LPIC-1 · domain
Administrative Tasks
Administrative Tasks covers user and group management, job scheduling with cron and systemd timers, local and network printing via CUPS, and locating files by name, time, or content. LPIC-1 tests these as command-level scenarios: you pick the exact utility, option, or configuration file that satisfies a stated requirement, such as adding a user to a supplementary group or finding recently modified logs.
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What to know about Administrative Tasks
Be able to add a user to extra groups with usermod -aG, write a correct five-field crontab line, diagnose CUPS printing across subnets, and build find commands filtering by -mtime, -user, or -perm. The most important thing is choosing options that modify only what the task asks, without clobbering existing configuration.
Managing users and groups with useradd, usermod, groupadd, and passwd, including supplementary group membership
Scheduling recurring jobs with crontab entries, /etc/cron.* directories, and systemd timer units
Configuring and troubleshooting CUPS shared printers, including remote subnet access and lpadmin/lpstat
Locating files with find, locate, and grep by modification time, ownership, permissions, or content
Watch out for
Common Administrative Tasks exam traps
- ▸Using usermod -G alone, which replaces all existing supplementary groups instead of appending; -aG is required to add without removing others.
- ▸Writing cron fields in the wrong order or using an invalid day-of-week value; the five fields are minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
- ▸Assuming CUPS is reachable from another subnet without checking Listen directives, firewall rules, or the cupsd.conf access controls.
Question index
All Administrative Tasks questions (56)
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A system administrator wants to configure log rotation to compress log files daily and keep 30 days of logs. Which of the following configurations achieves this goal?
Medium2A system administrator wants to change the default runlevel of a SysV init-based system to runlevel 3. Which file should be edited to make this change persistent across reboots?
Medium3Which TWO commands can be used to display the current runlevel of a system?
Medium4A server's root filesystem is filling up. The administrator suspects that a service is writing large log files to /var/log/journal. Which command displays the total disk space currently used by the systemd journal?
Medium5A user's home directory /home/alice has grown unexpectedly large. The administrator wants to identify which subdirectory consumes the most space, displaying sizes in human-readable format and limiting output to one level deep. Which command is most appropriate?
Easy6An administrator adds the line 'DenyUsers john' to /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restarts the SSH service. What is the effect?
Easy7An administrator needs to determine which package owns the file /usr/bin/htop on a Debian-based system so that the package can be reinstalled after corruption. Which command provides this information?
Easy8A Linux administrator is responsible for a server that runs a critical database application. The server uses SysV init and the current runlevel is 3. The administrator needs to schedule a maintenance window for next Sunday at 2:00 AM to apply security patches that require a reboot. The administrator wants to ensure that after the reboot, the system returns to runlevel 3 and the database service (db_service) starts automatically. The administrator also wants to log the maintenance actions to /var/log/maintenance.log. Which of the following is the BEST approach to accomplish these tasks?
Medium9A server has a backup script that runs daily at midnight. The system administrator notices that the script sometimes fails because the filesystem is mounted read-only. Which approach is the best practice to ensure the script runs only when the filesystem is writable?
Hard10Which configuration file is the primary configuration file for logrotate?
Medium11Based on the exhibit, which of the following is true about the cleanup.sh job?
Medium12An 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?
Easy13An administrator wants to allow user 'john' to run all commands as root without a password. Which sudoers entry accomplishes this?
Medium14An administrator notices the system clock is drifting. Which command can be used to enable automatic time synchronization using NTP on a system with systemd?
Medium15A system is not logging messages to /var/log/syslog. Which command should an administrator use first to diagnose the issue?
Medium16Arrange the steps to troubleshoot a service that fails to start.
Medium17An administrator ran 'dnf update' and a critical application broke. The administrator wants to undo the last transaction and return to previous state. Which command should be used?
Hard18An administrator needs to find all files in the /var/log directory that have been modified in the last 24 hours. Which command should be used?
Easy19Which TWO commands can be used to display the current runlevel of a SysV init system?
Easy20An administrator needs to check the system's load averages without displaying any process information. Which command should be used?
Easy21An administrator wants to prevent a specific user, 'john', from being able to schedule cron jobs. Which file should the administrator modify?
Medium22A 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?
Medium23A 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?
Medium24Refer to the exhibit. What can be concluded about the cron daemon based on this systemctl output?
Medium25Which THREE directories are commonly used for mounting removable media in Linux?
Medium26Refer to the exhibit. An administrator runs 'ntpq -p' and sees the output shown. What is the most likely cause of the '16' stratum and '0.000' delay/offset?
Hard27After creating a new user with 'useradd john', the user 'john' cannot log in. What is the most likely cause?
Hard28A systemd service unit file must be configured to automatically restart the service if it exits unexpectedly. Which directive should be used?
Hard29A system administrator needs to schedule a recurring maintenance task that runs every Monday at 3 AM. Which crontab entry is correct?
Easy30A zombie process appears in the process list. The parent process has PID 1234. Which command will most likely remove the zombie?
Medium31Refer to the exhibit. What is the file permission in numeric mode for /etc/crontab?
