You want every future boot of a GRUB 2 system to pass an extra kernel parameter, and you want the change to survive the next kernel update. Which file do you edit before regenerating the configuration?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 102. Linux installation and package management medium
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct /boot/grub/menu.lst, adding the parameter to the kernel line
Wrong for GRUB 2. menu.lst is the GRUB Legacy configuration file and GRUB 2 does not read it; on a GRUB 2 system the file usually does not exist at all.
Not correct /boot/grub/grub.cfg, editing each linux line directly
Wrong. The edit works until the next regeneration, which any kernel package update triggers, and then it is silently overwritten.
Not correct /etc/fstab, adding the parameter to the root filesystem line
Wrong. /etc/fstab lists filesystems to mount and their mount options; it is read by userspace long after the kernel has started and cannot pass kernel parameters.
Correct /etc/default/grub, then regenerate grub.cfg
Correct. Adding the parameter to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX (or GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT) there means every generated menu entry, including entries for kernels installed later, carries it.
Why
Anything you want to persist in GRUB 2 belongs in an input file — /etc/default/grub for global settings, /etc/grub.d/ scripts for custom entries — followed by grub-mkconfig (update-grub on Debian, grub2-mkconfig on Red Hat family). Editing the generated grub.cfg is only appropriate as a temporary fix, and the interactive 'e' editor at the menu is the right tool for a genuinely one-off boot.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 102.2
- What it says
- Configure the boot loader, including kernel options passed at boot.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 102 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
- A mail server keeps filling its root filesystem because spooled mail and logs grow without bound, and when the disk fills the whole system becomes unusable. Which single change to the disk layout most directly contains that failure? machine-checked
- In LVM terminology, which object is created directly on a partition or whole disk so that its storage can be added to a pool? machine-checked
- You are laying out storage for a general-purpose Linux server. Which TWO of the following are genuine reasons to use LVM for the data filesystems rather than plain partitions? machine-checked
- Which file is the configuration file that GRUB 2 generates, and which administrators are told not to edit by hand on a typical Linux distribution? machine-checked
- You replaced the boot disk in a BIOS/MBR system and need to write the GRUB 2 boot loader into the master boot record of /dev/sda, installing the required GRUB modules under /boot. Which command does that? machine-checked
- On a GRUB 2 system whose configuration file is /boot/grub/grub.cfg, type the grub-mkconfig command — including the option and its argument — that regenerates that file. machine-checked