LPIC-1 Administrative Tasks Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An administrator wants to run a shell script every day at 2:00 AM. Which command should be used to edit the user's personal crontab?

Accepted Answer

crontab -e. The correct command to edit a user's personal crontab is `crontab -e`. This invokes the default text editor (as defined by the EDITOR or VISUAL environment variable) on the user's crontab file, ensuring proper syntax validation and locking to prevent concurrent edits. It is the standard and recommended way to modify cron jobs for the current user.

Answer

crontab -l

Answer

at 2:00 AM

Answer

vi /var/spool/cron/crontabs/username

Question 2

A system is not logging messages to /var/log/syslog. Which command should an administrator use first to diagnose the issue?

Accepted Answer

systemctl status rsyslog. The first step in diagnosing why messages are not appearing in /var/log/syslog is to verify that the rsyslog service is running and active. The 'systemctl status rsyslog' command shows the current service state, recent logs, and any errors that might prevent logging. Without confirming the service status, other diagnostic steps may be misleading.

Answer

tail -f /var/log/syslog

Answer

logger test

Answer

ps aux | grep syslog

Question 3

A user 'jdoe' already exists. The administrator needs to add 'jdoe' to the 'staff' and 'admin' groups without changing other group memberships. Which command accomplishes this?

Accepted Answer

usermod -a -G staff,admin jdoe. The `usermod -a -G` command appends the user 'jdoe' to the supplementary groups 'staff' and 'admin' without altering existing group memberships. The `-a` (append) flag is essential; without it, `-G` would replace all current supplementary groups with only those listed. This matches the requirement to add the user to new groups while preserving other group memberships.

Answer

sed -i 's/^staff:.*/&jdoe/' /etc/group

Answer

usermod -G staff,admin jdoe

Answer

useradd -G staff,admin jdoe

Question 4

To enable disk quotas for user quotas on a filesystem, which line should be added to /etc/fstab's mount options?

Accepted Answer

usrquota. The 'usrquota' mount option is the standard Linux kernel parameter used to enable user disk quotas on a filesystem. When added to the fourth field of an /etc/fstab entry, it instructs the kernel to track per-user disk usage, allowing the quota system (via quotacheck, edquota, etc.) to enforce limits.

Answer

grpquota

Answer

userquota

Answer

quota

Question 5

A zombie process appears in the process list. The parent process has PID 1234. Which command will most likely remove the zombie?

Accepted Answer

kill -9 1234. A zombie process is a child process that has terminated but whose exit status has not been read by its parent. The zombie cannot be killed directly because it is already dead; it only remains in the process table until the parent calls wait(). Sending SIGKILL (kill -9) to the parent process (PID 1234) causes the parent to terminate, and the zombie child is then adopted by init (PID 1), which automatically reaps it by calling wait().

Answer

kill -9 <zombie_pid>

Answer

wait <zombie_pid>

Answer

reboot

Question 6

Which configuration file is the primary configuration file for logrotate?

Accepted Answer

/etc/logrotate.conf. The primary configuration file for logrotate is /etc/logrotate.conf. This file sets global options such as rotation frequency, compression, and the number of rotated logs to keep. It also includes configuration snippets from /etc/logrotate.d/ via an include directive, but the main control file is /etc/logrotate.conf.

Answer

/var/log/messages

Answer

/etc/logrotate.d/

Answer

/etc/rsyslog.conf

Question 7

After creating a new user with 'useradd john', the user 'john' cannot log in. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

No password has been set for the user. The `useradd` command creates a new user account but does not set a password. Without a password, the system's authentication mechanism (typically PAM) will deny login attempts, as there is no valid password hash in `/etc/shadow`. The user must have a password assigned via `passwd john` before they can authenticate.

Answer

The home directory does not exist

Answer

The user's shell is not set

Answer

The user is not in the sudoers file

Question 8

An administrator needs to restart the SSH service after a configuration change. Which TWO commands can accomplish this on a systemd-based system?

