T Minus 30 Days Till RHCSA

Ok, so I'm going to take a stab at logging all of my study time for RHCSA in this post. As of today, I have 30 days till I take this exam.

The last few months I haven't been able to devote as much time to studying as I would like. I got married, the holidays, work, family, and gotten sick. So I need to be able to use every hour the best I can.

I'm sure a few of you will ask why RHEL6. Well, at work we use a mix of RHEL5/6 and slowly moving away from RHEL5 to 6.

And I'm sure a few of you will ask why it took me as long to study for this exam. Well, I've had my goal post moved on me a few times. First I was studying for CCNA, and ready to take the 1st part of the exam, when my boss said to drop that and focus on getting RHCSA. So I switched and later learned that my Security+ was no longer valid, so I had the goal post moved on me again and took about two months to prepare for that cert. Finished that cert and started to study for RHCSA, when I had my goal post moved on me yet again when my boss wanted me to finish a number of CBT for Linux for work. Took me a few months to finish that and here I am.

I'm using the latest VirtualBox, and have a number of RHEL6 templates that i can spin up with the labbing software already built in, ready to run. For the book, the previous admin left behind Jang's RHCSA 6th edition, however I wish I would have got something else. I also have a subscription to Linux Academy too.

I'm still having issues getting Kick Start to run, and haven't had a chance to power up the extra pc that I bought to master KVM.

Tonight, I practiced LVM, encryption and creation partitions with fdisk and Parted. Fdisk I know like second nature. Parted I'm still not used to and still having issues creating multiple primary partitions. I also had trouble tonight trying to setup swap space with Parted. I will need to master Parted because I'm managing a number of servers that in the TB range of storage.

I also need to go back and review Umask along with Star.

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Comments

gkca

varelg wrote: »

I don't know if LDAP- related objectives are part of RHCSA 6 exam but they definitely are part of RHCSA 7 exam. You'd work on the virtual machine, as far as I know.

Yes, they are.

varelg wrote:

Few testimonials like yours led me to choose classroom exam over kiosk. You won't have to take the class to take the classroom exam. Instructor also supervises the exam and not a clueless employee of the testing center.

I took both, classroom and kiosk tests and liked the kiosk version better as I could better concentrate on the test.

varelg wrote:

Those that passed the exam say they got their results within hours after the exam. I got mine (did not pass) days after. But I really hope I am wrong and that you passed.

I got my results for RHCSA in about 8 hours after the test and RHCE in about 2 hours.

rolltide78

I'm taking RHCSA 6 on Monday and am starting to panic a bit. Been studying Jang, Sander, RH official courseware (1 and 2) that I took 2 years ago, along with some practice material. I was pretty confident until I went to certdepot.com and did their practice quizzes. I think my issue is the cmd line for things such as LVM and LDAP. If I feel like I can knock things out with the GUI should I go that route? I still want to make sure I'm crisp on my knowledge of the cli for exercises such as these 2 but for the exam I'm just getting nervous. Thanks.

G

JockVSJock

varelg wrote: »

Few testimonials like yours led me to choose classroom exam over kiosk. You won't have to take the class to take the classroom exam. Instructor also supervises the exam and not a clueless employee of the testing center.

I didn't know there was an option of taking the classroom exam and not the class Vs the Red Hat Kiosk. The kiosk is junk.

Test results are back...$400.00 down the drain. My score was 116.

I focused on growing LVM, SELinux and LUKS. SELinux and LUKS weren't any of the questions on the exam. The one LVM scenario was using lvremove, which I didn't focus on and the other was to grow disks, however I didn't see a way to add space via fdisk???

I think Jang's book was bad, and didn't prepare me for the exam...I briefly remember him talking about OpenLDAP and that's it. No labs and no scenarios. I will have to look at FreeIPA...

However my RHCSA 7 book from Asghar Ghori arrived in the mail on Thursday. However my goal post has moved once again as I'm going to CEH training the 1st part of April, so I need to start to gear up for that. I'm thinking once I complete CEH successfully, I will switch focus to finish CISSP...

I'm very angry and frustrated right now...However I do thank everyone for their support and checking in on this thread.

rolltide78

Did you have the GUI throughout? This will make me rest easy about a lot. I've heard to always use the GUI for LVM on the exam as well as LDAP. I'm concerned with creating a virtual from the cmd line but have the GUI down pat as well as installing with yum groupinstall Virtualization.

ftp, http, kernel update, working with files, vnc, etc I'm all fine on the cli but it's just some of those tasks that require lots of switches and multiple commands to get the job down that I struggle with right now. 3 whole days left to study.

rolltide78

I know it's frustrating to not pass but what helps me is to keep it in perspective that you learned a heck of a lot than when you started. I know that doesn't help much with the feeling.

JockVSJock

rolltide78 wrote: »

Did you have the GUI throughout?

I'm so used to working from the CLI, and plus I was in the zone, that I forgot about various gui tools that could help with the exam.

Word on the street, is that you shouldn't use LVM from the gui. It is prone to accidents.

rolltide78

ok cool. Thanks.

techfiend

If you plan on going with 7 which contains a plethora of changes, you might want to look at The Pearson van Vugt book it's been solid so far and has a lot of labs. It includes RHCE study as well in case you plan on continuing red hat studies. Both are great to learn but the RHCE is the one employers want, rarely see RHCSA mentioned. 555 pages for RHCSA, 358 pages for RHCE.

