I recently attended the Global Knowledge classes that prepare you for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) test. This article is a brief description of the content of the classes as well as an analysis of their intrinsic value. I will write about the location where the classes took place, the group of people who attended them, the instructor, the materials, exercises, etc.
Introduction
In case you did not know, Red Hat started a certification program called the RHCE in the Spring of 1999. Exams are currently administered only by Red Hat itself. To sign up for one of these exams, contact Red hat at (919) 547-0012, or send an email to training@redhat.com. The total cost of the exam is $349, and it roughly takes the whole day. You may read in the Red Hat site that the total cost is $749. Do not despair. That is the amount of the \”crash course\” plus the test. If you are planning to take only the test, then the real amount is $349.
The test itself is comprised of three sections, which makes it considerably harder than the MSCE so many people may be used to. The first section is a regular multiple choice written exam that includes between 40 and 50 questions. You have one hour to do it. The second part is a server install and network services setup part, which takes about 2.5 hours and is worth 100 points. Finally, the third part is a debug exam where you are supposed to fix 2 to 4 problems that could be either boot-related or network/services-related. The total amount of time allotted to this part is also 2.5 hours. In the end, in order to pass you need an average of 80 points or higher, and there is no way you can pass if you obtained less than 50 points in one of the three tests. Also keep in mind that the order in which you take the tests varies, meaning that sometimes testers may take the multiple choice exam first, while other testers will take the debugging test first. If I ever actually take the test (which I may), I will then write another article on my experience too (no tips on the questions, of course).
If you need to have a better idea of the sort of issues that are covered, just take a look at the information provided in the Red Hat site itself. They list all the terms and tecniques that you need to be familiar with in order to pass it. I would also suggest the Exam Cram book published by Coriolis. Of course, if either you or your company are willing to spend the money, you can also prepare by taking the classes with Global Knowledge, which are the ones I talk about in this article. There are basically three different classes that you can attend: Introduction to Red Hat Linux (only take this one if you are truly new to Linux and/or UNIX), Red Hat Linux System Administration I & II (they are taught together, in spite of the fact that they are divided into two sections), and Red Hat Linux Networking and Security Administration.
The classes: location, material and attendants
I took the \”RHCE System Administration I and II\” classes in Minneapolis. As it turned out, the Global Knowledge people had set up the class in the local Marquette Hotel, in downton Minneapolis. Sort of difficult to find any parking, but quite fancy and professional looking.
When I arrived, I already had the material on the table waiting for me: a copy of the Red Hat Linux official distribution (2 CDs, binaries and source), the Official Installation Guide book, the Reference Guide, the training courseware put otgether by Red Hat in a binder (the actual contents of the class), a handy Networking Protocol Reference Guide from Global Knowledge (a couple of sheets including interesting information about subnetting, frames internals, etc.), a course evaluation sheet to fill out at the end of the class, and a notepad and pen that the hotel itself gave us.
We also had a bunch of Dell Latitude CPi laptops that we would be using for the labs. They all had Red Hat Linux already installed, and we would be using the root accounts during the week so we could learn how to administer a Linux box. Some of us had to share the laptop with somebody else, since we did not have enough of them for everyone (we were 7 in this class). The instructor had another laptop for himself, together with a laptop that we would be using to assign IPs to our little network (it was already configured for DHCP, although it failed to assign IPs to the laptops as they booted, and we never fully fixed it during the week). Additionally, the instructor had forgotten the password for root, which provided a good chance for him to teach us how to boot into single user mode and set a new password for root.
The people who attended the class came (to nobody\’s surprise) from different backgrounds, although I may say that the general level was much higher than the one for similar Windows NT classes I attended in the past. We had people who already worked as system administrators with UNIX, web developers, people who worked for corporations, others who worked for small businesses… a little bit of everything. It certainly helped me realize how mainstream Linux has become in just a couple of years.
The classes
As I said above, the \”RHCE System Administration I and II\” course spans over a period of four days, and the division between part I and part II seems pretty arbitrary to me. In any case, this is a short summary of what we covered during these days:
- Day One: introduction to open source, Linux and Red Hat; kudzu, devices and hardware in general; runlevels and initialization; installation (we actually reinstalled Red Hat Linux on our laptops).
- Day Two: configuring X (configuration files and scripts, exporting the display settings for remote login, etc.); administration tools (Control Panel, Linuxconf, up2date utility…); filesystem basics (partitions, umask, fsck, inodes, fdformat, mkfs, tar, dd…); general user administration (PAM, shadow file, wall, talk, etc.).
- Day Three: more user administration (user quotas, ulimit…); networking (ifconfig, resolv.conf file, arp, NIS, NFS, DHCP, etc.).
- Day Four: planning filesystems (partitioning strategies), repquota, configuring NFS, procmail, basic host security.
In general, the classes consisted of a summary review of the courseware on the different topics (the binder neatly divided everything in units), and some labs that reinforced the concepts learned during the regular lecture. The instructor was always wide opened to questions and discussions, and quite often these evolved into some interesting exchange of ideas that proved to be useful to the participants, especially taking into account that pretty much everyone had some real life experience with the OS.
Conclusions
As usual, the key question is: was it worth it? Would you attend it again once you know what it was like? I suppose the answer would be a qualified yes, for the classes do not actually provide much new information to anyone who has been running Linux for a while already. However, they do certainly provide a chance to \”play\” with a nice networking setting during four days (let\’s face it, you rarely get that chance at work), as well as a good excuse to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. What I mean is that most Linux users have learned from just running the operating system, and therefore never sat down to put all the ideas in order. These classes somehow helped me see the overall picture, and in that sense they were indeed useful.
In any case, no matter how experience you are in Linux, there is a good chance you never tried everything there is… and you are nevertheless bound to learn something new, be it from the course material, the instructor, the other attendees, or even from troubleshooting the problems that may arise during the class.
As for the instructor, I somehow expected to meet a Linux guru of some sort. Oh, well. The instructor turned out to be a pretty approachable guy who had had experience with UNIX before, and also some Linux experience, but not a guru. However, if one takes into account the current salaries in the field, I am pretty sure Linux gurus have better places to be that teaching classes for the RHCE test, and as I said our instructor was cool and knowledgeable nonetheless.
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