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LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2
I purchased the book last year after deciding I had no reason to try and keep my windows 95 MCP up to date and wishing to (formally) extend my Linux knowledge. I hit a wrong turn after spending quality time with Que's "General Linux 1" [ISBN]0-78972292-5] to find (as I went to book the exam) the format and topics had changed a fair amount in four years (LPI is constantly evolving...).
It was fine book with some good Lab sections, however it was not preparing me for the onslaught that is the seriously tough LPIC Level 1 exam. After a quick rant in the LPI mailing lists, a friendly poster [ross@brunson.org] noted that a book did exist (recently printed) that accumulated one of the premier LPI Linux trainers knowledge and experience, and by no coincidence he was the author.
My previous guide had been only 340 pages long so I was concerned to find this was closer to 600! Luckily the author wastes nothing, with a considerably helpful introduction, followed by details of the LPIC 101 (both flavors) and the 102 exam culminating in the full LPIC Level 1.
The first half of the book is dedicated to the 101 exam, which is the first part of the LPIC level 1 certifications. This included a lot of trouble-shooting steps for basic booting of Linux with hardware configuration and included vi usage (key strokes, buffers, regular expressions), XFree86 (config and understanding) to text processing with tee, tac, sed etc. The detail involved also dipped into modems, CHAP scripts, hardware identification, jobs, processes, chmod, grep, exit statuses and much much more. This also where the RPM/DEB specifics some in; although I have used Debian for many years I opted to take the RPM exam simply because I believe RPM is more widely commercially used, not that I think it is a better packaging system. These skills are an excellent grounding for basic Linux use and understanding, giving rounded knowledge of all the key areas a Linux user should be aware of.
Each chapter has an example exam and the author often makes use of these to introduce new ideas and concepts to encourage the user to research further. These answers are accompanied by explanations of not only why the right answers were correct, but why the wrong answers were incorrect.
The second half of the book (after a quick 66-question 101 test exam) is much more geared to a junior sysadmin and I found it quite hard going. Topics range from runlevels, daemons, users/groups, kernel compilation, modules, shells, scripting, networking, services, printing and security. As you may imagine, some of these topics are quite extensive and I personally found this half much more difficult to absorb. Note there is only one 102 LPIC exam, there is no RPM/DEB choice. This list does not really do the subject matter justice, as it goes into such things as custom subnet masks, network time utilities, Apache, sendmail, crontabs and even more.
This was followed by a set of 77 test 102 questions with both a quick answer key and a complete set of explanations.
The book includes a pull-out Cram Sheet which can help you memorize things such as the IRQ/IO address for serial ports, the different man page sections and common printer commands.
The author also notes how best to prepare for taking and even resitting the exam (the LPI has a concise retake policy).
The actual exam questions and areas are weighted, and you should ensure you review for the heavily weighted sections at least as much if not more that the lower-weighted ones.
The key 'trick' to passing the exams is to have tried the commands yourself and seen the results, I cannot emphasize this enough! The LPI 'seems' to favor (currently) 2.4.x kernels in the FHS File Hierarchy Standard RPM and DEB varieties, I did most of my investigation either with Knoppix via qemu(in windows) or Debian sid running the 2.6.x kernel. (However, most topics are vendor/distribution neutral and kernel and other obvious differences are noted.)
Although this book contains a lot of examples, it is not for beginners, unless you want to base your Linux learning on it. Sysadmins will find it too simple in places, but should not be complacent as they will find some knowledge nuggets buried that will ultimately help them pass the exams.
The book is easy to read, with some real-world examples that are ideal to reinforce the information presented. (It has been noted that practice lab sections could have been included; see author reply here)
Unfortunately, there are a fair number of misprints, technical inaccuracies and spelling mistakes current errata but a quick session with man will set you straight and very few directly spoil the otherwise accuracy of the book (the author notes that a second reprint is addressing these).
