CompTIA Updated XK0-005 Exam Questions and Answers by klay

The slowness is caused by the CPU being overloaded. The iostat command shows that the CPU utilization is 100%, which means that there are more processes competing for CPU time than the CPU can handle. The other options are incorrect because:

• The system is not running out of swap space, as shown by the iostat command, which shows that there is no swap activity (si and so columns are zero).
• The memory is not exhausted, as shown by the free -m command, which shows that there is still available memory (avail column) and free buffer/cache memory (buff/cache column).
• The processes are not paging, as shown by the vmstat command, which shows that there are no major page faults (majflt column) and no swap activity (si and so columns). References: CompTIA Linux+ Study Guide, Fourth Edition, page 417-419, 424-425.

The command gzip can extract files that are compressed with the gzip format, which has the extension .gz. This is the correct command to use for the software package. The other options are incorrect because they either compress files (bzip2 -z), unzip files that are compressed with the zip format (unzip -v or funzip), or have the wrong options (-v or -z instead of -d). References: CompTIA Linux+ (XK0-005) Certification Study Guide, Chapter 11: Managing Files and Directories, page 353.

To give the support group access to modify the config file while preserving the current ownership, the administrator can execute the command chmod 664 config ©. This will change the permissions of the config file to read and write for the owner and group, and read only for others. The owner and group of the file will remain as root and app respectively. The other commands will not achieve this task, but either change the group ownership, set an access control list, or set a setgid bit. References:

• [CompTIA Linux+ Study Guide], Chapter 3: Working with Files, Section: Changing File Permissions
• [How to Use chmod Command in Linux]

The server’s CPU is spending too much time waiting for data inputs. This can be inferred from the output of the top command, which shows the percentage of CPU time spent in different states. The wa state stands for wait, and it indicates that the CPU is idle while waiting for an I/O operation to complete. In this case, the wa state is 52.4%, which means that more than half of the CPU time is wasted on waiting for data inputs. This can cause a high I/O latency and affect the performance of the server.

The other options are not correct based on the output received from the executed command. The server’s CPU is not taking too long to process users’ requests, because the us state, which stands for user, is only 0.2%, which means that the CPU is barely used by user processes. The server’s CPU does not show a high idle-time value, because the id state, which stands for idle, is 0.0%, which means that the CPU is not idle at all. The server’s CPU value for the time spent on system processes is not low, because the sy state, which stands for system, is 33.1%, which means that the CPU is heavily used by system processes.

References: How to Use the Linux top Command (and Understand Its Output); [Understanding Linux CPU Load - when should you be worried?]