Apparently tab complete, man and --help are available during the test. van Vugt has a lot of quick tips for this. Such as just remember vg, pv, lv for lvm.

rolltide78

Thanks. I'm taking RHCSA 6 on Monday and then I'll concentrate on RHCE 7 later on. Our Linux environment is pretty small right now (16 servers) compared to our Windows environment (500) so this is just to get more comfortable and build skills at this point. Hopefully I'll have a good end result on Monday.

techfiend

https://www.certdepot.net/ looks like a very useful site.

varelg

Oh man, that must have hurt. Sorry to hear you didn't pass. Do you feel like you gave 100% preparing the exam? Do you think distractions you mentioned took the toll on your readiness?
lvreduce on the exam? Maybe because ext4 as the default filesystem of RHEL 6 allows shrinking, unlike xfs (default of RHEL 7) that does not.
Good to have that behind you, now that you have built a solid base it is easier to pursue RHCSA for RHEL 7. Plenty of good resources already, I am going over and over again through Sander's book (solid read) and practice on Linux Aacademy's server labs.

rolltide78

Today I've been going through Sander's livelessons on rhca 7 (even though I'm taking 6) and watching his exercises and then doing them myself. I also have the certdepot sample exams to review.

techfiend

There are many differences between 6 and 7. I really don't see a reason to take 6 now since some core functionality has changed such as networkmanager being a big one.

hiddenknight821

Having gone through the entire Jang's RHEL6 book and only the RHCSA portion of Van Vugt RHEL7 book, I can attest that there are several differences. Although, the differences aren't hard to learn. Especially with the tips that Van Vugt provided as he tells us to take it easy and only remember the basics.

There are a couple of things you need to be aware of:

- The scripts in the /etc/init.d/ directory is now being replaced by systemd. You now use the 'systemctl' command to stop/start services. This command also replaces the 'chkconfig' command, and you'd have to use the disable/enable options instead.

- xfs is now the default file system. With this, you can't reduce the file system size, but you can expand it.

- Firewalld is now the 'new' way of configuring firewall rules. It's actually a lot easier than you think. You are not REQUIRED to use firewalld. You can still stick with iptables, which I think is probably best since it's portable on other systems. The catch is that you must disable either service persistently. It's recommended to mask either service so that it can't be started accidentally. You can't have both iptables and firewalld services running at the same time.

- Remember the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 script file? Well, all the networking configuration is now being done through the revamped NetworkManager. If you want to take the path of least resistance, then all you need to know is the 'nmtui' command. However, to get the full control of your networking config, you'd have to use the command-line version, 'nmcli'.

- Logging just got a lot easier with journald daemon. You'd be able to see what's happening to your system and pinpoint the issue better with 'journalctl' command. Syslog is still being used and can be used concurrently. Although, it can be completely replaced by journald. Journald deeply integrates with systemd. You'd notice some similarities when running the 'systemctl status some.service' command.

This is all I can remember for now as it's getting late here. I was skimming through Van Vugt's book for the last few weeks. You can breeze through his chapters rather quickly if you're just reading to learn the differences. I plan to jot down some notes soon as I have bookmarked all the relevant pages I need to practice/relearn.

rolltide78

techfiend wrote: »

There are many differences between 6 and 7. I really don't see a reason to take 6 now since some core functionality has changed such as networkmanager being a big one.

Well I purchased the test voucher exactly one year ago so now I'm on my last day to take it. Otherwise, I'd be taking 7.

rolltide78

Awesome. Yes, I ran into some of these while studying like nmtui and systemctl not on 6. I just used system-config-network and then service and powered through. I guess my weakest right now would be virtual, selinux and iptables. I'm hoping system-config-firewall is enough to get me through the rhcsa for firewall. I'll be still powering through exercises leading up to the exam tomorrow. Good times.

JockVSJock

rolltide78 wrote: »

Well I purchased the test voucher exactly one year ago so now I'm on my last day to take it. Otherwise, I'd be taking 7.

That's what exactly happened to me. I planned on having enough time to study and take the exam for RHEL6, however I was forced to retake Security+ by CompTIA because they said my exam from 2010 wasn't valid (a non-profit that only wants to make profit). Also I had to do a bunch of outdated Linux CBTs for work.

The goal post keeps moving...plan ahead but don't count on it.

I got the RHEL7 book from Ghori. Thumbing thru it there are some differences, however shouldn't be that much.

I guess you can think of this as a dry run for RHCSA 7.

rolltide78

I definitely hear you there. In the past year I've completed MCSE 2012, Security +, recertified on NetApp, and now RHEL. My employer doesn't make me test or really reward based on it, although they do pay. I do it because I love technology and learning. Any last recommendations for RHCSA 6? I'm less than 24 hours to go before sitting down at that machine.

Verities

Get a sub to safari books online and access all of Sander Van Gut's materials. I used his videos and book to pass my RHCSA 7.

rolltide78

Good news all. I passed 230/300. I made 3 mistakes that I know of but don't think I missed any questions entirely. I had taken RH124 and RH125 courses so going back through those exercises/criterions and then the Sander RHCSA7 videos. Oh, these are awesome too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2kvtLU9KGE&list=PLgqvVwePYEKE3Kui2PhbsQFV-_DX71l-m

Thanks guys.

varelg

That's great news rolltide, congratulations! Was this your first attempt?

bigdogz

To Rooltide78: good post.

To OP:
Without going too much into detail, if you work the objectives and test/verify the change is made, you should be able to pass.

JockVSJock

rolltide78, congrads on passing RHCSA.

rolltide78

Yes, it was my first time. I probably put the last 3 weeks straight into it and the 3 days prior consistently breaking only for a bit here and there. I love this type of testing. You either can do the tasks or you can't. Now the videos for RHCSA7/RHCE7 add a new level of excitement since they are new without me having to keep RHEL6 mentality. A 2 1/2 hour trip to the testing facility and a 3 1/2 hour trip home due to awful traffic wasn't fun though but did give me an extra 3 hours to prepare.

Now just need to keep my skills up in a primarily Windows world. I'll be sure to have a VM of RHEL7 one screen away on my Mac though.