Linux Exam A

What security measure is considered necessary in order to properly warn users that misuse of a system is illegal and has repercussions, but will not actively stop them from committing the act?

Banners and messages

Due to your remote company location, you are unable to get a single broadband network connection that will serve your companies internet connection needs. After securing two identical connections, what process would you then configure to enable both connections to work effectively as a single faster connection?

Bonding

You are constructing a more automatic process for compiling your software that requires fewer steps overall, and almost no human intervention to make, test, and report any errors. Which of the following tools could help you to automate your build environment? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply.

Chef Puppet

Which of the common desktop system is conceived of and created to provide a more open-source and unencumbered version of a Linux desktop?

GNOME

Which partitioning scheme is limited to 4 primary partitions per disk, with one of those possibly being converted to an extended partition that can contain logical partitions?

MBR

If your network administrator suggests taking two network connections and having a server connect the two networks and make a larger network as a result, what is the appropriate term that describes this?

Network bridging

Which of the following signals would you use to end a process immediately and cause it's removal from the process table?

SIGKILL

When inspecting the output of the lastlog command on a new server, you see a number of accounts that have the phrase *Never logged in* to the right of the username. Over time, some of these accounts have not changed this status, what is the most likely classification of these accounts?

Service

When scheduling an impromptu task to run tomorrow at 4 pm, which of the following will be the easiest to configure to accomplish this task?

at

Your system seems to have several data areas that when accessed cause the system to slow perceptibly. Which of the following commands, when used as the root user, can scan and report issues with data blocks?

badblocks

You want to get a quick overview of what the disks and filesystems mounted on your system to have for free and used space. Which of the following would give you this information?

df -ht

Which command is used by security administrators to inspect and change the contents of a set of files called tally files?

faillock

As you go by a server, you run a quick command and get the following output. Which command did you run to get this information?

free

Which git command would you use to add local files from staging to the local repository?

git commit

You want to start a new local project to be versioned eventually by your github account. Which of the following commands would start this new repository in an empty directory?

git init

In order to change the various elements of host naming information on a systemd server, you would use what command?

hostnamectl

Which of the following commands has options to help you both commit your hardware clock's time to the system, and the system's current time to the hardware clock?

hwclock

When you execute the following command, many column will be displayed having details of files or directories. What describes the information that is located in the first column? $ ls -li

inode

Which command is used to load a module with no dependencies manually into the running kernel?

insmod

In order to view a listing of failed user logins to your system in chronological order, what is the most useful command?

lastb

You have run a command that shows you a list of usernames and the date and timestamp if any, that they have most recently accessed the system via a login. What is the most direct command that provides this information?

lastlog

You consistently get an error about a library being missing when executing a particular command. Which command will show you the libraries needed for the command to properly function?

ldd

You have viewed the contents of a file in /proc that begins with the following information. Which main file in /proc did you view? MemTotal: 1814208 kBMemFree: 439856 kBMemAvailable: 769416 kBBuffers: 8 kBCached: 440128 kBSwapCached: 13004 kBActive: 669856 kBInactive: 391544 kB

meminfo

When loading a module into the running kernel, the usual command fails and indicates the need for several other modules to be present before this one can be loaded. Which command will be most successful in satisfying the module dependencies when used?

modprobe

You suspect an issue with network traffic and want to inspect packets on a particular network interface both in a live session but also to save packet data for later. Additionally, you are limited to searching for a given term or keyword by your network security policies. Which of the following commands will most simply and straightforwardly accomplish this?

tcpdump

You want to find all orders that don't have the pepperoni string in the file named pizza-orders.txt. Which of the following options of the grep command will you use to accomplish the task?

-v

Which of the following files allows you to ignore files, such as editor backup files, build products, or local configuration overrides that you never want to commit to a repository?

.gitignore

Historically the /etc/modprobe.conf file is used to configure the settings that affect the modprobe command. More recently, which of the following files can contain configuration for the modprobe command?

/etc/modprobe.d

Due to the proliferation of multiple sets of data in files in the /proc directory, which of the following directories is also used for storing data for the running kernel?

/sys

After changing the group owner of a directory, you find that users of the previous group owner can still access the files in the directory, as well as create and delete files. What might be in place allowing members of this group access?

ACL permission

In your orchestration planning, you need to customize a procedure by adding a piece of configuration data. What is this commonly called?

Attribute

Which of the following is the characteristic of the vmlinuz kernel file?

It is a compressed kernel file.

Which of the following common Linux Desktops was originally controversial due to its use of non-GPL libraries?

KDE

Which of the following variables sets the language a user interface is displayed in, typically set in the /etc/profile?

