RHCSA exam

log32 · June 2012

hi everyone.
my question is: is there a GUI on the test machine? or is it command line only? the michael jang books explains partitioning with the GUI so i kind of got confused.
thanks.

Slowhand · June 2012

You should be able to do everything from the command-line, but also be familiar with some GUI tools. According to Red Hat, they don't care how, exactly, you accomplish the tasks given during the exam, as long as they're done by the time you hand in your workbook. That means you can work with the GUI for some things, the CLI for others, etc. As for whether or not there will be a GUI on the machine, I couldn't tell you. . . (and neither can anyone who took the test.

)

robdog · June 2012

A real server OS shouldn't be run on GUI...save the resources for the jobs/processes that the server runs

onesaint · June 2012

^What slowhand said. To add, if the objectives state you should be able to add a repo to yum, you should then be able install a gui from a repo, which would allow you to setup a GUI environment even if there wasn't one to begin with. Be a Boy Scout, be prepared.

Quantumstate · June 2012

Well, gpk-application is add/remove software, but it has no way to add a repo to yum, nor its gpg key. And there is nothing about this in its Help, or in the System Admin guide.

onesaint · June 2012

From the gpk-application help file:

At this time, PackageKit does not offer a way to add new repositories to
your system. It only allows you to enable or disable known repositories.
However, it is often possible to make a new repository known to PackageKit
by installing a package with the necessary information. These are usually
called (foo)-release, where foo is the name of the repository.

Beyond that, if you're taking the RHCSA you should know how to add a repo via the shell and not rely on the GUI. One of the exam objectives is to update a machine from the RHN. Plus, adding a bisc local repo isn't really a difficult thing to do.

Quantumstate · June 2012

Yes, I've read the Admin Guide through, however I am a Debian type from way back and this is quite different.

I try two ways for adding a new repo, and in each case I lose all access to normal packages like bind. No idea what's wrong. I try:
a. In yum.conf adding a line after the baseurl line, with only the url for the new repo, like the Admin Guide says.

b. Adding a new section to yum.conf after the regular one, as such:
[multimedia]
baseurl=http://downloads.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/multimedia/
enable=1

Well, maybe these methods (recommended by the Admin Guide) are just non-functional. It's a mystery. When Debian says something will work, it works. Maybe the only way is to add a file to yum.repos.d. Furthermore, in the files in yum.repos.d, the baseurl is always commented out! Why does it work if the main repo's baseurl is always commented out? Doesn't make sense. Yes, let's do everything backwards and upside down.

lordy · June 2012

/etc/yum.repos.d/ is the way to manage Repositories in CentOS / Red Hat.

Quantumstate · June 2012

I understand.The orthodoxy is to use yum.repos.d because no one knows the answers to my questions. I'll just do that.

onesaint · June 2012

you sound unhappy about using RHEL.

Creating .repo config files under /etc/yum.repos.d/ is the standard as lordy mentioned.

From the RHEL 6 documentation it is noted that you can place repos in the /etc/yum.conf file, but I haven't seen this done often.

With your above directives you might try adding the line:
gpgcheck=0

This is insecure but will help for trouble shooting and I would imagine it is enabled in the /etc/yum.conf file (it's done so by default), which would cause your repo check to fail. Have a look at /var/log/yum.log for more information.

Also take a look here for further information regarding Yum repo configs:
5.3. Configuring Yum and Yum Repositories

RHCSA exam

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