Helping Hand Questions for 101-500

This command will run dbmaint in the background and make it immune to hangup signals, which means it will continue to run even when the user logs out of the system. The nohup command prefixes the command with nohup, which intercepts the SIGHUP signal that is sent to the process when the terminal sessionends. The output of the command is redirected to a file called nohup.out by default, unless specified otherwise. The & symbol puts the command in the background, allowing the user to run other commands in the same shell.

The other commands are incorrect for the following reasons:

• A, job -b dbmaint: This command is invalid and will not work. There is no job command in Linux, and the -b option is not a valid option for any command. The command that is used to list the background jobs in the current shell session is jobs, and it does not have a -b option either.
• B, dbmaint &>/dev/pts/null: This command will run dbmaint in the background, but it will not prevent it from being terminated when the user logs out of the system. The &> symbol redirects both the standard output and standard error of the command to a file or device, in this case /dev/pts/null. However, this device does not exist, and the redirection will fail. Even if the device was /dev/null, which is a special device that discards any output sent to it, the command would still be susceptible to hangup signals and would not survive the logout.
• D, bg dbmaint: This command will not run dbmaint in the background, but it will try to resume a stopped background job with the name dbmaint. The bg command is used to move a stopped foreground process to the background and continue its execution. However, if there is no such process with the name dbmaint, the command will fail. Even if there was such a process, it would still be terminated when the user logs out of the system, unless it was disowned or prefixed with nohup.
• E, wait dbmaint: This command will not run dbmaint in the background, but it will wait for a background process with the name dbmaint to finish and return its exit status. The wait command is used to pause the execution of the current shell until one or more background processes complete. However, if there is no such process with the name dbmaint, the command will fail. Even if there was such a process, it would still be terminated when the user logs out of the system, unless it was disowned or prefixed with nohup.

References:

• How to Run Linux Commands in Background | Linuxize
• How to Run Linux Commands in Background | phoenixNAP KB
• How to Run Linux Commands in the Background - MUO
• How to Run Linux Commands in Background & Bring Them Back

The correct answer is D, .bash_history. This file, located in a user’s home directory, contains the Bash history, which is a list of commands that the user has entered in the Bash shell. The syntax of the file is:

~/.bash_history

The ~ symbol represents the user’s home directory, which is usually /home/username. The / symbol is a directory separator that separates the components of a path. The . symbol at the beginning of the file name indicates that the file is hidden, which means that it is not normally displayed by the ls command or the file manager, unless the -a option or the show hidden files option is used. The bash_history is the name of the file that stores the Bash history.

The Bash history is maintained by the Bash shell while it is running, and it is written to the .bash_history file when the shell exits or when the history -a or -w options are used. The history command can be used to display, manipulate, or search the Bash history. The HISTFILE variable can be used to change the name or location of the .bash_history file. The HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE variables can be used to change the number of commands that are stored in the Bash history and the .bash_history file, respectively.

The other files are incorrect for the following reasons:

• A, .bashrc_history: This file does not exist by default, and it is not used to store the Bash history. The .bashrc file is a configuration file that is executed by the Bash shell when it starts in interactive mode. It can contain commands, aliases, functions, variables, or other settings that affect the behavior of the shell. However, it is not used to store the history of the commands that the user has entered.
• B, .bash_histfile: This file does not exist by default, and it is not used to store the Bash history. The .bash_histfile file is not a standard file name, and it is not recognized by the Bash shell. The Bash shell uses the .bash_history file to store the history of the commands that the user has entered, unless the HISTFILE variable is changed to a different file name.
• C, .history: This file does not exist by default, and it is not used to store the Bash history. The .history file is not a standard file name, and it is not recognized by the Bash shell. The Bash shell uses the .bash_history file to store the history of the commands that the user has entered, unless the HISTFILE variable is changed to a different file name.
• E, .history_bash: This file does not exist by default, and it is not used to store the Bash history. The .history_bash file is not a standard file name, and it is not recognized by the Bash shell. The Bash shell uses the .bash_history file to store the history of the commands that the user has entered, unless the HISTFILE variable is changed to a different file name.

References:

• Where is bash’s history stored? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
• How to view the .bash_history file via command line? - Ask Ubuntu
• shell - How can I see all of the bash history? - Stack Overflow

 The apt-cache command is used to query the APT cache for information about packages. The depends option shows a listing of each dependency a package has and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that dependency. For example, apt-cache depends ubuntu-restricted-extras will show the dependencies of the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. The other options are not valid for the apt-cache command. References:

• How to Check Dependencies of a Package in Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux Distributions
• Check DEB package dependencies on Ubuntu / Debian

 When removing a package on a system using dpkg package management, the --purge option ensures that configuration files are removed as well. The --purge option is equivalent to the --remove option followed by the --purge-config-files option, which removes any configuration files that are marked as obsolete. The --remove option only removes the package files, but leaves the configuration files intact. The --clean option removes any .deb files from the local cache, but does not affect the installed packages. The --delete option is not a valid option for dpkg. References:

• 1, 102.4 Lesson 1
• 3, 101-500 Exam - Free Questions and Answers - ITExams.com
• man dpkg