LANG

A complex compile job is taking a long time and slowing the system down to free up resources during work hours. What will you adjust?

Priority

In a script, you want to have a loop of instruction run, prompting for input at the beginning of each iteration until a particular text value is entered, such as "stop." Which of the following will meet this need most specifically?

The if statement

A user has created a shell script and sets it to be executed regularly in their account's cron table. The user reports the script either cannot be found or is not executing. What is a possible (and likely) reason the script is not being run properly?

The script is not set with chmod +x.

When looking at a script that executes properly when invoked from the user's home directory, but fails in any other location, what is the most likely cause of this issue?

The script is using a relative path.

At it's core, a Debian package is really what type of file?

ar archive

After taking over from a departed systems administrator, you find the directory and some files in it that cannot be deleted, no matter what the permissions you set on them with the chmod command. Which command will you use to discover the problem?

chattr

Your security system is running SELinux, and you need to change the security context of a file to allow it to be accessed by someone other than who it is currently set for. Which command would you use to accomplish this?

chcon

In order to see what the services status will be in a given runlevel, you would use what command?

chkconfig

When setting up git on your system, you would set your name and email in your user configuration files using what option to the git command?

config

You have attached a new drive to your older Linux server, and wish to replicate an existing drive to that new drive, which shares the same geometry and size specifications. Which of the following commands would accomplish this? Choose the most straightforward option.

dd

Which command is used to alter system settings that affect the language of system settings and the display manager interface presented to a user before and after login?

localectl

What command would you use at the end of a period of logging to ensure that the logs were closed out properly and archived safely? Choose the best answer.

logrotate

When creating a redundant array of inexpensive disks, what command is used?

mdadm

Which of the following commands will cause the user's password to be altered in a recoverable fashion, effectively locking the user out of the system?

passwd -l

Which of the following commands will remove a user's account but leave the user's home directory in place for data retention purposes?

userdel

You wish to find out if a remote website is up and serving files, but only have a command-line session available. Which of the following could be used to at least determine if the remote site has and is making available it's index.html file?

wget

When you use the mount command to mount a device into your system's filesystem, what read-only file will reflect the mounted filesystem's presence and details?

/etc/mtab

On a modern Linux system, in what file/directory is the actual encrypted/hashed password kept?

/etc/shadow

While running a command that will take a long to finish, you need to suspend the command which causes it to process further in the background, without quitting or restarting the command. Which command will you use?

bg

If you are concerned with local system security, which boot-level security feature can you take advantage of without removing any drives or access ports on your system?

bootloader password

You want the traffic pass between two configured IP interfaces, what file in the overall /proc subdirectory structure would you set the value of 1 in order to accomplish this?

ip_forward

Your virtualization host has a command-line tool named virsh. What must also be present in order for virsh to work properly to manage your virtualization environment?

libvirt

After running the command, you see the output displayed below. Which of the following commands is the most likely to have produced this output? NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTsda 8:0 0 20G 0 disk├─sda1 8:1 0 8M 0 part├─sda2 8:2 0 12.6G 0 part /usr/local├─sda3 8:3 0 5.4G 0 part /home└─sda4 8:4 0 2G 0 part [SWAP]sr0 11:0 1 6.7G 0 rom

lsblk

Which of the following commands will display the loaded kernel modules and their relationships with each other?

lsmod

A user process is keeping you from dismounting a filesystem for maintenance, and you run a utility that returns the following output showing the process in question. What command have you run?

lsof

Which command will display not only the current runlevel but also the previous runlevel, if any?

runlevel

Your system's users have the need to use commands that would otherwise be available only to the root user, but you cannot by policy (and common sense) let them have access through the root account. What is another option to give them controlled access to root-level commands in a safe and predictable manner?

sudo

When starting a process that will be resource-intensive, which of the following will adjust the process's priority to make it work better with other system processes?

nice

Which of the following is not a logging-related service that you can run on your Linux systems?

syslogger

Which command should you use to enable or start system services on a systemd-based system?

systemctl

You are concerned that there are connectivity problems between your location and your hosted servers. Which command will display the route that packets take from one location to the host being attempted?

traceroute

You get a report from a junior system administrator that they cannot connect remotely to a server. They report that they can sign on to the server at the console properly. Upon inspection, you realize that they are trying to sign on to the server as the ______.

root account

Your Internet service provider has a shortage of publicly-addressable IP addresses for customer use, instead, they suggest that you use a method that converts internal addresses from multiple hosts to be used jointly by the publicly-accessible external IP address. What is this method known as?

NAT

Your system attaches to a remote server during its boot process and appears to mount a large portion of the operating system from that server to the local filesystem. Which of the following is being used as a sharing protocol for this instance?

