topic Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice in Operating System - Linux

RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 10:25:57 GMT

I feel like A. Clay Stephenson's atttitude toward taking the CSA toward the RHCE.

A. Clay has stated that some day after nearly 30 years of Unix experience he may take the HP-UX CSA but he refused to study for it.

Since I have considerably less experience than him, and will be taking the RHCE fast track course next week, I'm looking for experienced advice. My company wants to have a pair of RHCE engineers on staff.

Being on top of the ITRC Linux heap does not mean a lot when it comes to passing this exam. Some skills I can do in my sleep. Others I've simply never needed to know.

I want to know whose taken it, what they think of it and what their advice is on things to concentrate.

I've got materials from RHCE 3 and am registered and will soon go over materials for RHCE 4. I want to hear your thoughts.

Anyone brave enough to admit they failed the exam gets an extra point for honesty.

No post or advice is too small.

Point scale:
5 Points for any advice from someone that has taken the RHCE 4 exam.
3 Points for any advice for someone that has taken the RHCE 3 exam.
2 Points extra if you say why you failed the RHCE 4 examination.

I have good materials, but will look at new links.

As always, TIA for your excellent advice.

SEP

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Andrew Cowan — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:43:59 GMT

Steven,

I took the RHCE fastrack course and exam last year, and you could say that I failed, as I only came out with an RHCT. I can't talk too specifically about the exam as you have to sign-up to RedHat's code of conduct, however my experiences/comments are as follows:

The course is very hands-on (hint: pay particular attention to the exercises!), and quite intense, and I would say on the whole one of the best I've been on. The exam is in two parts on the fifth day. The morning is RHCT, and the afternoon is RHCE. The first part is very straight-forward, the examiner set's up several problem scenarios on a test PC, and you have to solve them.

In the afternoon you do a similar thing but it is a compound task rather than discrete problems, and the catch is that there is very little time, as it takes so long for your PC to read CD's, install packages etc, and the big catch is that if you miss a step, you are screwed as you don't have the time to go back.

My BIG argument against part-2 is that I don't think it is representitive of the real world. I work in Linux everyday and virtually never setup systems whereby people are using the entire Linux desktop environment and toolset. The reality is more like the Linux server sits in back-room running a website or app, and the users have Windows-based PC's. I am no Windows fan but I do accept this reality!

The other big criticism of the course was that they did not cover real-world issues such as Kernel rebuilds, driver installations, etc, and my experience is that they are the biggest problems that we face, and the obstacles which prevent a lot of clients adopting Linux more widely.

I hope this helps?

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:50:09 GMT

Thank you.

Few things:
1) I expect full compliance with agreements you have signed with Red Hat. The purpose of this thread is not to gain an unfair advantage. I have to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, trains and other things and have virutal machines on my laptop and such and wish to make best use of my time.
2) I think the study guide I am using does not deal very much with reality. Cest la vive, thats the way it goes. I may post specific problems during my study process to this thread.
3) Feel free to contact me offline if you are more comfortable with this.
http://www.isnamerica.com/contactsep.shtml

However I am serious about item 1. I've been using RH for 6 years and should be able to pass this exam. I wish to not only pass it but to do it by a wide margin.

Extra points for tough honesty have been swarded.

SEP
:-)

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Andrew Cowan — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:19:45 GMT

SEP,

I wasn't trying to be awkward or to suggest that you were cheating, its just that lots of people read these forums and I did not want them to think that I was ignoring the agreement I had signed.

I have no doubt that you could pass this exam, however I'm pretty sure that you don't get to see your marks at all, other than the examiners tells you at lunchtime whether you've done enough to take the second part, as there's no point if you can't do the RHCT part.

As I also tried to explain, I also have a lot of experience in Linux, and work with everyday, however a lot of the exam material is NOT representive of the real-world, so unless they've updated it for the US since I took it, you will be asked to concentrate on some long-since dead things like NIS, and to configure some stuff for the desktop that only home users would see.

I was hoping that the exam would focus far more on the corporate world and not using Linux as a replacement for Windows.

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Andrew Cowan — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:26:25 GMT

One other thing to add is that I would advise anybody wose wants a crash course in Linux NOT to do this course, but to look more at things like the LPIC online courses and exams, as they are far more focused on things like: what different switches to "ls" do and why, or how to add a printer.

The RHCE is very specific to the things that are possible to configure in the RHEL environment. It does however, open a lot of doors, and many employers here in Europe take it very seriously.

I'm hoping to sit the RedHat security exams later this year.

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:42:57 GMT

Your remark concerning the agreements made me remember what I intended to insert into the original post.

I did not take anything you said in a negative way, it merely made my pea brain molecules connect and make a circuit.

