Linux+ - Progress thread

I'm about to start Linux+. When I did the OSCP, I started a progress thread and people on here seemed to like it, because it let them know whether they should do it too. As of today 8th Jan, 2016, i've set up a CentOS box (I hear that CentOS is the best distro to lab during the course) and i've had a mess about with it. Yum seems easy to use (equivalent of apt-get on ubuntu).

Why am I doing Linux+? I want to get a better understanding of Linux because I will *hopefully* be getting a linux administrator job soon. I am keen to get the LPIC certs too. I have purchased both CompTia vouchers, so I *have*to take the exam.

I'll update this thread regularly, so feel free to bookmark it as I go on my Linux+ journey.

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evopilot

glad i read this thread man thanks for sharing

si20

Ok guys, i've booked the exam for the 29th September. I've done this to make me REALLY push myself (OSCP-style) and drown myself in information and get exam #1 out the way. I've been through quite a lot this year. I got a job with a big company and decided to leave. I joined the public sector and was horrified at how they do things. I finished up my contract and whilst i'm officially unemployed at the time of writing, i've got an interview with a big company. So things are on the up. To tell the truth, i've been a bit depressed with everything. This year hasn't gone as planned. I was hoping to get this cert done with a few months ago. But I spent 3-4 months of this year getting my PGCert.

So now, i've got just over 30 days to learn part #1 of the exam and (hopefully...) pass it. Once i've done that, that buys me a little bit of time and i'd aim to take exam #2 in December of this year.

thomas_

Best of luck on your exam! I know exactly how you're feeling. I bought my voucher about a year ago and have been studying off and on. I took a detour to get Security+ which turned out to be a good thing because it helped me get a job. About a week ago I logged in to my account to see when I had purchased the exam. I was expecting to have a month left, but only had two weeks left. Luckily, I've gone through most of my study material twice along with reading a completely different book. Hopefully I pass

si20

Thanks Thomas, glad I'm not the only one! I bought my vouchers almost a year ago. I've found it extremely difficult to get motivated. I think it's a combination of stress with my job and that I've been continuously studying for years and aside from a few certs with my name on, I've not get much to show for it. The OSCP drained me as well. I did 90 days solid and it pushed me to my limits. I feel fairly confident I can pulled this off if I hammer the next 30 days. Good luck with your exam too!

nisti2

Can you share? How are you practicing or doing labs? Please!!

Im reading some books but I need to practice and memorize all the comands!! Thanks

si20

nisti2 wrote: »

Can you share? How are you practicing or doing labs? Please!!

Im reading some books but I need to practice and memorize all the comands!! Thanks

Earlier in this thread i've mentioned the strategy i'm using for the exam which is basically reading 2x Linux+ books and working through the exam objectives (the two books are mentioned earlier, check them out). So say for example the objective is to learn the 'whereis' command. I'll read about it. Do it practically, then move on to the next command. I have a hunch that exam #2 is going to be harder than exam #1, so I want to get exam #1 out of the way very quickly.

I'm going to spend *ALL* of today working on it.. I can't afford to fail it (both financially and time-wise). If I can pass it by December, I will feel like i've achieved something whilst i'm temporarily unemployed which will look much better to a potential employer.

nisti2

Excellent! Thanks!! For the advice!

si20 wrote: »

Earlier in this thread i've mentioned the strategy i'm using for the exam which is basically reading 2x Linux+ books and working through the exam objectives (the two books are mentioned earlier, check them out). So say for example the objective is to learn the 'whereis' command. I'll read about it. Do it practically, then move on to the next command. I have a hunch that exam #2 is going to be harder than exam #1, so I want to get exam #1 out of the way very quickly.

I'm going to spend *ALL* of today working on it.. I can't afford to fail it (both financially and time-wise). If I can pass it by December, I will feel like i've achieved something whilst i'm temporarily unemployed which will look much better to a potential employer.

si20

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but i'll mention it here too. I've booked my Linux+ exam for the end of this month... So i've started a new strategy because I don't have much time.

I'm now going through my books and answering the questions at the end of the books. I'm picking up on things I don't know much about e.g SysVinit, renice etc and making notes of them. I'm then going to spend the week before the exam revising all the things I don't know.

It's make or break for me really. I perform well under pressure, so I hope my strategy will pay off. I found the course to be quite unstructured really. There's no one telling you: do this, do that. You just have to educate yourself on loads of different topics until you feel confident enough for the exam. Do I feel confident right now? Absolutely not. Will I pass? I'm not sure. I'm going to give it my all though.

