike log inspection or unit state listing, which focus on errors or failures rather than duration.

Answer

systemctl list-units --state=failed

Answer

journalctl -b -p err

Answer

dmesg | grep -i 'time'

Question 3

A server has an LVM logical volume mounted at /data. The administrator needs to add a new physical disk to the volume group and then extend both the logical volume and the filesystem online, without unmounting. Which sequence of commands achieves this?

Accepted Answer

pvcreate /dev/sdc1; vgextend data_vg /dev/sdc1; lvextend -r -L +50G /data. Extending LVM storage online requires initializing the new device with pvcreate, adding it to the existing group with vgextend, and growing the logical volume with lvextend while using -r so the filesystem is expanded in the same step. Reversing the first two commands, creating a new volume group, or omitting the filesystem resize all leave the task incomplete or failing outright.

Answer

vgextend data_vg /dev/sdc1; pvcreate /dev/sdc1; lvextend -L +50G /data; resize2fs /data

Answer

pvcreate /dev/sdc1; vgextend data_vg /dev/sdc1; lvresize -L +50G /data; mount -o remount /data

Answer

pvcreate /dev/sdc1; vgcreate data_vg /dev/sdc1; lvextend -r -L +50G /data

Question 4

A Linux server uses nftables as its firewall. The administrator needs to allow incoming SSH (TCP/22) and HTTP (TCP/80) while dropping all other incoming traffic. Which TWO statements about implementing this are correct? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

The rule 'tcp dport { 22, 80 } accept' can be used to allow both SSH and HTTP in a single rule.. To filter incoming traffic with nftables, you must create a base chain with type filter and hook input. Allowing multiple ports can be done with a set in a single rule. The default policy should be drop to block other traffic, and connection tracking handles return traffic without output rules. Rules are not persistent unless saved and loaded at boot.

Answer

Rules must be added to the output chain to allow responses from the server to clients.

Answer

The default policy of the input chain must be set to accept to allow the specified ports.

Answer

The command 'nft add rule ip filter input tcp dport 22 accept' will persist across reboots by default.

Question 5

A backup operator needs to archive the entire /srv/projects tree, preserving permissions, ownership, and directory structure, into a single compressed file that can later be unpacked on another Linux host. Which TWO commands correctly produce such an archive? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

tar -cjf projects.tbz /srv/projects. Both tar invocations create a single compressed archive of the whole directory tree while retaining permissions, ownership, and layout. The only difference is the compressor: gzip via -z produces a .tgz, while bzip2 via -j produces a .tbz. Either output can be copied to another Linux system and unpacked to reproduce the original structure, which is exactly what the backup operator needs.

Answer

cp -a /srv/projects projects_copy

Answer

gzip -r /srv/projects

Answer

dd if=/srv/projects of=projects.img

Question 6

A script needs to read a file line by line, preserving leading and trailing whitespace and backslashes. Which loop construct should be used?

Accepted Answer

while IFS= read -r line; do echo "$line"; done < file.txt. Reading a file line by line while preserving exact content requires disabling both word splitting and backslash processing. Clearing IFS stops the shell from trimming leading and trailing whitespace, and the -r option stops backslash escapes from being interpreted. Using only one of these settings leaves the other behavior active and alters the data.

Answer

while read line; do echo "$line"; done < file.txt

Answer

while read -r line; do echo "$line"; done < file.txt

Answer

for line in $(cat file.txt); do echo "$line"; done

Question 7

A Linux server uses chrony for time synchronization. The administrator notices that the system clock is drifting by several seconds per day. Which command should she use to verify which NTP servers are currently selected and the estimated offset?

Accepted Answer

chronyc sources -v. The chronyc sources -v command provides a detailed list of all time sources, including which ones are currently selected for synchronization and their estimated offsets. This is exactly what the administrator needs to diagnose drift and verify server selection. The other commands either show only summary information or are not native to chrony.

Answer

ntpq -p

Answer

timedatectl status

Answer

chronyc tracking

Question 8

A Linux administrator needs to create a user account 'jsmith' with a home directory '/home/jsmith' and the default shell '/bin/bash'. The account must be created without creating a group with the same name. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

useradd -m -s /bin/bash -N jsmith. The useradd command with -m creates the home directory, -s sets the login shell, and -N prevents the creation of a group with the same name as the user. This satisfies all requirements: new account, specified home directory, specified shell, and no matching group. The other commands either use invalid options, wrong syntax, or are meant for modification rather than creation.

Answer

adduser -m -s /bin/bash -N jsmith

Answer

usermod -m -s /bin/bash -N jsmith

Answer

useradd -d /home/jsmith -s /bin/bash --no-group jsmith

Question 9

A technician needs to inspect a compressed log archive named app.log.gz without modifying it, and wants to view only the first 20 lines. The archive is 40 MB compressed. Which command accomplishes this most efficiently?

