Your site standard is that ordinary user accounts start at UID 5000 rather than the distribution's default of 1000, so that the numbering does not clash with a directory service. Which file holds UID_MIN and UID_MAX?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks easy
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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 /etc/login.defs
Correct. login.defs carries site-wide policy read by the shadow-utils commands and by login itself: UID_MIN and UID_MAX, GID_MIN and GID_MAX, PASS_MAX_DAYS, ENCRYPT_METHOD, UMASK and CREATE_HOME.
Not correct /etc/default/useradd
Wrong. That file holds useradd's own per-invocation defaults — GROUP, HOME, SHELL, SKEL, INACTIVE and EXPIRE — and is what `useradd -D` displays and edits. The UID allocation range is not among them.
Not correct /etc/skel
Wrong. /etc/skel is a directory whose contents are copied into a new user's home directory. It holds no configuration for useradd itself.
Not correct /etc/passwd
Wrong. /etc/passwd is the account database. It records the UID each account already has, not the range from which new ones are drawn.
Why
Three files are easy to confuse. /etc/login.defs is site policy for the whole shadow suite, including the UID and GID ranges and the password ageing defaults. /etc/default/useradd is useradd's own default arguments, viewed with `useradd -D`. /etc/skel is content, copied into new home directories. Only the first governs which numbers a new account is allocated.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page login.defs(5)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
- The account alice already belongs to the supplementary groups audio and video. You must additionally put her in the group developers while keeping her existing memberships. Which command does that? machine-checked
- A departing employee's account bob must be deleted together with his home directory and mail spool. Which command does all of that in one step? machine-checked
- You want every newly created account to start with a company-standard .bashrc already in its home directory. Where do you place that file? machine-checked
- On a host whose accounts come partly from local files and partly from a directory service, `grep alice /etc/passwd` returns nothing even though `id alice` works. Which command shows alice's account entry the way the system itself resolves it? machine-checked
- Policy says passwords must be changed at least every 90 days, and the account carol must comply. Which command sets that maximum password age? machine-checked
- A line in /etc/group reads `developers:x:1500:alice,bob`. What does the final field contain? machine-checked