It's a shame that the 3-1 certification offer is now gone. I am quite gutted I missed out on that, but to be 100% honest. At this point, I just want the Linux+ and then I can finally move on.

danny069

When did the 3 in 1 expire? So what I'm reading here: https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/linux is not valid?

thomas_

danny069 wrote: »

When did the 3 in 1 expire? So what I'm reading here: https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/linux is not valid?

You have to look for it on the page, it's at the end of the section where they talk about the three in one.

Note: The SUSE certification framework is changing. The LPIC-1 for SUSE CLA offer will only be available until Aug 30, 2016. After Aug 30, SUSE will recognize Linux+ directly as a prerequisite for their advanced certifications. For additional details, visit: https://training.suse.com/cer

nisti2

danny069 wrote: »

When did the 3 in 1 expire? So what I'm reading here: https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/linux is not valid?

Yeah, I also missed that

now we have to take 3 exams... too bad (N) ... or apparently didn't work

danny069

Boo!! The bright side is, Linux+ is still for life right? Perhaps we can see some more collaborations like this in the future.

thomas_

Yeah, Linux+ is for life as it stands, but your LPIC-1 will have an expiration date. To be honest I don't think having 3 certs versus 2 versus 1 cert really mean much. After all you still have the same amount of knowledge. The only way I can see it matter is if a certain employer was really firm on their requirement of having a certain cert such as Linux+ vs LPIC-1 vs Suse CLA.

si20

Quick question on umask, if anyone can clear this up. Default permission is 666. So umask 077 gives us 600. Because the '77' part is higher than the '66' part, is that why it goes to '00' ? Does that make sense?

So for example, if default permissions were 444 and I did a umask of 077, the result would be: 400 ?

Trying to wrap my head around it but the book isn't great at explaining.

si20

In the interest of being 100% open and honest with everyone. I did a practice exam today on penguintutor.com and I only got 44%. This did set alarm bells ringing BUT, in my defense, I did make some very basic errors (e.g not reading the question properly).

I revised a bit more and sat the exam again right this second (at the time i'm writing this post). The questions were different the second time around. Results as follows:

[h=1]Linux Certification Practice Exams[/h] [h=1]Score[/h] 20 out of 25
80 %

So I think with a bit more revision, I should be ok providing the questions in the exam are of a similar difficulty level to the sample questions on that website. I will do sample questions on other websites too.

thomas_

It'sbetter to get lower scores on practice exams than the actual test. This allows you to see where you are lacking knowledge and let's you shore up those areas before the actual test.

si20

I decided to use 4tests.com to give me some sample questions and wow. I almost had to guess every single one. I don't know if I was just unlucky got I got almost 30 questions about rsync, systemd, upstart, runlevels.... I got 55%.

I've absolutely spotted gaping holes in my knowledge. My knowledge of systemd and the other things I listed is virtually zero. My confidence is pretty low at this point because i've got the exam in 2 weeks and i'm struggling. Someone else in another thread said that the hardest thing about the Linux+ is the wide variation of questions and I think they're right.

You can get anything from CLI useage to dmesg, to locations of files, runlevels, grep questions, filesystem questions etc. I'm going to put some serious effort into boosting my knowledge over the next 2 weeks but at the time of writing I am NOT confident.

thomas_

You might want to download the exam objectives and read each one. I think there are some things that the exam objective says that you need to he familiar with, but don't have to know in depth.

varelg

@si20: your question on umask has to do with maximum permissions for file and for directory, which are not the same. When you assign a umask value, think about what are you masking from the user or group.
Also think of the implications of umask value per user vs. global assignment.
Further with your studies, be very specific on topics you have problem understanding or remembering. Make a list of them and do your research on each until you start understanding . Lab. Them. All.

si20

Thanks. I checked out a youtube video and it explained it 100x better than the book did. I think if I was starting from scratch, i'd have used youtube tutorials for the most part. Visually seeing it done properly is so much better than someone trying to explain it in a limited space in a book.

si20

Well it's my LX-103 exam tomorrow. I'm doing some practice tests today and trying to re-learn things ASAP because there are still a lot of things that I don't feel 100% comfortable with.

