Practice Test Geeks(SAC) System Administration Certification Practice Test
← All SAC Flashcard Decks

System Maintenance and Troubleshooting Flashcards

7 cards from real SAC practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

Read the first 7 System Maintenance and Troubleshooting flashcards as text

  1. What is the purpose of a post-incident review (PIR) after resolving a major system outage?

    Answer: To document root cause, timeline, and preventive measures to avoid recurrence

    A PIR (also called a postmortem) is a blameless process to document what happened, why, and what changes prevent recurrence.

  2. A Linux cron job is not executing at the expected time. After verifying the crontab syntax is correct, what else should you check?

    Answer: Whether the cron daemon (crond) is running

    If crontab syntax is correct but jobs don't run, the cron daemon itself may not be running and should be checked and started.

  3. When configuring Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), what is the purpose of the 'approve' step for updates?

    Answer: To authorize specific updates for installation on targeted computer groups

    Approving updates in WSUS explicitly authorizes those updates for deployment to specified computer groups, giving admins control over what gets installed and where.

  4. A server's disk I/O wait time is very high. Which Linux command helps identify which processes are causing the most disk I/O?

    Answer: iotop

    iotop displays real-time I/O usage per process, similar to how top shows CPU usage, making it ideal for identifying I/O-heavy processes.

  5. A system administrator is documenting a runbook for a recurring maintenance task. What is the most critical element to include?

    Answer: Step-by-step procedures including rollback steps if something goes wrong

    A runbook must include detailed step-by-step procedures and rollback steps so any administrator can execute or recover from the task safely.

  6. Which Windows Performance Monitor counter helps identify if a server is experiencing excessive memory pressure?

    Answer: Memory\Pages/sec

    Memory\Pages/sec measures the rate of paging activity; high values indicate memory pressure causing excessive use of the page file.

  7. A system admin needs to temporarily prevent users from logging into a Linux server during maintenance without disabling their accounts. What is the best method?

    Answer: Create a /etc/nologin file

    Creating a /etc/nologin file causes the login process to display its contents and refuse non-root logins, which is cleanly reversed by deleting the file.