RHCSA Howto ... Tips and Tricks - Episode 1

Introduction

As I recently started to study to improve my knowledge in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I thought it was a good idea to use the Blog like a notepad where I will write information on the topics of the certification, links to external websites which provide tutorials and whatever matters with the topic!

The RHCSA certification is the introductory Red Hat System Administrator certification and a mandatory step for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification.

As the topic are subject to change by Red Hat, if you want to take my same journey, I suggest you to check the following link and print-out the "Study Point".

At the moment of writing this post (July 2017), the topics are divided into the following chapters:

• Understand and use essential tools
• Operate running systems
• Configure local storage
• Create and configure file systems
• Deploy, configure, and maintain systems
• Manage users and groups
• Manage security

As written at the end of the webpage of the mentioned Red Hat link, quote "Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance through revisions to this document" ... unfortunately there is no "revision number" in the document itself so ... check the document multiple times during the preparation.

I would not suggest to take this certification journey if you don't already have a couple of year of experience with Linux! You will possibly waste time and money and this certification is not cheap... currently the exam cost around 470£ + VAT ... quite expensive!

Training Material

After downloading the topic list you need to figure out where to get information, which training material to study, which books, videos ...
I love Linux for many reasons, one is that you can find so many information for free. Perhaps when it comes to a certification, in my opinion you need to have an official certification guide: this will help you to divide and conquer each topic, have a set of exercises and labs and have one or more exam simulation to verify if what you learnt is enough to pass the exam or if you need to review any topic.

I have been able to review several books (thanks to some friends) and the one I found perfect for my study-style is:
Cert Guide - Red Hat RHCSA/RHCE 7 - by Sander Van Vugt

As I like to read the same topic from different authors I am using these other books as well:

The Linux Bible - Ninth Edition - by Christopher Negus
which is a good "comprehensive" book full of tutorials and resources.

How Linux works, what every superuser should know - by Brian Ward
more about troubleshooting but with interesting information even for a System Admin

Note: I don't have any interest/profit by mentioning the above books but I found good to suggest them and promote the authors work.

As you will read on all the books, for any command you will come across during your journey, you should have a proper look to the man page and to the info page (if any): these resources will be the only one available to you during the exam ... so better to know how to use it to your advantage!!

Lab and first experiences

That's the first step! What Sander suggest is to create 3 virtual environments:

• server with CLI
• server with GUI
• server for LDAP authentication and other shared services

You can create an account and download the official Red Hat 7 image and then create the 3 VMs or, more simply, download CentOS 7. At the moment of writing (July 2017) it seems like the exam will focus on versions 7.1 and 7.2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can use CentOS with the same version number as basically CentOS is a Red Hat Enterprise "stripped of the Red Hat" logo.
So what is the difference between Red Hat and CentOS and why companies are paying for Red Hat? When it comes to the ISO, the same versions of the 2 distribution has the same packages version and pretty similar configurations; they are basically interchangeable.
When it comes to apply patches, CentOS provides free access to its repositories while to get access to Red Hat you need to pay an annual fee. The fee does not entitle you only to get access to the repository but also to get free high quality, 24H 7/7 365 support! That's the main difference ... an enterprise level support which will take care of providing you quick and expert answer to your queries.
So, setup your VMs and start to play around with the basics! If you already have a Linux machine running CentOS you may find useful to read my post about deployment of VM using KVM.

In my next post I will focus on the objective of the first chapter "Understand and use essential tools":

• access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax
• use input-output redirection
• use grep and regular expression to analyze text
• access remote system using ssh
• log in and switch users in multiuser targets
• archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip and bzip2
• create and edit text files
• create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
• create hard and soft links
• list, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions
• locate, read and use system documentation including man, info and files in /usr/share/doc

In the post I will introduce the commands that you need to know focusing on the tasks which maybe required in the exam.

Recommendations

If you decide to take a journey into a certification the most common recommendation is to schedule your study activities and have a target day for the exam! There is no better recommendation. I know that sometimes life and work does not help to keep you on track but without any target milestone you will never meet the desired result!
Please feel free to add comments; they may be helpful for other geek who would like to learn the topic! I hope you enjoyed reading this post.
Stay tuned!