MrAgent's Daily log Redhat course 124

MrAgent

This is a daily log of my experiences during the Redhat training course RH124.

Monday - Day 1
There are 10 people enrolled in this course. Introductions were made and it appears that most people in this course have some experience in different forms of Unix. After telling the instructor wha I do for a living and what I use RHEL for, I am told by the instructor that this course will probably be pretty boring for me as it is very basic. I am told that everything in the exam forAfter a long introduction from everyone in the course we went over the daily topics in the course. Every topic covered has tasks at the end of the chapter to ensure the student understands what is being covered.We have a course book which comes with a DVD with the RHEL software, a pen, and some note paper.Every student also has a machine preinstalled with the RHEL software and various labs we will be doing.We started by getting a basic over view of the OS. Including access to the various menus. Some of the tasks we briefly looked at were (all of this was done by using the gnome GUI)

• Editing the about me information
• Editing user profiles including customizing the terminal windows
• Location of documentation
• Logging in, switching users, and changing password
• Restarting a shutting down

After this we went into learning more about gedit. This is the basic text editor included with RHEL. I am told that all tools which are included in the RHEL repository are allowed and will be able to be installed during the RHCSA exam. The instructor briefly went over vim and nano.With in gedit we had some tasks we had to complete to ensure understanding of how to create, edit, and delete files.The tasks included

• Creating a new document
• Finding and replacing words in gedit
• Basic editing
• Saving documents

We then went into the file system explorer included with RHEL. This is called Nautilus. The tasks we had to perform using nautilus included:

• Basic browsing
• Moving, copying, and linking files
• Connecting to remote servers (FTP, SSH, Windows/Samba)
• Mouting and dismounting network shares

We also very briefly covered getting help for any application. This included just hitting F1 in the application in question, as well as going to a terminal and using the man pages.We than began covering the role of the root user. The tasks covered were:

• Using su - and why
• Using sudo
• Differences between the Linux root and Windows administrator

We then went to covering the System clock and its importance to the system. Some of the things to be considered about having accurate time included:

• Logging
• Messaging (timestamps)
• Cron jobs
• RSA Tokens

The tasks covered for the system clock were:

• Setting the clock
• Syncing time with external and internal sources
• Changing the time zone
• Using UTC

After that we covered adding printers and the use of CUPS. The basic tasks included:

• Location in the GUI to setting up a printer
• Using the system-config-printer command
• Setting up and connecting to local and remote printers
• Publishing printers so that others can use them
• Setting permissions to limit or grant access to printers

This brought us to our last topic of the Day. The Bash shell. We then went into a few of the features included with bash and the use of the commands within the cli. Two of the features included:

• Using the history command
• Tab completion

I was amazed that most of the students in the class had no idea they could use the the tab completion feature. To me that is one of the best features of bash. The last commands we went over before leaving for the day included:

• passwd
• id
• su [-]
• exit
• Putting applications into the foreground and background
• jobs
• sleep
• fg

Tuesday Day 2

The first thing we covered was managing physical storage. We covered the GUI disk utility. Which are told we will have access to during the RHCSA exam as well as all of the other tools.From there we started going through the practical stuff including:

• Seperating partitions
• MBR
• df command
• fdisk functions

We then had a discussion of the structure of the file system, and discussed the required directories that must hang off of root ( / ) Those directories are:

• bin
• dev
• etc
• lib
• sbin

We then talked about the disk utility again and began practicing with it again. There are exams at the end of each chaper which require you to ensure all of the objectives for the chapter are met. While using the disk utility again we went through:

• creating partitions
• formatting
• mounting
• editing the fstab
• creating the directories for the mount points

We learned that you can also access the disk ultility via a command prompt (which can be done over ssh) with the gnome-disk-utility commandWe next headed into LVM. We covered:

• creating physical partitions
• creating physical volumes
• creating volume groups
• creating logical volumes

We then talked more about LVM and went into:

• displaying free space
• space used
• editing volume groups
• viewing volume groups

Most of class for the rest of the day was dicussions about LVM's and the different types of volumes contained within. We discussed:

• Deplying logical volumes
• Creating volume groups
• Extending logical volumes
• Removing physical volumes
• Managing logical volumes

