LPIC-1 Shells, Scripting and Data Management Practice Question
A helpdesk technician receives a call about a user who is unable to run a script that was working yesterday. The user says they only changed the ownership of a file in their home directory. The script is located in /usr/local/bin and is owned by root:root. The script has permissions 755. Which of the following is the most likely cause of the issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume the script itself must be the problem because it's in /usr/local/bin, but the question explicitly states the user only changed ownership of a file in their home directory, so the issue must be with a file the script depends on, not the script itself.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The user changed the ownership of one of the script's input files, making it unreadable.
The script itself is owned by root:root with 755 permissions, meaning it is executable by everyone. However, if the user changed the ownership of an input file that the script reads, that file may now be owned by the user but with permissions that prevent the script (running as the user) from reading it, or the script may require specific ownership to access the file. Since the script was working yesterday and the only change was ownership of a file in the home directory, the most likely cause is that the script's input file is now unreadable or inaccessible due to the ownership change.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The user changed the ownership of the /usr/local/bin directory.
Why it's wrong here
Changing ownership of a system directory requires root privileges.
- ✗
The script requires root privileges to run.
Why it's wrong here
Script permissions are 755, so it runs as the user; requiring root would have caused issues before.
- ✗
The user accidentally changed the ownership of the script file.
Why it's wrong here
The user cannot change ownership of /usr/local/bin/script without root privileges.
- ✓
The user changed the ownership of one of the script's input files, making it unreadable.
Why this is correct
If an input file's ownership changed to another user, the current user may lose read access.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This LPIC-1 practice question is part of Courseiva's free LPI certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the LPIC-1 exam.