Easy32A system administrator wants to ensure that the syslog service starts automatically on boot and is running immediately without a reboot. Which command sequence should be used?
Hard33A system administrator needs to perform incremental backups of a large directory /data. The backup strategy requires a full backup every Sunday and incremental backups on weekdays. Which tar command satisfies this requirement using the --listed-incremental option?
Hard34Based on the exhibit, what will happen if the syslog service is stopped?
Hard35A junior administrator needs to schedule a backup script to run as the user 'backup' every day at 02:30. The script is /usr/local/bin/backup.sh, and output should be discarded. Which crontab entry should the administrator add to the 'backup' user's crontab to accomplish this?
Medium36An administrator wants to change the owner of all files in /data to user 'web' without changing the group. Which command should be used?
Medium37A 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?
Hard38To enable disk quotas for user quotas on a filesystem, which line should be added to /etc/fstab's mount options?
Easy39Which three commands are commonly used to display information about running processes?
Hard40A system administrator suspects that a particular service is failing to start at boot. The service is managed by systemd. Which command will show the current status of the service, including whether it is active, and recent log entries?
Medium41An administrator needs to display the current and previous runlevels of a Linux system. Which command provides this information?
Hard42Refer to the exhibit. What is the current state of the SSH service?
Easy43Refer to the exhibit. The job runs every hour but the administrator notices that it does not execute on Sundays. Which cron syntax element is responsible?
Hard44Which three actions can an administrator take to securely erase data on a disk before decommissioning?
Medium45Which command is used to view the last few lines of a log file and simultaneously follow new entries as they are written?
Easy46Refer to the exhibit. This line is from /etc/passwd. What does the third field (1001) represent?
Easy47Refer to the exhibit. What is the purpose of the 'test -x /usr/sbin/anacron' command in the cron entries?
Hard48A medium-sized company runs a web application on a Linux server. The server uses systemd and has the following configuration: the web application service (webapp.service) is configured to start after network.target and requires a database service (database.service) to be running. The database service has a Restart=on-failure directive. Recently, the server experienced a power outage. Upon reboot, the system administrator notices that the web application fails to start because the database service is in a failed state. The administrator checks the status of database.service and sees 'inactive (dead)' with no recent attempts to restart. The journal shows that the database service failed to start because a required filesystem (mounted at /var/lib/database) was not mounted when the database service tried to start. The filesystem is listed in /etc/fstab with the nofail option. The administrator wants to ensure that in future reboots, the database service starts successfully and the web application comes up without manual intervention. Which of the following is the best course of action?
Hard49A Linux administrator needs to configure a new system to automatically mount an NFS share at boot. The share is exported from server 'nfs.example.com' as '/export/data'. The mount point '/mnt/data' already exists. Which TWO actions are required to ensure the share is mounted automatically and persistently? (Choose two.)
Medium50A small business uses a Linux server running CUPS to share a network printer. For several months, all employees could print successfully. Today, an employee in a different subnet reports that printing does not work. The administrator checks the server: cupsd is running, the printer is configured with an IPP URI pointing to the printer's IP address, and the printer is idle. The administrator can ping the printer from the server. The administrator checks the CUPS error log and sees the following line multiple times: 'E [04/Oct/2024:10:15:22 -0400] [Client 5] client-error-not-authorized'. Which of the following actions should the administrator take to resolve the issue?
Easy51A small business runs a Linux server hosting a web application and a PostgreSQL database. The server uses LVM for storage, with a single volume group vg_data containing two logical volumes: lv_web (50GB) and lv_db (100GB). The root filesystem is on a separate disk. The administrator receives alerts that the database volume is at 95% capacity. The server has additional unused space from a recently added disk that was added to the volume group as an additional physical volume, but the space has not been allocated. The administrator runs 'vgs' which shows VG vg_data with total size 500GB, allocated 150GB, and free 350GB. The administrator wants to increase the size of lv_db by 50GB. Which course of action should the administrator take?
Hard52An administrator needs to restart the SSH service after a configuration change. Which TWO commands can accomplish this on a systemd-based system?
Medium53In the /etc/shadow file, a user's password hash begins with '$6$'. What hash algorithm does this prefix indicate?
Hard54A junior administrator needs to add a new user account named 'tester' to a Linux server. The account must have a home directory created at /home/tester, and the default shell should be set to /bin/bash. The administrator runs 'useradd tester' but later finds that no home directory was created and the shell is /bin/sh. Which command should have been used to meet both requirements?
Medium55Which command adds a new group named 'developers' to the system?
Easy56An administrator needs to extend a logical volume by 10GB. The volume group has available physical extents. Which command should be used?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Administrative Tasks domain cover on the LPIC-1 exam?
- Be able to add a user to extra groups with usermod -aG, write a correct five-field crontab line, diagnose CUPS printing across subnets, and build find commands filtering by -mtime, -user, or -perm. The most important thing is choosing options that modify only what the task asks, without clobbering existing configuration.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 56 Administrative Tasks questions in the LPIC-1 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
- Can I practise only Administrative Tasks questions?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.