Courseiva
Knowledge + Practice
CertificationsVendorsCareer RoadmapsLabs & ToolsStudy GuidesGlossaryPractice Questions
C
Courseiva

Free IT certification practice questions with explained answers for CCNA, CompTIA, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more.

Certification Practice Questions

CCNA practice questionsSecurity+ SY0-701 practice questionsAWS SAA-C03 practice questionsAZ-104 practice questionsAZ-900 practice questionsCLF-C02 practice questionsA+ Core 1 practice questionsGoogle Cloud ACE practice questionsCySA+ CS0-003 practice questionsNetwork+ N10-009 practice questions
View all certifications →

Product

CertificationsCertification PathsExam TopicsPractice TestsExam Dumps vs Practice TestsStudy HubComparisons

Company

AboutContactEditorial PolicyQuestion Writing PolicyTrust Center

Legal

Privacy PolicyTerms of Service

Courseiva is a free IT certification practice platform offering original exam-style practice questions, detailed explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics for Cisco, CompTIA, Microsoft, AWS, and other technology certifications.

© 2026 Courseiva. Courseiva is operated by JTNetSolutions Ltd. All rights reserved.

Courseiva is an independent certification practice platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Cisco, Microsoft, AWS, CompTIA, Google, ISC2, ISACA, or any other certification vendor. Vendor names and certification marks are used only to identify the exams learners are preparing for.

← Essential Tools practice sets

EX200 Essential Tools • Complete Question Bank

EX200 Essential Tools — All Questions With Answers

Complete EX200 Essential Tools question bank — all 0 questions with answers and detailed explanations.

74
Questions
Free
No signup
Certifications/EX200/Practice Test/Essential Tools/All Questions
Question 1easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to find all files in /var/log that have been modified in the last 2 hours. Which command should be used?

Question 2mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user complains that the 'ls' command no longer outputs colors. The administrator suspects a change in environment variables. Which command would help diagnose the issue?

Question 3hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

During a security audit, an administrator needs to list all TCP ports on which the system is listening, showing only the port numbers and the associated process names. Which command best achieves this?

Question 4easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A new Linux administrator needs to read the manual page for the 'ls' command but also wants to search for the word 'color' within the manual. Which command accomplishes this?

Question 5mediummultiple choice
Read the full NAT/PAT explanation →

An administrator needs to terminate a hung process with PID 3456 that does not respond to 'kill -15 3456'. Which signal should be used next?

Question 6hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A backup script uses tar to create an archive, but the administrator wants to exclude the /tmp directory from the backup. Which tar option should be added?

Question 7easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator wants to display a list of all currently logged-in users. Which command is most appropriate?

Question 8mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A developer needs to search for the string 'ERROR' in all files under /var/log, but wants to exclude files ending with '.gz'. Which command is correct?

Question 9easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to display the current date and time in a format like '2023-10-05 14:30:00'?

Question 10mediummulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to view the contents of a compressed file named 'archive.tar.gz' without extracting it?

Question 11hardmulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which THREE commands can be used to check the disk space usage of the /home partition?

Question 12easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. Why does the 'bin' user have /sbin/nologin as its shell?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

$ cat /etc/passwd | head -3
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin
Question 13mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. Why does the /etc/shadow file have no read permissions for any user?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

$ ls -l /etc/shadow
----------. 1 root root 1234 Oct  5 14:30 /etc/shadow
Question 14hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

You are a system administrator for a company running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. A developer reports that a script which runs daily at 2 AM is failing. The script is located at /opt/scripts/backup.sh and is owned by root. The developer says the script runs fine when executed manually with './backup.sh' from the /opt/scripts directory. The script is scheduled via a root crontab entry: '0 2 * * * /opt/scripts/backup.sh'. However, the script fails because it cannot find a configuration file located at './config.ini'. What is the most likely cause and the correct solution?

Question 15mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

You are a Linux administrator. A user reports that when they log in via SSH, they see the message 'Could not chdir to home directory /home/john: No such file or directory' and are dropped into the root directory. The user's home directory does exist at /home/john but is empty. The user's entry in /etc/passwd is: 'john:x:1001:1001::/home/john:/bin/bash'. What is the most likely cause and the correct fix?

Question 16easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user reports that a script in their home directory fails to execute. The script has permissions -rw-r--r-- and is owned by the user. Which command will allow execution for the owner?

Question 17mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to find all regular files larger than 10MB in /var/log. Which find command should they use?

Question 18hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator wants to ensure that when a user presses Ctrl+C during a long-running script, the script cleans up temporary files before exiting. Which approach should the script use?

Question 19easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user needs to view the last 15 lines of a log file that is constantly being updated. Which command should they use?

Question 20mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to compress a directory 'data' into an archive named backup.tar.gz using gzip compression. Which command should they use?

Question 21easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to find all files modified in the last 24 hours under /var/log. Which command accomplishes this?

Question 22mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user reports that they cannot use the 'systemctl' command to manage services. The user is part of the 'wheel' group. Which configuration change is required to allow this?

Question 23hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

During boot, a server fails to mount an NFS filesystem listed in /etc/fstab. Which troubleshooting step should be taken first to isolate the issue?