Here's one of my latest test exam scores:

If it's anything like the practice tests, I feel like I should nail it. If it's not like the practice tests, it could go either way.

test.jpg

shochan

Thanks for taking the time to post your progress, I am going to take the Linux+ in 2017. I've decided to detour & take the beta Project+ exam in mid Nov since it is only $50 instead of $285 (I think this is still available too if anyone is thinking of taking it). But after the Proj+ is done, I will be hitting the Linux+ full steam like you have been doing. I have taken the intro to Linux course on edX.org and passed what they call "certificate of achievement", but it is not a true certification in my eyes. It may look good on a resume though (which it is on mine). Good luck on your exam tomorrow duder! Seems like a 500/800 score...63% is the passing score, correct? Cheers!

si20

shochan wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to post your progress, I am going to take the Linux+ in 2017. I've decided to detour & take the beta Project+ exam in mid Nov since it is only $50 instead of $285 (I think this is still available too if anyone is thinking of taking it). But after the Proj+ is done, I will be hitting the Linux+ full steam like you have been doing. I have taken the intro to Linux course on edX.org and passed what they call "certificate of achievement", but it is not a true certification in my eyes. It may look good on a resume though (which it is on mine). Good luck on your exam tomorrow duder! Seems like a 500/800 score...63% is the passing score, correct? Cheers!

Thanks shochan. I haven't heard of the Project+ exam but I will look into it! My only issue with the Linux+ is the sheer amount of information you have to cover and that the exam is in 2 parts which goes to show just how much material is in it. Yes 500/800 but from what I read, some questions aren't worth as much as others, so until you get to the end of the exam, you don't know how you've performed. Even if I hit 500 on the dot i'll be happy. I've already decided that career-wise i'm not going down the Linux route, I was just doing this cert because Linux (and still is) a hobby. I will update this thread tomorrow with my results! Let's hope I can pull it off!

thomas_

The thing I like about practice tests the most is usually they will have some kind of explanation about why the correct answer is the correct answer and why all of the other choices are wrong. I always read the explanations and I find that it helps me a lot.

I would get a good night's sleep. I always show up early to the test center and spend 45-60 minutes doing a final review. I know I got some answers right on the LX0-103 that I would have otherwise gotten wrong if I didn't spend the extra time reviewing. I like to skim through my notes and then skim through the book reading anything that's bolded, highlighted or otherwise marked as being important. However, I do focus on the areas that i know I'm weaker in.

si20

Totally agreed thomas_ that's exactly how i'm spending this evening. In fact i've just went through chapter 4's practice questions from Bresnahan's book and scored 14/20 (70%). I'm looking at the ones I got wrong and the explaination so that I wont make the same mistake tomorrow.

si20

Good news everyone!!! I passed the LX-103

The bad news: I only got 540 / 800 (500 is passing mark). The exam was no joke - I thought i'd failed it. I got a whole bunch of vi questions, upstart, SysV, grub and yum/RPM questions - I got a few easy questions but i'd say the vast majority were hard - I had to use the process of elimination to answer the questions. One of the umask questions had me stumped for a good 10-15 minutes but I finished the exam with approx 55 mins to go. I got a question that asked for the parameter for a command and the answers were identical, only one of them was upper case and one was lower case - in short: you NEED to know your commands inside out otherwise you can easily fail this one.

So now i'm going to take the LX-104 exam in December and hopefully i'll pass that, then I will be able to say that I reached my goals for this year.

P.S

Thanks everyone for the support

mindcrank

si20 wrote: »

Good news everyone!!! I passed the LX-103

The bad news: I only got 540 / 800 (500 is passing mark). The exam was no joke - I thought i'd failed it. I got a whole bunch of vi questions, upstart, SysV, grub and yum/RPM questions - I got a few easy questions but i'd say the vast majority were hard - I had to use the process of elimination to answer the questions. One of the umask questions had me stumped for a good 10-15 minutes but I finished the exam with approx 55 mins to go. I got a question that asked for the parameter for a command and the answers were identical, only one of them was upper case and one was lower case - in short: you NEED to know your commands inside out otherwise you can easily fail this one.

So now i'm going to take the LX-104 exam in December and hopefully i'll pass that, then I will be able to say that I reached my goals for this year.

P.S

Thanks everyone for the support

Congrats man!

I am studying for this right now as well.

thomas_

Congrats.

illuminus

It was cool following your progress. Great job on the pass. Good luck on your next exam.

shochan

Yeah MANE! Good job regardless...A pass is PASS! CHEERS!