Accepted Answer

systemctl restart sshd. Option C, systemctl restart sshd, is correct because systemctl is the native control utility for systemd, and 'restart' stops and starts the sshd unit in one operation, applying the new configuration. Option D, service sshd restart, is also correct because the service wrapper script on systemd-based distributions translates the request into the appropriate systemctl restart sshd call, so it works on such systems. Option A, initctl restart sshd, belongs to Upstart and is not the systemd interface. Option B, rc.d restart sshd, is not a valid command form for the BSD-style rc.d mechanism. Option E, /etc/init.d/sshd restart, invokes a legacy SysV init script directly, which may exist for compatibility but is not the systemd method and is not guaranteed to be present or functional.

Answer

initctl restart sshd

Answer

rc.d restart sshd

Answer

/etc/init.d/sshd restart

Question 9

Which THREE directories are commonly used for mounting removable media in Linux?

Accepted Answer

/mnt. Option A, /mnt, is correct because it is the traditional Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) mount point for temporarily mounted filesystems, including removable media such as USB drives and external disks. Option C, /cdrom, is correct because it is a conventional mount point historically used by distributions to mount optical media like CD-ROMs and DVDs. Option E, /media, is correct because modern Linux distributions use it as the standard mount point for automatically mounted removable media such as USB sticks, cameras, and optical discs. Option B, /mount, is not a standard FHS directory and is not used by Linux for mounting removable media. Option D, /dev, is incorrect because it contains device files (e.g., /dev/sdb1) that represent hardware devices, not directories where filesystems are mounted.

Answer

/mount

Answer

/dev

Question 10

Refer to the exhibit. What is the purpose of the 'test -x /usr/sbin/anacron' command in the cron entries?

Accepted Answer

It ensures the periodic tasks are not run if anacron is installed.. The 'test -x /usr/sbin/anacron' command checks if the anacron binary exists and is executable. If it is, the test returns true (exit code 0), and the subsequent periodic tasks (e.g., run-parts) are skipped due to the logical NOT operator '!' at the beginning of the cron entry. This prevents duplicate execution of periodic jobs when both cron and anacron are installed, as anacron is designed to handle them for systems that may not be running continuously.

Answer

It checks if anacron is executable and then runs the periodic tasks.

Answer

It starts anacron if it is not already running.

Answer

It logs the output of the periodic tasks to a file.

Question 11

Refer to the exhibit. What can be concluded about the cron daemon based on this systemctl output?

Accepted Answer

It is running and will start automatically at system boot.. The systemctl output shows 'Loaded: loaded' and 'Active: active (running)' for the cron daemon, which indicates it is currently running. Additionally, the 'enabled' status in the 'Loaded' line means the service is configured to start automatically at system boot. Therefore, option D is correct.

Answer

It is stopped.

Answer

It is enabled but not currently running.

Answer

It has failed recently.

Question 12

Refer to the exhibit. This line is from /etc/passwd. What does the third field (1001) represent?

Accepted Answer

User ID (UID). In the /etc/passwd file, the third field is the User ID (UID), a numeric identifier assigned to each user. UID 0 is reserved for root, and values below 1000 are typically system accounts, while 1001 is a regular user UID. This field is used by the kernel to track user ownership of processes and files.

Answer

Home directory UID

Answer

Group ID (GID)

Answer

Login shell number

Question 13

A system administrator needs to schedule a recurring maintenance task that runs every Monday at 3 AM. Which crontab entry is correct?

Accepted Answer

0 3 * * 1 /script.sh. The crontab syntax is minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Setting minute=0, hour=3, day of week=1 runs the script at 3:00 AM every Monday (day 1 represents Monday in cron).

Answer

3 0 * * 1 /script.sh

Answer

0 3 * * 0 /script.sh

Answer

0 3 * * 7 /script.sh

Question 14

Which command adds a new group named 'developers' to the system?

Accepted Answer

groupadd developers. The correct command to add a new group on a Linux system is `groupadd developers`. This command creates a new group entry in the system's group database (typically /etc/group). The `groupadd` utility is the standard tool for this task in Linux, and it is part of the shadow-utils package.

Answer

addgroup developers

Answer

newgroup developers

Answer

groupadd -r developers

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. What is the current state of the SSH service?

Accepted Answer

It is active and running. The exhibit shows the output of `systemctl status sshd`, which displays the service state as 'active (running)' in the green text. This indicates that the SSH daemon (sshd) is currently loaded and executing, providing secure shell access to the system. The 'active (running)' state is the normal operational state for a service that has been started and is functioning correctly.

Answer

It is inactive

Answer

It is disabled

Answer

It has failed