The CD comes with the obligatory PDF version of the book and a test program, this has caused some problems for some Linux users although fixes are now available. The test program tries to recreate the testing environment, with optional timer and instant result features. I personally found it very useful to identify areas I was weak in and required further investigation.
The book does a good job not to stray off into GPL licensing or any other non (LPIC Level 1) related topic, leaving further investigation up to the reader offering links where relevant.
It took me about 15-20 hours to revise for the 101 RPM exam and I passed with (apx) 96% where as the revision for the 102 exam was over a much longer period (and a more turbulent part of my life) taking about 40-50 hours which gave me a (apx) pass of 86% (remember the questions are weighted, my percentage scores are simply against the number of questions I got right and makes me feel good).
Preparing you for the LPI LPIC level 1 exams (part 1(RPM/DEB) and part 2)
Not only did I find the book easy to get on with and an indispensable asset for passing the exam but it has had pride of place on my desktop and makes an excellent reference tome.
The LPI website does now list Ross's book and there are various other resources available for a quick google, or just wait for the Slashdot crowd to fill up the comments below.
You can purchase LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Is this associated with Phoenix University (the online university) that offers worthless degrees (not worth the paper they are printed on)? Is linux certification even worth it (think MCSE)? Thanks (in advanced)
AC (anonymous coward)
Someone needs (their) parentheses taken (away) from them.
What (the fuck) is with this (horrible) writing?
Is it (really) necessary to (nearly) parenthesize the (almost) entire summary? It (really) reads like that (ta ta today Junior!) kid from (the movie) Billy Madison.
(It looks like (the review) was written (in lisp)).
Lots of Parentheses In Commentary
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Let's cut to the chase.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You have to (seriously) wonder if this (admittedly eccentric) typing style has (even) a (remote) chance of (universal) acceptance in (virtual or otherwise) literary circles...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
The real trick is actually knowing wtf you are doing, instead of flailing around like a tipped turtle.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
What I'm not getting exactly is: is this book useful mainly to people trying to pass a particular exam or is it useful to those interested in actually learning something and getting knowledge? This is a sort of common problem in academics where students study for the exam, rather than for the actual knowledge. I'm not sure I like a book promoting that (if it does).
see a Text Widget
Just kidding. I'm a fan of the "Exam Cram" series, since I think that if the industry is going to judge me on my credentials, instead of my ability, then I should be allowed to get my credentials based on my test-taking savvy instead of relying on my actual (awesome) skill.
But the real benefit of the Exam Cram format is that by asking me questions, they show me the areas in which I'm less versed. Hitting those areas leads to others and by the time I get back to the questions they're easily answered.
sigs, as if you care.
Everyone knows that Linux certs (or almost all certs for that matter) are useless, so how is this News? My last job interview:
Interviewer: tell me about your Unix experience
Me: well, I've adminned about 50 Solaris boxes all over the country, and I've been running my own domain on 2 Linux machines since 1997, and never been hacked. [insert lengthy discussion of the coolness of nscd here]
Interviewer: You're hired.
