Select the THREE true statements about time zone configuration on a Linux system.
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks medium
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The options
Choose 3.
Correct /usr/share/zoneinfo/ contains the compiled zone files, arranged in Region/City directories.
True. Each file is a binary TZif description of one zone's offsets and daylight-saving history.
Correct TZ set in a user's environment overrides the system default for that process and the ones it starts.
True. The library checks TZ first and only falls back to /etc/localtime when it is unset.
Correct /etc/localtime is normally a symbolic link to, or a copy of, a file under /usr/share/zoneinfo/.
True. It is the system-wide default zone, and how it is materialised varies between distributions.
Not correct /etc/timezone contains the same binary data as /etc/localtime.
False. Where it exists, /etc/timezone is a one-line text file holding the zone name, such as Europe/Berlin. It is a Debian-family convention, not a second copy of the zone data.
Not correct Changing the time zone shifts the system clock, so the count of seconds since the epoch changes with it.
False. The kernel keeps time as a UTC-based count that a zone change never touches; only the rendering of that count into a local date and time changes.
Why
Separating storage from presentation is the whole model: UTC in the kernel, zone rules in /usr/share/zoneinfo, a system-wide selection through /etc/localtime, and a per-process override through TZ. Once that ordering is clear, questions about which file wins answer themselves, because TZ is consulted before the system default and nothing else is consulted at all.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page tzset(3)
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.
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