EX200 Deploy, configure, and maintain systems Practice Question
Exhibit
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/rhel-root 50G 45G 5.2G 90% / /dev/sda1 1014M 312M 703M 31% /boot
Refer to the exhibit. An administrator is unable to write to /tmp because the filesystem is full. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Red Hat often tests the misconception that /tmp is always a separate filesystem, leading candidates to overlook the root filesystem's usage as the cause of write failures.
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 root filesystem is nearly full at 90% usage
The exhibit shows that the root filesystem (/) is at 90% usage, while /tmp is not a separate filesystem but a directory under the root. Since /tmp resides on the root filesystem, when the root filesystem is nearly full, there is no space left for writing to /tmp, causing the write failure.
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 /tmp is a separate filesystem
Why it's wrong here
The exhibit displays mount points for / and /boot only, with no separate entry for /tmp. On RHEL systems, /tmp is part of the root filesystem unless explicitly mounted as its own device; a separate filesystem would appear as a distinct df row or mount point. Since the output shows no such mount, a dedicated /tmp filesystem is not the reason write access is failing.
- ✗
There is a filesystem quota enabled
Why it's wrong here
The df output in the exhibit provides no evidence of quota settings, such as the usrquota or grpquota mount options, nor does it show quota-related columns like Quota or Limit. Standard RHEL installations do not enable filesystem quotas by default, and quotas restrict per-user or per-group usage rather than blocking writes to /tmp for the root administrator. Without any quota enablulation in the mount flags, this is not a plausible cause.
- ✗
The /boot partition is too small
Why it's wrong here
The /boot partition is reported as only 31% full and is a separate, small partition dedicated to kernel and bootloader files. Its size or fullness has no bearing on writability of /tmp, because /tmp resides on the root filesystem. A nearly full /boot might cause kernel updates to fail, but it cannot affect the ability to write to /tmp, making this option incorrect.
- ✓
The root filesystem is nearly full at 90% usage
Why this is correct
The root filesystem / is at 90% capacity with only 5.2GB free, and since /tmp is not a separate mount, it is part of this same root volume. When the root filesystem is nearly full, write attempts to /tmp can fail due to insufficient free space, especially if the file to be written is large or the filesystem has reserved blocks for root. The df output directly indicates a high usage level that commonly triggers 'no space left on device' errors for temporary file creation.
About these practice questions
This EX200 question is part of Courseiva's 427-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This EX200 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Red Hat 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 EX200 exam.