Certs are an extension of the Microsoft mentality - if you keep repeating something, eventually people believe it (Developers! Developers! Developers!). The more people who buy into the cert racket, the more PHBs are going to (mistakenly) base critical decisions on what certified people say, often to their detriment.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Since it was already (very) slow... 1: PC Architecture (8-Feb-1999) The LPI program will attempt to be architecture-neutral when possible. When architecture-specific knowledge is deemed important for the purposes of the program, Intel "PC" architectures will be used for reference. Other architectures may be optionally included for testing as demand warrants. 2: Start with exam 1 (8-Feb-1999) We require the candidates to pass all exams from #1 up to the required level. Motivation: At the higher levels, we can only guarantee the necessary background and a complete and consistent program if the candidates actually pass the initial exams. 3: Bounding the Certification Program (8-Feb-1999) The Linux Certification Program will test technical skills and knowledge of Linux system administration. The emphasis will be on understanding rather than memorization. We will not test other requisites for successful system administration like general intelligence, social and managerial skills, knowledge of legislation, financial awareness etc. 4: Jargon (7-Jul-1999) The Linux Professional Institute will not explicitly test on knowledge of jargon or acronyms. The examinees are expected to be familiar with concepts that have a commonly used acronym for a name (e.g. TCP/IP). However, we will not require knowledge of the actual meaning of the letters. There will be a list of preferred terms and deprecated synonyms. Acronyms which are not explicitly listed as "preferred", should not be used. This list will also contain definitions of the terms within a certain context where this appears necessary. The list will be updated while successive tests are being developed by LPI, and the tests will be made consistent with this list. Note: The list is currently available on LPI's Glossary Page. 5: Exam Renewal (4-Oct-1999) LPI will review the contents of its test objectives and exams and revise them as deemed necessary in order to provide for new material, test validity, security, and to incorporate feedback. Test objectives and exams will be reviewed at least once in two years. 6: Recertification (Revised 19-Apr-2004) LPI strongly encourages certificate holders to recertify minimally within a ten-year period from the date the first exam of the level was passed. Ten years from the date the first exam of the level was passed, a designation's status will change from "ACTIVE" to "INACTIVE" in the LPI database, unless the certificate holder recertifies. LPI will provide to third parties, at the certificate holder's request, information pertaining to the history of certifications(s) passed, the date the certification(s) were passed, the revision date/level(s) of the completed certification(s), as well as the designation status (ACTIVE or INACTIVE). In providing this information, LPI reserves the right to indicate the current revision level of any or all of the certification(s) passed by the certificate holder and to issue public advisories concerning changes in the content or objectives of the certification(s). It is LPI's position that the purpose of recertification is to measure continued competence. Currently, the methods of recertification include: Retaking and passing all current form examinations required for initial certification. After successfully passing all the required up-to-date examinations, the designation status will be updated to ACTIVE for a period of ten years from the date the first exam of the level was passed. Earning a higher-level LPI certification designation. When a higher level certification designation is earned, the status of all lower level designations are considered ACTIVE for ten years from the date the first exam of the higher level was passed. LPI is currently considering the development of a single "refresher" recertification exam that encompasses the content of all examinations for a particular designation, with a focus on newer developments in the field. Although LPI strongly encourages certificate holders to recertify minimally within a ten-year period, possible major revisions of Linux or recommendat
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Yes, you can get help (from others). You don't have to face this by yourself (alone). You can learn to use your favorite language (lisp) without feeling the desire (that burning need) to litter your entire conversation (or posts) with an amazing (literally amazing) amount of parenthetical notes (or notations, if you prefer).
You may want to start with using footnotes instead of parenthetical asides. This will allow you to gradually wean yourself off of your dependence on parenthesis. Note that some experts recoomend using braces instead of parenthesis. This won't do at all! You will still be dealing with your, ahem, addiction. Your readers will just think that you have gone completely nutso-wheelies and are trying to communicate in bash shell script.
Once you have managed to replace your use of parenthesis with footnotes, you can gradually and carefully eliminate the use of footnotes. In no time at all you will be writing clear, easily understood sentences. You readers will love you. Your parents, spouse, or SO will be proud of you. Your descendents will no longer have to avoid embarassing questions about your parenthetical love affair by telling stangers that they are RMS' illegitimate love children. World peace will become a reality.
The fate of future generations rests in your capable hands. Think of the children, man!
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Assume there are 2 people up for a job:
(1) If neither has the experience and one has the certification, the one with the certification wins.
(2) If one has the experience and no certification and other has no experience but a certification, the person with experience wins.
(3) If both have the same experience and only one has the extra certification, the one with the certification wins.
(4) If both have the same certifications and the same experience, the one who is cheaper wins.
(5) If both have certifications and neither has any experience, the one who talks better wins.
(5) If neither has any certifications or experience, the one who looks better wins.
... on a Windows box. Their site is already getting slow. Makes me pretty uninterested in getting a certification from them.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
LPI stand for? And what the fuck is wrong with you... there's no reason to say "LPI LPIC" when the LPI in LPIC stands for the same fucking thing.
