Linux Professional Institute LPIC-2 (201-450) Simulator #3

Jake, a system administrator, noticed a slowdown in the performance of a critical application running on his Linux server. He suspects that the system might be using swap space heavily, thus impacting performance. Which command should Jake use to check the current swap usage on his system?

Rebecca, a system administrator, is troubleshooting a performance bottleneck on her Linux server. She suspects that there are processes blocked on I/O operations. Which field in the vmstat command output should she focus on to identify the number of processes waiting for I/O?

While monitoring a Linux system’s I/O statistics, Maria notices a significant number of blocks being continuously read from the disk. To ascertain the rate of these “blocks in” on a block device, which field in the vmstat command output should she monitor?

Susan is attempting to analyze the I/O statistics on a Linux server, focusing particularly on how much data is being written or sent out. Using the vmstat tool, which column should Susan keep an eye on to determine the rate of these “blocks out” from the system?

Julia, an IT administrator, is keen on setting up a centralized monitoring system that collects metrics from multiple servers and offers visualization capabilities. She wants a solution that supports a wide variety of data sources and provides alerting features. Which of the following tools would best suit her requirements?

Jennifer is evaluating a new server configuration for a database application in her organization. She wants to understand at what point the server will run out of resources and become a bottleneck. Which of the following would be the most direct method for her to predict the capacity breakpoint of this new server configuration?

Andrew, a system administrator, is keen on ensuring that the company’s IT infrastructure can handle growth in the coming years. He has collected data on resource usage for the past 12 months. Which of the following is the most appropriate way for Andrew to determine the growth rate of capacity usage over this period?

Mariah, a systems analyst, has been tasked with visualizing the trend of server resource usage over the past two years. She intends to use this information to predict future requirements. Which type of graph would be most suitable for Mariah to capture and visualize the trend of capacity usage over this time period?

Richard, an IT administrator, is looking to set up a new monitoring solution for his organization that offers both active and passive checks. He also wants a solution that can be easily extended with plugins. Which of the following tools would be most appropriate for his needs?

Jeremy, an IT administrator, has noticed that a business-critical application is gradually taking longer to process user requests. He suspects it might be a capacity-related issue. Which of the following steps should Jeremy take first to diagnose the issue?

Sarah wants to ensure that a third-party module remains compatible even after kernel upgrades on her Linux system. She’s been advised to utilize Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS). Which command should Sarah use to add a module named thirdparty to DKMS?

Jeremy recently compiled a new Linux kernel and wants to ensure that the boot process can load the necessary modules and drivers during the initial boot phase. He is considering using dracut to create an initramfs. Which command would Jeremy use to generate an initramfs for a specific kernel version, say 5.8.10?

After compiling a new kernel version 5.12.3, Robert wants to create an initial ramdisk (initrd) image for this kernel. Which command should Robert use to accomplish this with mkinitrd?

Lara is preparing to compile a new Linux kernel. After configuring the kernel using make menuconfig, she wants to start the compilation process for the kernel and its modules. Which command should Lara use to accomplish this?

Tom, a systems administrator, wants to clean his kernel source tree by removing all generated files, configuration, and also backup files. This will allow him to start from a fresh slate. Which make target should Tom use?

Lisa, a system administrator, just compiled a new Linux kernel and wants to compress the resulting kernel image using gzip. Which of the following commands should Lisa use to compress her vmlinuz kernel image?

Lara, a Linux system administrator, is troubleshooting an issue with a specific kernel module on her server. She needs to quickly view the current status and properties of a module named netfilter. Which command should Lara use to achieve this?

Alex is a system administrator who is planning to compile a new kernel for the organization’s servers. Before doing so, he wants to understand the current kernel configuration. Which file should Alex examine to find the default configuration of the source tree for the Linux kernel?

Carla, a Linux systems engineer, wants to install a third-party kernel module for a specific kernel version. She needs to locate the directory where kernel modules for a given kernel version are stored. Which directory structure should Carla navigate to find the modules for a kernel version 5.8.10?

