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Administrative Tasks practice questions

Practise Linux Professional Institute Certification Level 1 LPIC-1 Administrative Tasks practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

Courseiva uses original exam-style practice questions designed for learning and revision. The goal is to understand the concepts, recognise exam patterns, and improve through explanations — not memorise copied exam dumps.

Reviewed byJohnson Ajibi· MSc IT Security
20 questionsDomain: Administrative Tasks
Practice 10 questionsBrowse domain →

What the exam tests

What to know about Administrative Tasks

Administrative Tasks questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.

Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.

How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.

Watch out for

Common Administrative Tasks exam traps

  • ▸Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • ▸Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • ▸Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • ▸Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Practice set

Administrative Tasks questions

20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation

Question 1hardmultiple choice
Read the full network assurance explanation →

A 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?

Question 2easymultiple choice
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A user reports that a cron job is not executing. The cron job is defined in /etc/crontab. The administrator checks the system logs and finds no errors. Which command should the administrator use to verify that the cron daemon is running?

Question 3mediummultiple choice
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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?

Question 4hardmultiple choice
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A 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?

Question 5easymultiple choice
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An 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?

Question 6hardmultiple choice
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A Linux system fails to boot with the error 'Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)'. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

Question 7mediummultiple choice
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An administrator wants to prevent a specific user, 'john', from being able to schedule cron jobs. Which file should the administrator modify?

Question 8mediummulti select
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Which TWO commands can be used to display the current runlevel of a system?

Question 9hardmulti select
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Which THREE of the following statements are true about the /etc/shadow file?

Question 10mediummultiple choice
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Based on the exhibit, which of the following is true about the cleanup.sh job?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

$ crontab -l
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
MAILTO=admin@example.com
0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh
30 4 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/cleanup.sh
0 0 1 * * /usr/local/bin/monthly_report.sh
Question 11hardmultiple choice
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Based on the exhibit, what will happen if the syslog service is stopped?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

$ systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2023-08-14 10:30:45 UTC; 2h 15min ago
     Docs: man:apache2(8)
 Main PID: 1234 (apache2)
    Tasks: 55 (limit: 4915)
   Memory: 24.5M
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─1234 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─1235 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─1236 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

$ systemctl list-dependencies apache2
apache2.service
● └─network.target
● └─syslog.service
Question 12hardmultiple choice
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A 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?

Question 13easymulti select
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Which TWO commands can be used to display the current runlevel of a SysV init system?

Question 14hardmultiple choice
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Refer 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?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

# cat /etc/ntp.conf
server 0.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 1.pool.ntp.org iburst
# driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
restrict default kod nomodify notrap nopeer noquery
restrict -6 default kod nomodify notrap nopeer noquery
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict -6 ::1
# ntpq -p
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
*0.pool.ntp.org   .POOL.          16 p    -   64    0    0.000   0.000   0.000
 1.pool.ntp.org   .POOL.          16 p    -   64    0    0.000   0.000   0.000
Question 15mediummultiple choice
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A 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?

Question 16mediumdrag order
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Arrange the steps to troubleshoot a service that fails to start.

Drag steps to the numbered slots on the right, or tap a step then tap a slot.

Steps
Order
1Step 1
2Step 2
3Step 3
4Step 4
5Step 5
Question 17mediummatching
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Match each Linux signal to its default action.

Drag a concept onto its matching description — or click a concept then click the description.

Concepts
Matches

Terminate process immediately (cannot be caught)

Terminate process gracefully

Hangup; often reloads configuration

Interrupt from keyboard (Ctrl+C)

Stop process (cannot be caught or ignored)

Question 18easymultiple choice
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An administrator needs to check the system's load averages without displaying any process information. Which command should be used?

Question 19easymultiple choice
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An administrator adds the line 'DenyUsers john' to /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restarts the SSH service. What is the effect?

Question 20easymultiple choice
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Which command is used to view the last few lines of a log file and simultaneously follow new entries as they are written?

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Frequently asked questions

What does the LPIC-1 exam test about Administrative Tasks?
Administrative Tasks questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How should I use these practice questions?
Select your answer before revealing the explanation. Then read why each option is right or wrong — this active recall approach builds retention far faster than re-reading notes.
Can I practise just Administrative Tasks questions in a focused session?
Yes — the session launcher on this page draws every question from the Administrative Tasks domain. Use a 10-question session first to gauge your baseline, then move to 20 or 30 once the weak spots are clear.
Where can I practise other LPIC-1 topics?
Use the topic links above to move to related areas, or go back to the LPIC-1 question bank to see all topics.
Are these real exam questions or dumps?
These are original practice questions written to test the same concepts the LPIC-1 exam covers. They are not copied from any real exam or dump site.