LPIC-1 Administrative Tasks Practice Question
A system administrator wants to schedule a script to run every Monday at 3:00 AM, but only if the system clock is set to local time (not UTC). Which crontab entry should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse the order of minute and hour fields (minute first, then hour) or mistakenly use 0 for Monday instead of 1, leading to selection of option A or D.
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
✓
0 3 * * 1 /path/to/script
The crontab format is 'minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week command'. To run at 3:00 AM Monday, the minute field is 0, the hour field is 3 (using 24-hour time), and the day-of-week field is 1 (Monday). The cron daemon does not care about UTC vs local time; it uses the system's configured timezone, so no special flag is needed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
3 0 * * 1 /path/to/script
Why it's wrong here
Fields swapped: runs at 0:03, not 3:00.
- ✓
0 3 * * 1 /path/to/script
Why this is correct
Correct: minute 0, hour 3, any day of month, any month, Monday (1).
- ✗
0 15 * * 1 /path/to/script
Why it's wrong here
15 is 3 PM, not 3 AM.
- ✗
0 3 * * 0 /path/to/script
Why it's wrong here
0 is Sunday, not Monday.
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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.