Tina, a system administrator, has just added a new kernel module to the system. Before booting the kernel, she wants to ensure all module dependencies are correctly resolved. Which tool should she use to generate the modules.dep file for module dependencies?

Amelia is troubleshooting an issue with her web server. Upon system startup, the Apache web service is failing to initialize. What should Amelia check FIRST to determine the cause of the service initialization failure?

John is preparing to install the GRUB bootloader on his new Linux system. He wants to ensure that the bootloader is installed in a location that allows it to be read by the system’s BIOS/UEFI during startup. Where should John install the GRUB bootloader?

Jake is troubleshooting a system that refuses to boot properly. He suspects that there might be an issue with the kernel parameters. Using the GRUB 2 bootloader, which of the following steps should he take to temporarily modify the kernel boot parameters during system startup?

Alex is troubleshooting a Linux system that uses systemd and needs to boot into a mode that only starts the core of the system without any services or mounts. Which boot option should Alex use?

While trying to recover a malfunctioning system, Emma wants to attach a file system in read-only mode to ensure no changes are accidentally made to the data. Which of the following mount commands should she use?

During the boot process, a system administrator noticed that one of the partitions didn’t mount correctly. Before mounting it manually, she wants to perform a file system check on /dev/sda2 without repairing any detected errors. Which of the following fsck commands will serve this purpose?

A system administrator wants to change the system’s current runlevel to runlevel 3 without restarting the system. Which of the following commands will achieve this goal using SysV init?

A system administrator needs to update the GRUB bootloader configuration. In which directory would the administrator typically find the main configuration file for GRUB on a modern Linux system?

During a boot issue troubleshooting, you noticed that the EFI System Partition (ESP) is corrupted on a Linux server. Which of the following commands would you use to verify the contents of the ESP?

An administrator wants to view the current boot order of a Linux system booting in UEFI mode. Which of the following efibootmgr commands should they execute to view the existing boot order?

Chris is preparing a new disk, /dev/sdd1, to be used as a swap partition on a Linux server. Before activating the swap space, he needs to format the partition appropriately. Which command should he use?

Hannah, a system administrator, is creating a swap file named swapfile.img in the /mnt/data/ directory. She’s using the dd command to create a 2GB file and then wants to prepare it as a swap space. Which command should she use next?

Samantha suspects that there might be some inconsistencies on her /dev/sdb2 ext4 partition. Before mounting it, she decides to perform a filesystem check but does not want the check to be carried out if the filesystem was unmounted cleanly. Which command should she use?

You are tasked with updating an ext4 filesystem to reduce the time between periodic filesystem checks. You are specifically asked to set the check interval to 30 days. Which of the following commands would you use to accomplish this?

A system administrator suspects that there may be inconsistencies on an XFS filesystem mounted at /data. Before proceeding with any corrective measures, the administrator wants to gather information about the filesystem. Which command should the administrator use to retrieve detailed information about the XFS filesystem at /data?

After a system crash, you want to check an XFS filesystem for consistency and, if necessary, repair any found issues. However, you want to ensure that the filesystem is not modified unless there is a consistency problem. Which command would be appropriate in this scenario?

A system administrator wants to view the health of the hard drive /dev/sda on a Linux system and interpret the attributes and threshold values in a user-friendly format. Which command will achieve this?

The system administrator received an alert regarding a potential hard drive failure. To monitor and log the SMART status of /dev/sdb in the background, ensuring it checks the status every 30 minutes, which of the following would be appropriate?

A system administrator wants to use autofs to automatically mount a network share whenever a user accesses the /mnt/networkshare directory. Which file does the administrator primarily need to modify to define the mount point /mnt/networkshare?

To make the settings in autofs take effect after modifying its configuration files, what should the system administrator do?

A company is looking to set up a Storage Area Network (SAN) that leverages their existing Ethernet infrastructure without requiring additional hardware like FC switches or HBAs. Which protocol should they consider using for this purpose?