NFS

If you are configuring your system to query a higher-level server for the correct date and time, which of the following protocols are you most likely using?

NTP

Which of the following is designed to be a more efficient and massively scalable alternative to connect users via Xclient or VNC?

NX

Which of the following is an environment variable that is used by various time-related functions on the system to compute the local time relative to UTC/GMT time?

TZ

Which of the following best defines the concept of a message digest in the public/private key encryption world?

A ciphertext created by hashing and represented by hexadecimal

You come across a file that is named etc.gz and want to open it and see what the contents are. What do you know this file cannot directly contain?

A directory

When attempting to send the output of one command to another, the results are unsatisfactory, and the output of the first command needs to be treated as individual arguments. Which command should you use to accomplish this?

xargs

A user is attempting to run a command as another user, whose username and password they have, by using the privilege elevation command su. Environment variables that are necessary are not present. Which of the following su options will likely fix the issue if used?

-

When setting up how the udev mechanism handles hardware attachments and removals, which of the following would contain a series of configuration files that would be read by udev when started or on-demand?

/etc/udev/rules.d

The file descriptors that are used in concert with piping, redirecting, and displaying output are known by what numbers? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply.

1 0 2

As the sysadmin of a server used for security scanning, you regularly run the lastlog command and inspect the output for oddities. One morning you discover an entry such as that shown below, what does the output indicate may have happened? statd : localhost Wed Jun 26 14:23:36 -0600 2019

A service account has been hacked.

Which of the following statements are correct regarding the pty connection? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply

A terminal application's connection to the console A remotely-signed on user via ssh

Which of the following best defines a security measure that will slow down only the most amateur of port scanners looking for a given service or vulnerable port to attempt to enter?

Change default ports.

When downloading a package from a vendor, you are required by your security protocol to determine that the package that is on the vendor's site is identical to the package you eventually get downloaded, free from any man-in-the-middle replacements, or alterations. What best describes the method or file that you will be used to determine the authenticity of the package?

Checksum

When booting a recently-installed Linux server, you are presented with a menu of boot selections. Which of the following is the most likely boot manager to be installed?

GRUB2

You inherit a system that has a complex partitioning scheme for its disks, apparently several disks are used to make up a system volume, and the filesystem has been created in that volume. What is the type of disk management being used?

LVM

IP Security (IPSec) is a suite of protocols that have been created and further developed to ensure the integrity and authentication of data over the wide-area networks. Which are valid use cases for IPSec?

Routing level security Network-level security Virtual private network security

Multiple users of a shared directory are reporting problems accessing each other's files. The directory has a common group between the users set, but a quick inspection shows different group ownerships on the user's files. What setting needs to be set for proper sharing to occur?

SGID

Your server needs to provide a shared filesystem for use by Windows clients. Which of the following would allow this with the least need for additional software on the clients?

SMB

When installing software on a remote system, you use a local program to send instructions to a remote application that takes your commands and acts them out on the remote system. What would be a reasonable definition of this application?

agent

Managing your infrastructure's configurations is a time-consuming task and you expend a lot of resources keeping things all working. If you were to ________ the management of your configurations, it would make things a lot less arduous.

automate

You have hired a contractor and have a set number of months that his user account will be active for. What command will you use and what file will be acted upon to set this user's account timeout?

chage, /etc/shadow

Once you have made changes to local files and committed them to the local repository, what git command would you use to sync those changes to the remote repository?

git push

You have run a command that will replace targeted files with a file named the same as the original along with a particular suffix that identifies the command used. Which of the following commands will accomplish this? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply.

gzip bzip2

Which of the popular firewall options includes the use of input, output, and forward chains and has been traditionally difficult to manage manually?

iptables

Which command will not create a new file with a different inode when used on the same filesystem?

mv

You want to sign out and leave a command running in the shell you invoked it in. Which of the following commands will you use to accomplish the task? Each correct answer represents a part of the solution. Choose all that apply.

nohup screen

Which of the following commands would you use to establish basic network connectivity to a remote host's IP address?

ping

You are signed in as a user to the console of a server and want to see just your own user processes from the process table. Which of the following commands will by default show you this?

ps

You attempt to use the netstat command to gather summary statistics about your system's network traffic activity and get a message that it has been deprecated. Which command will most directly show you the needed statistics?

ss

Which service allows for a public/private key encrypted terminal session between a local client and a remote system?

ssh

Which command will help you to query, set, and alter your time, date, and time zone information?

timedatectl

The enterprise distribution SUSE and the community distribution openSUSE use which package management scheme?

zypper