'is the authoritative tree-based text to aid and abet interested parties accomplishing a LPI LPIC level 1 certification'
What the fuck is this... who the fuck talks like this. It's a god damn book for the LPIC 1. That's all you gotta say. Adding all the other shit may make it sound like it's really hard to get the certification and that you aren't just an IT dickhead who dropped out of CS.
But you FLUNK teh LISP. You didn't close all your parenthesis.
English is a damn crappy language for subphrase grouping, unlike languages with latin roots for example.
A lot of technical people use what might be considered "excessive" parenthesizing in English, purely to make the logical structure of sentences stand out more.
If you can't handle it, tough. And don't bother attempting LISP then or your little brain will explode.
Slashdot's really going down the pan, when even posters with low IDs don't have anything but crap to post.
And in what way is the capacity of a website relevant to the quality of educational course material?
Bad formatting aside, it's interesting that this company policy page has almost as many nonsensical parenthesis in it as the original review. How coincidental that two entirely different writers would have the same style. Isn't it?
Breakfast served all day!
Stop typing (like this). Motherfucker. It (is very) annoying and (hard to) read.
Just FYI, LPI is rather SuSE orientated, as seen in the 2-years-due Level 3 for which you have to know Yast inside out. Apart from that - the real problem with LPI is no their hardware but acceptance. Usually the answers to the current set of questions start filing into to the net after a while and the test comes down to "find and learn answers by heart" - and companies know that, at least those aware of LPI. Those who are not don't care anyway.
I bought this book mostly for the practice exam engine included on the CD. Too bad it doesn't work! I tried both the original version and the "fixed" version linked above on 2 different machines (one Slackware Current, one Hoary Ubuntu) and it fails giving a "no exam files found" error every time. I'm not a linux noob, and the exam files _are_ there, so I concluded that the software is hosed. My emails to the publisher and author went unanswered, so I sold my book to Half-Price for ~ $2. Caveat Emptor!
. . .has been sacked. Suggestive poses for the moose suggested by. . .
Need more coffee. A brain wouldn't hurt either.
KFG
How the LPIC compares against the RHCE ?
What is the best ? (yea i know experience is the best, i know, but just compare this 2 certs).
But, what proves to be better for the companies and individuals ?
Unix its simple, but sometimes it takes a geniuos to understand the simplicity -- Dennis Ritchie
The LPIC exam was probably the most useless exam I have ever taken. The exam read like it had been written by a 3 year for whom english was a tenth language. Many of the questions were worded so poorly that I had to read them four or five times before I could guess what the question was even asking. The whole test lacked structure and it was obvious that very little thought was put into the design of the test. You couldn't drag me into a testing center to take another exam from them.
I did. I found the test too easy for experienced linux administrator.
The Exam Cram books are good for studying a week before you take the exam, but you still need a good study book. I'd previously passed the A+, Network+ and Microsoft Certified Professional (Windows 2000 Professional) exams by using the study book with my home lab for a few months, and than the Exam Cram book for a week before the exam. I haven't look at the Linux certification yet since I'm still completing my Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) certification.
Isn't LPI changing their requirements in a few months? This book will be out of date then. Maybe it will be cheaper then, and I'm sure it will cover a good portion of the "new" stuff as well.
Ever wonder why when they have these exam crams for linux they dont make any of the exam cram tests simulation software to run on Linux only on Winblows.....
Agreed, but the real question is, which certs should I pursue? I'm pursuing Linux certifications and I'm wondering whether it is better to get a vendor neutral cert (CompTIA Linux+ and LPIC) or vendor specific certs from RedHat and Novell.
LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 is the authoritative tree-based text to aid and abet interested parties accomplishing a LPI LPIC level 1 certification...
....? And and can't imagine that a tree make a very good study guide.....
Is that b-tree, balanced n-ary tree, red-black tree, or
(slaps head)
Oh, a book! Wow, I've been coding for too long today!
