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As a side note to the whole certification issue, SAGE, A subgroup of Usenix, has been working on the Unix Systems Administrator Certification for several years now. The legal issues are hard, as well as even the basic issues of What do you certify?

Other certification programs are from SANS and from Linux Professional Institute

These organizations are professional thrid party groups that are not tied to any particular vendor, and will carry much more weight in the industry than any vendor specific "Certification". (IMHO)

(BTW: FUML Rocks!)

I took a good look over the Objectives By Exam and it looks rather comprehensive. I can see MANY things in there that are reasonbly difficult, diverse in their nature, not necessarily intuitive, and require some serious study.

And by giving out this list, it gives you a decent idea of what to expect. And knowing what to expect means you know what to learn if you want to succeed in getting this certification. It also gives people a set of objectives to learn even if they don't bother going through with the certification, which IMHO is a "good thing".

There are always going to be wanna-be's without motivation, frauds and people that will help them, because it is profitable to do so. It's just a matter of recognising them, and providing a detailed enough course to discourage the wanna-be's without the motivation, and the frauds from even trying. Much beyond that is futile at best, and at worst, damages the community as much, if not more, than the wanna-be's and frauds do in the first place.

As for the cost, well, if you want to succeed, you should expect to pay something, and $100 US is nothing compared to the courses I've seen on some products. Just because the software is free, doesn't mean the hard earned hours of the testers and the like should also be free.

As an aside, the only question I haven't seen yet in a Linux Certification is "When not to use Linux". Sure the list would be small, but hey, if you are true professional, you realise that no single product can be suited to everything. *grin*

I can offer these reasons why and how LPI is different from MCSE and other certification programs:

• LPI started as a grassroots organization, its history goes back to active email discussions from within the Linux user community that grew into a formal body
• LPI is incorporated as a non-profit body; legally we are not allowed to make a profit
• We are vendor-neutral, and have a number of Linux companies as sponsors (with more coming) and even more on our Advisory Council. The intention is that no one vendor can dominate the LPI agenda.
• We are trying as much as possible to keep costs down. We have sought to minimize the number of exams required to demonstrate the required proficiency (MCSE's first level requires six or seven exams; LPI's requires three)
• As another example of trying to keep costs down, LPI will not be "expiring" certificates the way other programs do. While we all know that older certifications will be less usable, we will not revoke them
• LPI is not in the training or book business. How you get your skill is up to you. Take courses, read a book, or go into a cave with a Linux box for a month. All LPI cares about is that you know your stuff when you take the test.
• The exams will be challenging. It will be quite difficult for somebody who doesn't know the basics to pass the first level
• We NEVER advocate leaning on certification -- LPI's or anyone else's -- as a substitute for good interviews or reference checking etc. A certification program is helpful but it's not the complete answer by far.

Again, I hope the standardization process grows with their presence.

Actually, I believe there are quite a few certification-style licensing tests where the questions are available. IIRC (I might not) the tests for your pilot's license, ham radio license, and probably others have a large pool of public questions from which a sample is drawn.

Here is a detailed list of subject matter for the 1A test. They might as well give you the answers.

Take a look for yourself;

Frequently-Asked Questions

Overview of exam

T1A Exam Objectives (test outline)

Take a look for yourself;

Frequently-Asked Questions

Overview of exam

T1A Exam Objectives (test outline)

Take a look for yourself;

Frequently-Asked Questions

Overview of exam

T1A Exam Objectives (test outline)

I guess not...

Red Hat isn't on their Sponsor list (see bottom of page)

It will give some newbies a place to start, and a goal to shoot for. I know that as a not-so-newbie-but-still-struggling, I have a hard time figuring out what to tackle next.

Here is an link to the description of the "1a" exam (I think it's already been /.'d)

happy reading.

I'm also watching the Linux Professional Institute with interest... they're working towards professional certification for Linux - though that seems to be a controversial topic all by itself.

Groupwise uses (at least 2 years ago when I was involved with it) a number post offices, which means a number of seperate computers (often unsuited to the task of processing large volums of mail) located in different parts of a domain. All these post offices process mail for their domain, which can include a number of file servers. The mail is then sent to a primary post office SMTP machine and out to the internet... In order to send mail out to another DNS, you'd also have to address it with an internet: or i: prefix.

So the problems start when individual post offices crash or bog down. When this happens mail from a domain queues up in a LAN queue. The size of the queue (number of e-mails pileing up) gives the groupwise admin an idea whether or not that PO is processing email to the centeral PO, or whether it's down, or if it needs some help. With multiple queues and machines (post offices) the margin for error is much higher than with a single enterprise send mail server.

Talking with friends, I hear that Groupwise is still alive and kicking, for instance, the University of Maryland just put in a groupwise system. I was also not surprised to hear the horror stories already appearing: professor: "How come I can't get my mail now?!?".

Personally I like POP3, as I can read my mail anywhere (with the exception of firewall issues) through Netscape, and it's very stable.

I'm just getting into Linux now, and I'm very excited about it. A couple years ago, I was looking into CNE (Novell) certification however, it seems like M$ NT is eating up too much of Novell's market share to make this worth the cost. The good news is that Linux Admin Certification looks like it's about to take off, so I'm studying for it now on my own :)