An unexpected binary /usr/sbin/logrotate is present on a Debian server and you want to know which installed package put it there. Which command reports that?
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
Correct dpkg -S /usr/sbin/logrotate
Correct. -S (--search) looks the path up in the file lists of all installed packages and prints the owning package name.
Not correct dpkg -L /usr/sbin/logrotate
Wrong. -L expects a package name and lists its files; given a path it reports that no package of that name is installed.
Not correct apt-cache search logrotate
Wrong. apt-cache search matches keywords against package names and descriptions in the repository index; it never looks at file paths.
Not correct apt-get install --reinstall logrotate
Wrong, and it changes the system. Reinstalling replaces the files rather than telling you where they came from.
Why
dpkg -S answers the question file to package, and dpkg -L the reverse, package to files. Both consult the local database, so both work only for packages that are already installed. If the file belongs to no package, dpkg -S says so, which is a quick way to spot software installed outside the package manager.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page dpkg(1)
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
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