The system clock shows the wrong time zone because the wrong answer was given to the tzdata package's setup questions during installation. Which command presents those questions again without reinstalling the package?
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-reconfigure tzdata
Correct. It re-runs the package's debconf configuration script, asks the questions again and applies the new answers to the package's configuration.
Not correct dpkg --configure tzdata
Wrong. --configure only completes the configuration of a package that is unpacked but not yet configured; for an already configured package it does nothing useful and asks nothing.
Not correct apt-get install --reinstall tzdata
Wrong in general. Reinstalling replaces the files but the stored debconf answers are reused, so the same wrong setting comes back.
Not correct apt-cache show tzdata
Wrong. apt-cache show only prints the package record from the index; it changes nothing.
Why
Debian packages ask their setup questions through debconf, which caches the answers in its own database so that upgrades do not re-ask them. dpkg-reconfigure deliberately re-runs the maintainer's config script against that database, which is the supported way to change a setting that was chosen at install time. The priority of the questions shown can be widened with -p, for example dpkg-reconfigure -p low tzdata.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page dpkg-reconfigure(8)
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.
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