How should I use these Essential Tools practice questions?

Read each scenario carefully and choose your answer before revealing the explanation. Then check why your choice was right or wrong. Repeat until the reasoning feels automatic.

Can I practise just Essential Tools questions in a focused session?

Yes — use the session launcher on this page to start a 10-, 20-, 30- or 50-question session drawn entirely from the Essential Tools domain.

EX200 · topic practice

Essential Tools practice questions

Use this page to practise Essential Tools questions for this certification. Focus on how the exam tests essential tools in scenario format — understanding the why behind each answer builds more durable knowledge than memorising options.

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: Essential Tools

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What the exam tests

What to know about Essential Tools

Essential Tools questions on this certification test your ability to deploy and manage essential tools concepts in scenario-based situations.

Core Essential Tools concepts and how they apply in real-world cloud scenarios.

How to deploy essential tools correctly and verify the outcome.

Troubleshooting essential tools issues by interpreting error output and system state.

Cloud best practices and Essential Tools design trade-offs tested by this certification.

Watch out for

Common Essential Tools exam traps

▸Selecting the most expensive service when a simpler managed option meets the requirement.
▸Forgetting that cloud resources must be explicitly secured — defaults are rarely secure.
▸Choosing a global service fix when the issue is region-specific.
▸Overlooking cost implications of cross-region data transfer in architecture questions.

Practice set

Essential Tools questions

20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation

Question 1easymultiple choice

Read the full Essential Tools explanation →

A system administrator needs to find all files in /var/log that have been modified in the last 2 hours. Which command should be used?

Trap 1: find /var/log -amin -120

amin checks access time, not modification.

Trap 2: find /var/log -mtime -0.08

Invalid syntax; mtime expects integer days.

Trap 3: find /var/log -cmin -120

cmin checks inode change time, not modification.

Essential Tools practice questions

What to know about Essential Tools

Common Essential Tools exam traps

Essential Tools questions

A system administrator needs to find all files in /var/log that have been modified in the last 2 hours. Which command should be used?

A user complains that the 'ls' command no longer outputs colors. The administrator suspects a change in environment variables. Which command would help diagnose the issue?

During a security audit, an administrator needs to list all TCP ports on which the system is listening, showing only the port numbers and the associated process names. Which command best achieves this?

A new Linux administrator needs to read the manual page for the 'ls' command but also wants to search for the word 'color' within the manual. Which command accomplishes this?

An administrator needs to terminate a hung process with PID 3456 that does not respond to 'kill -15 3456'. Which signal should be used next?

A backup script uses tar to create an archive, but the administrator wants to exclude the /tmp directory from the backup. Which tar option should be added?

An administrator wants to display a list of all currently logged-in users. Which command is most appropriate?

A developer needs to search for the string 'ERROR' in all files under /var/log, but wants to exclude files ending with '.gz'. Which command is correct?

Which TWO commands can be used to display the current date and time in a format like '2023-10-05 14:30:00'?

Which TWO commands can be used to view the contents of a compressed file named 'archive.tar.gz' without extracting it?

Which THREE commands can be used to check the disk space usage of the /home partition?

Refer to the exhibit. Why does the 'bin' user have /sbin/nologin as its shell?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit. Why does the /etc/shadow file have no read permissions for any user?

Exhibit

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?

A system administrator needs to find all regular files larger than 10MB in /var/log. Which find command should they use?

An administrator wants to ensure that when a user presses Ctrl+C during a long-running script, the script cleans up temporary files before exiting. Which approach should the script use?

A user needs to view the last 15 lines of a log file that is constantly being updated. Which command should they use?

An administrator needs to compress a directory 'data' into an archive named backup.tar.gz using gzip compression. Which command should they use?

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Frequently asked questions

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Study resources

Exam traps to avoid