Accepted Answer

gunzip -c app.log.gz | head -n 20. Streaming the decompressed output to standard output with gunzip -c and piping into head reads only as many lines as needed while leaving the archive untouched. This avoids writing a full uncompressed copy and stops work early, which is the efficient and non-destructive way to peek at the start of a compressed log.

Answer

tar -xzf app.log.gz -O | head -n 20

Answer

zcat app.log.gz > app.log; head -n 20 app.log

Answer

gunzip app.log.gz && head -n 20 app.log

Question 10

A user runs the command 'grep -E '^[[:space:]]*[^#]' /etc/ssh/sshd_config' and receives no output. Which statement best explains this result?

Accepted Answer

The regular expression matches lines that start with optional whitespace followed by a non-# character, so no output means every non-empty line begins with # or is empty.. The command searches for lines that do not start with a comment character after optional whitespace. No output indicates that all non-empty lines begin with '#'. The -E flag does not alter the meaning of this pattern, and the character class [[:space:]] does not include newline in grep's line-oriented processing. The negation [^#] correctly excludes '#'.

Answer

The caret ^ inside the bracket expression negates the set, so [^#] matches any character including #, making the pattern match all lines.

Answer

The character class [[:space:]] includes newline characters, so the pattern matches across multiple lines and produces no output.

Answer

The -E option enables extended regular expressions, but the pattern uses basic regex syntax, causing grep to fail silently.

Question 11

A junior administrator needs to create a new ext4 filesystem on the partition /dev/sdb2. The partition already exists but has never been formatted. Which command should the administrator run to create the filesystem?

Accepted Answer

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2. Creating a filesystem requires a mkfs-family tool, and the ext4-specific front end is mkfs.ext4. Because the partition exists but is blank, no partitioning step is needed and no mount or repair step applies. The command writes the on-disk structures that make /dev/sdb2 mountable as ext4.

Answer

fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb2

Answer

mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /mnt

Answer

fdisk /dev/sdb2

Question 12

A Linux administrator needs to archive the /etc directory into a compressed tarball at /backup/etc_backup.tar.bz2. The administrator wants to see the progress of the archiving process as files are added. Which command should be used?

Accepted Answer

tar -cjvf /backup/etc_backup.tar.bz2 /etc. To create a bzip2-compressed tar archive with verbose output, the correct combination is tar -cjvf. The -j flag invokes bzip2, -c creates the archive, -v shows progress, and -f specifies the output file. This ensures the archive is both compressed and the administrator can monitor which files are being added during the process.

Answer

tar -czvf /backup/etc_backup.tar.bz2 /etc

Answer

tar -cvf /backup/etc_backup.tar.bz2 /etc

Answer

tar -xjvf /backup/etc_backup.tar.bz2 /etc

Question 13

A user runs the command `echo $HOME` in a Bash shell and receives the output `/home/alice`. A colleague later runs the same command in a different shell and gets `/root`. Which type of shell variable is being displayed?

Accepted Answer

An environment variable. HOME is an environment variable that is exported to child processes, so it is inherited by commands run from the shell. It is set at login time based on the user account, which is why different users see different values. Local variables, positional parameters, and special parameters do not behave this way.

Answer

A local shell variable

Answer

A special shell parameter

Answer

A positional parameter

Question 14

A technician needs to inspect the filesystem type, UUID, and filesystem label of the partition /dev/sdb1 without mounting it. Which command provides all of this information in a single invocation?

Accepted Answer

blkid /dev/sdb1. blkid reads on-disk superblock metadata and reports UUID, TYPE, and LABEL for a block device without requiring a mount. That single invocation answers all three questions the technician has. fdisk shows partition-table data, lsblk -f is less reliable when given a single partition argument, and tune2fs works only on ext-family filesystems, so each of those alternatives leaves part of the requirement unmet.

Answer

lsblk -f /dev/sdb1

Answer

tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1

Answer

fdisk -l /dev/sdb1

Question 15

A system administrator is preparing a custom RPM package for internal distribution. The package must be built from source code and a spec file. Which command should be used to build the binary RPM from the spec file?

Accepted Answer

rpmbuild -bb package.spec. The rpmbuild command with the -bb option compiles the source and creates a binary RPM from the spec file. This is the correct tool for building packages from source on RPM-based systems. The -ba option would also produce a binary RPM but additionally creates a source RPM, which is not required when only the binary package is needed.

Answer

rpm -bb package.spec

Answer

rpmbuild -ba package.spec

Answer

rpmbuild -bs package.spec