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Scenario-based practice

Troubleshooting Scenario Questions

Practise Red Hat Certified System Administrator EX200 practice questions — original exam-style scenarios covering every exam domain, with detailed explanations, wrong-answer analysis, and common exam traps.

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scenario questions
EX200
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Red Hat
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Scenario guide

How to approach troubleshooting scenario questions

These questions describe a network symptom and ask you to identify the root cause or the correct fix. They appear across all certification exams and reward systematic thinking over memorisation. The best candidates follow a consistent troubleshooting framework even under time pressure.

Quick answer

Troubleshooting Scenario Questions 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.

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Practice set

Practice scenarios

Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. The service 'example.service' is created but fails to start. The administrator runs 'systemctl start example.service' and gets no output, but 'systemctl status example.service' shows 'active (exited)'. What is the most likely cause?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

# cat /etc/systemd/system/example.service
[Unit]
Description=Example Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/example.sh
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# systemctl daemon-reload
Question 2hardmultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. A web server (httpd) is unable to serve files from a user's home directory. What is the most appropriate single command to resolve the issue?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

```
# ausearch -m avc -ts recent
----
time->Thu Mar 14 10:15:22 2024
type=AVC msg=audit(1710418522.123:456): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=1234 comm="httpd" name="index.html" dev=sda1 ino=5678 scontext=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 tclass=file
```
Question 3easymultiple choice
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A user reports that a script in their home directory fails to execute. The script has permissions -rw-r--r-- and is owned by the user. Which command will allow execution for the owner?

Question 4easymultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator is unable to write to /tmp because the filesystem is full. What is the most likely cause?

Exhibit

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/rhel-root   50G   45G  5.2G  90% /
/dev/sda1      1014M  312M  703M  31% /boot
Question 5easymultiple choice
Full question →

A user is unable to log in via SSH. The administrator checks /var/log/secure and sees 'Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes' for the user's home directory. What is the most likely cause?

Question 6hardmultiple choice
Full question →

A system fails to mount an XFS filesystem at boot. The /etc/fstab entry is: UUID=abc123 /mnt xfs defaults 0 0. Running mount -a shows: 'mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1'. Which is the most likely cause?

Question 7hardmultiple choice
Full question →

A system administrator notices that a server is responding slowly. The administrator runs `top` and sees a process named `backup_script` consuming 95% CPU. The process runs as root and is supposed to run nightly backups. However, the system load average is low. The administrator wants to investigate without killing the process. Which of the following is the best course of action?

Question 8easymultiple choice
Full question →

A system administrator is setting up storage for a new application server. The application requires two separate filesystems: one for the database (needs to be at least 10GiB) and one for logs (needs at least 5GiB). The server has a single 20GiB disk /dev/sda. The administrator plans to use LVM and a single volume group 'vg_app'. They create physical volume on /dev/sda, create the volume group, and then create two logical volumes: 'lv_db' of 10GiB and 'lv_logs' of 5GiB. They format lv_db as ext4 and lv_logs as xfs, and mount them at /db and /logs respectively. After rebooting, the system fails to mount /logs. What is the most likely cause?

Question 9hardmultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. A user 'alice' is unable to write to /data directory. What is the most likely reason?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

```
$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        20G   15G  5.0G  75% /
tmpfs           1.5G  2.3M  1.5G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1       100G   10G   90G  10% /data

$ ls -ld /data
drwx------. 6 root root 4096 Jan 1 12:00 /data
```
Question 10mediummultiple choice
Full question →

A cron job fails to run. Which command should the administrator use to verify the cron daemon is active?

Question 11hardmultiple choice
Full question →

A system fails to boot because of a corrupted fstab file. The administrator boots into rescue mode from a RHEL installation ISO. Which command should be run first to mount the root filesystem read-write?

Question 12easymultiple choice
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A system administrator is troubleshooting a RHEL 9 server that fails to boot and drops into emergency mode. The system console shows an error about mounting /dev/sdb1 on /data. The administrator enters emergency mode, checks /etc/fstab, and sees the line: /dev/sdb1 /data ext4 defaults 0 0. The /data directory exists but /dev/sdb1 is a partition on an external USB drive that was removed. The administrator needs the system to boot normally without the USB drive and plans to fix the mount configuration later. Which course of action should the administrator take?

Question 13mediummultiple choice
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A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 server has an LVM volume group 'vg01' that contains two physical volumes: /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb1. After a reboot, the system fails to activate the volume group. The administrator runs 'pvdisplay' and sees one physical volume as 'unknown device'. What is the most likely cause?

Question 14hardmultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. A CGI script located at /var/www/cgi-bin/test.cgi fails to execute. What is the most likely cause?

Exhibit

$ ls -Z /var/www/cgi-bin/test.cgi
system_u:object_r:httpd_sys_content_t:s0
Question 15mediummultiple choice
Full question →

Refer to the exhibit. A host in the 192.168.1.0/24 network is unable to access a web service running on this server on port 8080. What is the most likely reason?

Network Topology
firewall-cmdzone=internallist-all output:internal (active)target: defaulticmp-block-inversion: nointerfaces: eth1sources:services: dhcpv6-client sshports:protocols:masquerade: noforward-ports:source-ports:icmp-blocks:rich rules:

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