Question 24easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator wants to edit a configuration file and ensure only the intended changes are saved. Which practice is recommended?

Question 25mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A script needs to be run at system boot for a specific user. Which method ensures the script runs with that user's environment?

Question 26hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A server has a disk with LVM logical volumes. The administrator needs to extend a logical volume to use all remaining free space in the volume group. Which command sequence is correct?

Question 27easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which command displays the current system time, timezone, and whether NTP synchronization is active?

Question 28mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to monitor network traffic on a specific interface in real time. Which tool is most appropriate for this task?

Question 29hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A developer needs to compile software from source and install it under /opt/custom. To avoid affecting the system package manager, which approach should be used?

Question 30mediummulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to display the contents of a compressed log file without decompressing it first?

Question 31hardmulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO methods can be used to permanently set the system's hostname to 'server01.example.com'?

Question 32easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which THREE file descriptors are always available for every Unix process?

Question 33easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which command displays the current working directory?

Question 34easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user needs to find all files with the '.conf' extension under /etc. Which command should be used?

Question 35easymultiple choice
Read the full NAT/PAT explanation →

An administrator wants to gracefully terminate a process with PID 12345. Which command should be used?

Question 36mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to replace all occurrences of 'enabled' with 'disabled' in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, but only on lines that do not start with '#'. Which sed command accomplishes this?

Question 37mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user wants to display the contents of a file in reverse line order. Which command should be used?

Question 38mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to measure the execution time of the command 'backup.sh'. Which command prefix should be used?

Question 39hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user is unable to delete a file named '-f' in the current directory. Which command will successfully remove it?

Question 40hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator wants to create a symbolic link named 'link_to_hosts' in /tmp that points to /etc/hosts. Which command is correct?

Question 41hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to list the permissions, owner, group, and filenames of all files in /var/log, including hidden files, in a human-readable format. Which command does this?

Question 42easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to view the contents of a compressed gzip file without decompressing it permanently? (Choose two.)

Question 43mediummulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which THREE actions will create a new empty file named 'testfile' in the current directory? (Choose three.)

Question 44hardmulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which THREE commands can be used to monitor real-time process status and update the display every 2 seconds? (Choose three.)

Question 45easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. What does the file permission -rw------- indicate about /etc/shadow?

Exhibit

$ ls -l /etc/shadow
-rw-------. 1 root root 1234 Jan 1 00:00 /etc/shadow
Question 46mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. Why did the sshd service fail?

Exhibit

$ systemctl status sshd
● sshd.service - OpenSSH server daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sshd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: start-limit) since Mon 2024-10-10 10:00:00 EDT; 2min ago
  Process: 1234 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sshd -D $OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1234 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Feb 10 10:00:00 host systemd[1]: sshd.service: start request repeated too quickly.
Feb 10 10:00:00 host systemd[1]: sshd.service: Failed with result 'start-limit'.
Question 47hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. The backup script runs every 5 minutes but generates errors. What is the most likely cause?

Network Topology
-rw-rr$ crontab -l$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/backup.sh
Question 48easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to view the last 10 lines of the log file /var/log/messages in real time as new lines are added. Which command should be used?

Question 49mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator runs the command 'ls -l' and sees that a file has permissions '-rwxr-xr-x'. The administrator wants to remove execute permission for the group and others while keeping it for the owner. Which chmod command should be used?

Question 50hardmultiple choice
Read the full NAT/PAT explanation →

A system administrator wants to find all files in /var that are larger than 100MB and have been modified within the last 7 days. The output should be a list of file paths with sizes in human-readable format, sorted by size descending. Which command pipeline accomplishes this?

Question 51easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user wants to run a command in the background after logging out of an SSH session. Which method ensures the process continues even after logout?

Question 52mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator receives an alert that a process named 'apache2' is consuming excessive CPU. The administrator needs to identify the PID of the process and then change its priority to the lowest possible value (least favorable scheduling). Which sequence of commands should be used?

Question 53hardmultiple choice
Read the full network assurance explanation →

A company policy requires that all cron jobs run by non-root users must be logged to a specific file /var/log/usercron.log. The system administrator decides to use rsyslog to capture these messages. Which configuration directive should be added to /etc/rsyslog.conf or a file in /etc/rsyslog.d/ to achieve this?

Question 54easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A user wants to set an environment variable named 'EDITOR' to the value '/usr/bin/vim' so that it is available in all future login sessions. Which file should the user add the export command to?

Question 55mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to compress a directory containing subdirectories and files into a single archive file, with maximum compression, and exclude all '*.tmp' files. Which command should be used?

Question 56hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator wants to monitor all files in /var/log that are currently being written to by processes. Which command shows file descriptors that are open for writing by any process?

Question 57easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to view the contents of a compressed file named 'data.log.gz' without decompressing it permanently? (Choose exactly two.)

Question 58mediummulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which THREE of the following are valid methods to schedule a recurring task in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8? (Choose exactly three.)

Question 59hardmulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO of the following are valid examples of using redirection and pipes in bash to append the output of a command to a file while also displaying it on the terminal? (Choose exactly two.)