SEP

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Thomas J. Harrold — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:29:07 GMT

I took the RHCT prep class, with the RHCT exam on the last day. (this was about 2 years ago). I have been doing UNIX admin for 14+ years, and I had NO idea what to expect on the exam. 2-3 years ago, it was hard to find people who had the RHCT/CE certs, and I was the first one from my company to attempt.

All I can say, is that the prep class taught all of the skills needed to pass the exam. It took me about 1 hour, and I did't miss a single point. Some of the folks who's only O/S experience was Windows had a tougher time. Most of the folks with some UNIX background had no problems.

I know that the RHCE is a bit more involved, but I imagine that with the prep class, and your existing knowledge/experience, you'll be fine.

-tjh

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:49:25 GMT

Based on my studies thus far, I would advise that RHCE preparation is for RHCE preparation.

Today I forced myself to learn kickstart and found it interesting.

1) It doesn't support LVM configuration, which makes it of limited value.
2) It is quite helpful when fixing machines broken by playing around with possible troubleshooting issues.

SEP

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

David Child_1 — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:56:44 GMT

I took this course a couple of months back (RHCE 4) and was successful in passing the RHCE. It is 100% practical (e.g. no written component). As already stated; if you don't know RedHat Linux at some level don't expect this course to teach it. It really is a crash course to passing the test, but I would look at it more of a refresher for things you already have some knowledge on.

I think that if you keep your cool during the test and have a good Unix and some Linux foundation you should be able to pass it. It is broad based so its better to study wide than deep.

Also, you stated, in reference to kickstart; "It doesn't support LVM configuration, which makes it of limited value". Actually you can set up LVM definitions in kickstart and they work quite well. Here is an example of what I have set up;

bootloader --driveorder=cciss/c0d0 --location=mbr --append="rhgb quiet"
clearpart --drives=cciss/c0d0 --all --initlabel
part /boot --size=1024 --fstype ext3 --ondisk=cciss/c0d0
part pv.0 --size=5120 --grow --ondisk=cciss/c0d0
volgroup vg00 --pesize=4096 pv.0
logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=lvroot --vgname=vg00 --size=512
logvol /usr --fstype ext3 --name=lvusr --vgname=vg00 --size=3072
logvol /var --fstype ext3 --name=lvvar --vgname=vg00 --size=2048
logvol /opt --fstype ext3 --name=lvopt --vgname=vg00 --size=512
logvol /tmp --fstype ext3 --name=lvtmp --vgname=vg00 --size=256
logvol /usr/local --fstype ext3 --name=lvlocal --vgname=vg00 --size=1024
logvol /home --fstype ext3 --name=lvhome --vgname=vg00 --size=512
logvol /usr/openv --fstype ext3 --name=lvopenv --vgname=vg00 --size=512
logvol /opt/bmc --fstype ext3 --name=lvoptbmc --vgname=vg00 --size=512
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=lvswap1 --vgname=vg00 --size=8192

David

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:29:37 GMT

I should clarify.

The system-config-kickstart daemon does not support lvm.

It is possible to do a lvm install and take the anaconda.cfg file, modify and use it as an installation configuration for other nodes.

SEP

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Andrew Cowan — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:57:24 GMT

The easiest way if you are going to clone a lot of systems is to build the first one manually just to get the logical partitioning right, then copy the section from the Anaconda Kickstart files, and copy if into your ks.cfg file.

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Ivan Ferreira — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:29:44 GMT

As I cannot add anything else to everything said here, if you will take the exam, I just want to say:

GOOD LUCK!!!

People say that "luck" is for people that is not prepared, this won't be your case, but always helps. :>

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven Clementi — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:49:14 GMT

So did you pass?

And if so... scores?

Me:
Section I : 90
Section IIa: 100
Section IIb: 96.4

:D

Steven

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven Clementi — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 13:13:27 GMT

I see you did by your profile, so you can bypass answering the first question if you so choose (and the second if you rather not answer).

Steven

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 13:47:52 GMT

Steven it was wonderful sitting class with you.

I did indeed pass and you did indeed outscore me, but not by a wide margin. I am very pleased with my results.

What I found most impressive was my rowmate to the left who trashed his system early in phase two, but battled on until the last moments.

SEP

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Stuart Browne — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:04:46 GMT

WooHoo! Congratulations! :)

My scores (if I remember correctly) were:

1) 100%
2) 96%
3) 100%

Damn multiple choice questions :P

That being said, I need to do a refresher for RHEL4..

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 06:16:32 GMT

Congratulations!

Re: RHCE 4 Preparation advice

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 10:27:47 GMT

Passe4 the Examination with plenty of room to spare.

Thanks for all your wonderful advice.

Feel free to open a congrats thread if you like. Its rather a pain to open this thread up to assign points and close it again.

Patting myself on the back.

Thanks Vitaly, it is difficult to fill your role at Beit NDS, but I'm trying very hard.

SEP