An enterprise is planning to use a high-speed, lossless network protocol for their SAN, which ensures reliable data transfer without the overhead of TCP/IP. They also want the ability to merge with their existing Fibre Channel infrastructure. Which protocol would meet these requirements?

A system administrator needs to determine the speed with which data is read from a specific SATA hard drive without any filesystem overhead. Which tool and option should they use?

An administrator is working with a SCSI disk and wishes to retrieve its parameters and state. Which utility and option would be most suitable for this task?

A system administrator wants to retrieve a detailed list of all NVMe devices installed on a Linux server. Which command should they use?

A Linux system administrator wants to modify an ext4 filesystem labeled “data_drive” to disable the automatic filesystem check that occurs every 30 mounts. Which of the following commands would accomplish this?

An administrator wants to set a specific last checked date on an ext4 filesystem located at “/dev/sdb1” without actually performing a filesystem check. Which of the following tune2fs commands would achieve this?

An administrator is looking to discard unused blocks on an SSD mounted at /mnt/ssd_data to ensure better wear leveling. Which of the following commands would best achieve this?

A system administrator wants to automatically discard blocks weekly on the /dev/sda1 SSD. Where should they configure this?

You’re troubleshooting a server which has been facing performance degradation. You suspect that a TCP-related kernel parameter is misconfigured. Which command will allow you to quickly inspect all TCP-related parameters?

Alex is managing network interfaces on a Linux server using the ifconfig command. He wants to display detailed information about all network interfaces, including those that are currently inactive. Which option should Alex use with the ifconfig command?

John needs to add a new static route to the routing table of his Linux system. Which command should he use to add a route for the network “192.168.2.0/24” via the gateway “192.168.1.1”?

Emily needs to manually add an entry to the ARP cache on her Linux system. Which command should she use to add a static ARP mapping for the IP address “192.168.1.100” with the corresponding MAC address “00:1a:2b:3c:4d:5e”?

Lisa wants to view a summary of socket statistics on her Linux system, including the number of established connections, listening sockets, and more. Which ss command should she use?

John is troubleshooting network issues on his Linux server and wants to see the routing table. Which netstat command should he use?

Alex is investigating which processes have opened a specific file on his Linux server. Which command should he use?

You want to test the connectivity between your Linux server and a remote host using the IPv4 protocol. Which command should you use?

You need to check if a specific network port is open on a remote server. Which command should you use?

You need to capture and analyze network traffic on interface eth0. Which tcpdump command should you use?

You are tasked with scanning a remote server for open ports and determining the services running on those ports. Which nmap command should you use?

You have compiled a program from source, and now you need to install it system-wide. What command should you use for the installation process?

You have a source code file named program.c, and you want to apply a patch file named fix.patch to address a bug. What command should you use to apply the patch?

You are responsible for performing regular backups on a Linux server. Which directory should always be included in your backup to ensure a complete system restore?

Your organization is looking for a network backup solution that provides centralized management of backups for multiple servers. Which open-source backup solution is known for its scalability and ability to manage large, complex environments?

Your organization is considering different backup media for long-term data storage. Which backup medium is known for its high storage capacity and durability but may have longer access times compared to other options?

You need to perform a partial backup of critical system files on a Linux server to ensure a quick recovery in case of a failure. Which command would you use to create a backup of the /etc directory?

After performing a backup of critical system files, you want to verify the integrity of the backup archive. Which command would you use to check the integrity of a tarball named system_backup.tar.gz?

A critical system file has been accidentally deleted, and you need to restore it from a backup. Which command would you use to fully restore the file /etc/network/interfaces from a backup named system_backup.tar.gz?

You are configuring a backup script, and you need to specify the shell that will be used to execute the script. Which shell is commonly located at /bin/sh in many Unix-like systems?

You need to create a backup image of a hard drive and store it in a file named backup.img. Which dd command would you use for this purpose?