Question 60mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator runs these commands on a server. The administrator suspects a performance issue. Which observation from the exhibit is most likely causing a bottleneck?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep '^processor' | wc -l
4
$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7.6G        1.2G        5.2G        100M        1.2G        6.1G
Swap:          2.0G        0.0G        2.0G
$ df -h /var
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3        50G   10G   37G  21% /var
Question 61easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator has created a new group named 'ops'. The administrator wants to add the existing user 'alice' to this group as a supplementary group without affecting her current group memberships. Which command should be used?

Question 62mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system is experiencing high CPU usage. The administrator suspects a process is stuck in an infinite loop. Which command can be used to identify the most CPU-intensive process in real-time?

Question 63mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator needs to schedule a script to run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 2:30 PM. Which cron expression should be used?

Question 64hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A Red Hat Enterprise Linux server has been configured with a custom repository for offline updates. The administrator runs 'yum repolist' and the custom repository is not listed. Which command should be used to verify that the repository configuration file is valid and located in the correct directory?

Question 65easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which two commands can be used to display the contents of a compressed .tar.gz archive without extracting it? (Choose two)

Question 66mediummulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which three of the following are valid methods to view the manual page for the 'ls' command? (Choose three)

Question 67easymultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A junior administrator is tasked with finding all files in the /var/log directory that have been modified within the last 24 hours and are owned by the 'root' user. The administrator runs the command: find /var/log -user root -mtime 0. However, the command returns no output, even though there are files that meet the criteria. What is the most likely issue with the find command?

Question 68easymultiple choice
Read the full NAT/PAT explanation →

A system administrator is trying to compress the contents of the directory /home/user/project into a tarball named project_backup.tar.gz using the command: tar -czf project_backup.tar.gz /home/user/project. The command completes without errors, but when the administrator tries to list the contents of the tarball using tar -tzf project_backup.tar.gz, it shows a leading slash (/) in the paths, like /home/user/project/file1. The administrator wants to create the tarball with relative paths instead. What change should be made to the tar command?

Question 69mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A Red Hat Enterprise Linux server has multiple network interfaces, and the administrator needs to ensure that the service 'httpd' starts automatically after a reboot. The administrator has already enabled the service using 'systemctl enable httpd', but after a reboot, the service is not running. The administrator checks the status and finds that the service is enabled but not started. The system uses systemd. Which additional step is required to ensure the service starts automatically at boot?

Question 70mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

An administrator notices that the /tmp directory is filling up quickly. They want to find all files in /tmp that are larger than 100 MB and owned by user 'ftp', then delete them. The administrator runs: find /tmp -type f -size 100M -user ftp -exec rm {} \;. However, this command deletes only files that are exactly 100 MB, not larger. Which find expression should be used instead?

Question 71hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator is troubleshooting a cron job that runs a script as root. The script is located at /root/scripts/backup.sh and has permissions 755. The cron job is defined in /etc/crontab with the line: 0 2 * * * root /root/scripts/backup.sh. However, the script does not run at the scheduled time. The administrator checks the cron logs and finds no errors. The administrator then runs the script manually as root and it executes successfully. What is the most likely cause of the cron job not running?

Question 72easymulti select
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

Which TWO commands can be used to view the kernel ring buffer?

Question 73mediummultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

What does the 's' in the owner execute position indicate?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

-rwsr-xr-x. 1 root root 12345 Jan 1 2025 /usr/bin/passwd
Question 74hardmultiple choice
Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator notices that a server is responding slowly. The administrator runs `top` and sees a process named `backup_script` consuming 95% CPU. The process runs as root and is supposed to run nightly backups. However, the system load average is low. The administrator wants to investigate without killing the process. Which of the following is the best course of action?

Practice tests

Scored 10-question sessions with instant feedback and explanations.

EX200 Practice Test 1 — 10 Questions→EX200 Practice Test 2 — 10 Questions→EX200 Practice Test 3 — 10 Questions→EX200 Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions→EX200 Practice Test 5 — 10 Questions→EX200 Practice Exam 1 — 20 Questions→EX200 Practice Exam 2 — 20 Questions→EX200 Practice Exam 3 — 20 Questions→EX200 Practice Exam 4 — 20 Questions→Free EX200 Practice Test 1 — 30 Questions→Free EX200 Practice Test 2 — 30 Questions→Free EX200 Practice Test 3 — 30 Questions→EX200 Practice Questions 1 — 50 Questions→EX200 Practice Questions 2 — 50 Questions→EX200 Exam Simulation 1 — 100 Questions→

Practice by domain

Each domain maps to a weighted exam section. Focus on the domain where you are weakest.

Operate running systemsConfigure local storageCreate and configure file systemsDeploy, configure, and maintain systemsManage users and groupsManage securityManage containersCreate simple shell scriptsEssential Tools

Practice by scenario

Filter questions by type — troubleshooting, exhibit, drag-and-drop, PBQ, ACLs, OSPF, and more.

Browse scenarios→

Continue studying

All Essential Tools setsAll Essential Tools questionsEX200 Practice Hub