Certification
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Certification

Linux Professional Institute Certification

The Linux Professional Institute currently has two levels of certification, Junior Level Administration (LPIC1) and Intermediate Level Administration (LPIC2). At the time of writing the Senior Level Administration (LPIC3) course was still being developed.

With the permission of the LPI, we have created a detailed list of the skills you need to have to gain the different levels of certification. We have included this in the first appendix of this course Appendix A

SAIR Linux and GNU Certification

We intended to cover the SAIR Linux GNU certification as well, but it seems as if it no longer exists. From their home page http://www.Linuxcertification.org/ it seems that this certification has been taken over by Thomson Learning corporate and professional training operations. We have made repeated attempts at contacting the new administrators of this certification, with no response. SAIR-GNU offered three levels of certification: Administrator (LCA), Engineer (LCE) and Master Engineer (MLCE).

Red Hat Certification

One of the reasons Red Hat has been so widely accepted in the Enterprise environment, I feel, is becasue it has created (and updated) its own certification for its products. People respect the RHCE certification, because it is not easy to attain. Unlike other certifications, the RHCE and RHCT exams are done on live test systems, that simulate tasks that System Administrators should be capable of doing.

There are two levels of certification offered by Red Hat; RHCT (Red Hat Certified Technitian) and RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). The RHCE is the more advanced certification. The RHCE and RHCT exams are performance based practical labs. In other words you are given a exam based on situations that you will find in the real world. As of the end of 2003 these exams are based on the Red Hat Enterprise family of products, not Red Hat 9 as it was previoulsy.

RHCT Certification

According to Red Hat [10]

RHCT tests a technician-specific subset of the skills tested in RHCE: * RHCTs will typically not be making the decisions about how to set up production network services and network security. Thus, RHCT does not test the networking services and network security skills required to earn RHCE.

The RHCT consists of the following exams:

  1. Troubleshooting and System Maintenance (1 hour)

  2. Installation and Configuration (2 hours)

[Important] Important

To earn the RHCT certification one must successfully complete all the requirements in Troubleshooting and System Maintenance and must attain at least 70% for Installation and configuration.

Pre_requisite skills:

  • use standard command line tools (e.g., ls, cp, mv, rm, tail, cat, etc.) to create, remove, view, and investigate files and directories

  • use grep, sed, and awk to process text streams and files

  • use a terminal-based text editor, such as vi/vim, to modify text files

  • use input/output redirection

  • understand basic principles of TCP/IP networking, including IP addresses, netmasks, and gateways

  • use su to switch user accounts

  • use passwd to set passwords

  • use tar, gzip, and bzip2v

  • configure an email client on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  • use mozilla and/or links to access HTTP/HTTPS URLs

  • use lftp to access FTP URLs

Skills needed for Troubleshooting and System Maintainenance exam:

  • boot systems into different run levels for troubleshooting and system maintenance

  • diagnose and correct misconfigured networking

  • diagnose and correct hostname resolution problems

  • configure the X Window System and a desktop environment

  • add new partitions, filesystems, and swap to existing systems

  • use standard command-line tools to analyze problems and configure system

Skills needed for Installation and Configuration Exam:

  • perform network OS installation

  • implement a custom partitioning scheme

  • configure printing

  • configure the scheduling of tasks using cron and at

  • attach system to a network directory service, such as NIS or LDAP

  • configure autofs

  • add and manage users, groups, and quotas

  • configure filesystem permissions for collaboration

  • install and update RPMs

  • properly update the kernel RPM

  • modify the system bootloader

  • implement software RAID at install-time and run-time

  • use /proc/sys and sysctl to modify and set kernel run-time parameters

The RHCE certification:

The RHCE consists of the following exams:

  1. Troubleshooting (2.5 hours)

  2. Multiple Choice (1 hour)

  3. Installation and Configuration (2.5 hours)

[Important] Important

To earn the RHCE one must successfully complete all the troubleshooting tests, score a minimum of 50% for the multiple choice exam, score at least 70% for both the RHCE and RHCT components of the exams and attain a minimum of at least 80% for the all the exams as a whole.

Pre_requisite skills:

  • use standard command line tools (e.g., ls, cp, mv, rm, tail, cat, etc.) to create, remove, view, and investigate files and directories

  • use grep, sed, and awk to process text streams and files

  • use a terminal-based text editor, such as vi/vim, to modify text files

  • use input/output redirection

  • understand basic principles of TCP/IP networking, including IP addresses, netmasks, and gateways

  • use su to switch user accounts

  • use passwd to set passwords

  • use tar, gzip, and bzip2v

  • configure an email client on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  • use mozilla and/or links to access HTTP/HTTPS URLs

  • use lftp to access FTP URLs

Skills needed for Troubleshooting and System Maintainenance exam:

  • boot systems into different run levels for troubleshooting and system maintenance

  • diagnose and correct misconfigured networking

  • diagnose and correct hostname resolution problems

  • configure the X Window System and a desktop environment

  • add new partitions, filesystems, and swap to existing systems

  • use standard command-line tools to analyze problems and configure system

  • use the rescue environment provided by first installation CD

  • diagnose and correct bootloader failures arising from bootloader, module, and filesystem errors

  • diagnose and correct problems with network services (see Installation and Configuration below for a list of these services)

  • add, remove, and resize logical volumes

Skills needed for Installation and Configuration Exam:

  • perform network OS installation

  • implement a custom partitioning scheme

  • configure printing

  • configure the scheduling of tasks using cron and at

  • attach system to a network directory service, such as NIS or LDAP

  • configure autofs

  • add and manage users, groups, and quotas

  • configure filesystem permissions for collaboration

  • install and update RPMs

  • properly update the kernel RPM

  • modify the system bootloader

  • implement software RAID at install-time and run-time

  • use /proc/sys and sysctl to modify and set kernel run-time parameters

People wanting to attain the RHCE certification must be also capable of configuring the following network services:

  • HTTP/HTTPS

  • SMB

  • NFS

  • FTP

  • Web proxy

  • SMTP

  • IMAP, IMAPS, and POP3

  • SSH

  • DNS

For each of these services, RHCEs must be able to:

  • install the packages needed to provide the service

  • configure the service to start when the system is booted

  • configure the service for basic operation

  • Configure host-based and user-based security for the service

RHCEs must also be able to

  • configure hands-free installation using Kickstart

  • implement logical volumes at install-time

  • use PAM to implement user-level restrictions


[10] http://www.redhat.com/training/

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