Our next section covered monitoring system resources. This included:

• Processes, priorities, and signals
• ps command
• system monitor
• process management
• disk usuage analyzer

We also covered the kill command and what meanings between kill -9 and kill 15 are. We also went into the top command and how to navigate around inside of top to show different and useful information.Our last section of the day was about getting help in a text environment. This basically was about the man pages including:

• Using the man reader
• searching for keywords
• pinfo reader
• addition man pages included by 3rd parties

That was the end of the day. We definitley covered a lot of information on day 2. I feel as though I didnt learn a lot, but I did reaffirm what I already knew and it seems to have stuck and sunk in. I just hope I can keep it in my head when I take the exam. Day 3 up next.

YuckTheFankees

What kind of work experience did the other 9 students have? What's the average age of the students?

MrAgent

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

What kind of work experience did the other 9 students have? What's the average age of the students?

Most of them appear to be developers and a couple of windows admins. I am definitely the youngest person here. I am 34 and everyone else appears to be in their 40's and 50's. Definitely an older class.

YuckTheFankees

Oh wow, I guess someone in th low/mid 20's might look a little out of place.

Has day 2 gone into the depth you were looking for?

MrAgent

Not yet. Still mostly GUI stuff and a little into the disk manager and LVM.

onesaint

Fantastic outline of the first day. Thanks for taking the time to do it. Based on the course outline I'm not sure you'll get too much deeper. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the class goes.

MrAgent

onesaint wrote: »

Fantastic outline of the first day. Thanks for taking the time to do it. Based on the course outline I'm not sure you'll get too much deeper. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the class goes.

So far its been mostly GUI tools, which dont seem too hard to figure out. I am told that in the second week, the class gets much more in depth and only uses the cli. I am really looking forward to the second week and taking the test.

YuckTheFankees

So would you suggest skipping Sys Admin I (just read books and google what's in the course objective?) and just going onto Sys Admin 2?

onesaint

I'm going to sit for the exam next quarter and am looking forward to it as well. I have a few classes including a Eucalyptus / LAMP class that I'm going to be working through at the same time, which I'm also looking forward to.

MrAgent

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

So would you suggest skipping Sys Admin I (just read books and google what's in the course objective?) and just going onto Sys Admin 2?

I dont know that I would skip it, since I have picked up some small things that are useful, but nothing that I was like "Oh thats what that does." Its just a little slow at the moment.

I just finished day 2 about an hour ago. Im going to go out and enjoy myself for a little bit then come back and post my thoughts/notes on day 2.

Thanks to whoever gave me the +rep. I appreciate it.

YuckTheFankees

Thanks to whoever gave me the +rep. I appreciate it.

YuckTheFankees

Hows the class going?

MrAgent

Day 2 added. Im having issues trying to get the editor to do what I want, so there are some spacing issues it seems. Ill try and add day 3 later.

YuckTheFankees

Overall how was your experience for week 1? Would you suggest this class if someone had 1 year of experience with Red Hat?

MrAgent

Overall I liked the course, and yes I would recommend it. Youll learn more about the GUI tools, which can make life easier.

YuckTheFankees

I get so focused on CLI, that I barely pay any attention to the GUI. What kind material do they give to you(books?)

MrAgent

For week 1 I received the official curriculum book with information on chapters that are taught during the class and lab exercises, as well as a dvd included with the book.

YuckTheFankees

Are you going to do a review for the second class?

MrAgent

Yes I am. Im also going to put up my review for days 3 - 5 as soon as I can.

YuckTheFankees

That sounds awesome. I just signed up for II and III (March 5-9 and 26-30).

UnixGuy

Great reviews thanks !

Good luck with the exams guys, keep us posted

N2IT

MrAgent wrote: »

Yes I am. Im also going to put up my review for days 3 - 5 as soon as I can.

Thanks for sharing this awesome information!

YuckTheFankees

Did week 2 get into more depth?

MrAgent

Week 2 starts Monday. Finally caught up with work, so I plan on putting the rest of my notes up tomorrow or Sunday. Ill start a new thread Monday for week 2.

YuckTheFankees

Awesome.