Join the IEEE Computer Society instead.
http://www.computer.org/
Brits: The British Computer Society
http://www.bcs.org.uk/
Aussies: The Australian Computer Society
http://www.acs.org.au/
etc etc.
Deleted
LPI(c) is indeed more versatile because it is vendor neutral. I don't agree tho your assertion that it is less recognized: The numbers are about equal, for people holdin LPIC or RHC. Unfortunately the distribution for basic and advanced levels is different. Because RedHat does not demand a proir exam for taking the advanced exam more people hold the advanced variety then the basic one (sorry forgot their terms for it). LPI demands level 1 for level 2, so the majority only has level 1 (which equals to 'poweruser' by their definition.
As for the testing method: As far as I know RH test the execturion of actual skills instead of asking multiple choice questions. with Redhat you get several broken systems that you have to fix, whit LPI you get a lot of questions (~90 for each level 1 exam) that you can guess prettty well without knowing the actual answer. This is clearly a less advanced method. On the other hand, you will have to study for both exams, and while studying you will pick up the rest of the skills you need, no matter what the testing method is.
If you feel like taking some LPI-like tests: you can have a go at my site(sorry mostly in dutch but the exam questions are english). There is also a lot of free LPI related content there, no need for expensive books IMHO.
As for me, I hold LPI level 2 certification. If you would like to help developing a training method a-la redhat (here's a broken system, fix it) based on UML, drop me a line. It would probably look a loot like this.
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If you want to pass your exam and learn about linux I would suggest you take a look at RUTE. You can get your dead tree version here
Actually there is quite a lot of planning and design that goes into the tests. You can read all about that on the LPI site. Basically they started with a big pool of questions and let established target audience take it to verify each question (make sure that each question has the biggest possible chance to be answered correctly by an experienced person, and wrongly by and inexperienced person) this remove about 50% of the questions.
They made two different tests with the remaining questions. Each test has its sequence randomised as well as the order of the answers (there is the explanation for your 'unstructured' comment), to make it harder to memorize the answers instead of the subjects.
Recently LPI began adding new experimental questions to the exam that are not recognisable but do not count for the final score. The score for each experimental question is validated against the total score of the student. experimental questions that perform good (distinguise passers from failers) are added to the validated questions pool, so that it pays of even less to memorise answers from practice exams (from testking for example, search for testking lpi on edonkey...).
Hope that helps.
You can try some non-lpi-verified tests here if you can wade through the dutch stuff (test are in english).
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
here is the correct one. Yes i should use that preview button and check those links...
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
yep, those people sure look like linux sysadmins to me. Its like they put a camera in the server room!
Writing (with) this (many) parentheses (is) incredibly (annoying).
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Okay, I've had to hire a few admins, and here's my point of view with regard to certifications:
If you seek out people with certifications, you're going to get boatloads of resumes from people who have certs and no experience. If you're looking for cheap bodies and like to train greenhorns, this can be an effective way to build a decent staff in a hurry. But you can be sure that, unless you pay competitively, these people will leave you within two years, three at the max.
Experienced people who are informed that they must pass one or more certification exams are interesting to watch. The ones who take the tests seriously tend to pass with high scores - - although there occasionally are surprises even for these people. But the ones who don't bother to try a practice exam before going to the test booth quite often don't want to talk about their experience afterwards, especially if they have to pay for anything beyond one attempt. This is something I've seen several times. My point is that the exams concocted by the big vendors - - i.e., Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, etc. - - can be eye poppers if you don't get yourself into the right frame of mind before you go for the exam. The people who are the most disparaging of certifications are typically people who have never sat for - - or passed - - a certification exam. I went through the MCSE in the early days of NT4, and despite the fact that I'd worked for years with Unix-style networking, both serial and TCP/IP, I found that passing those exams required some studying.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Did you attain both level 1 and 2 or just 1 ? Level 2 is supposed to be more difficult and 3 when it comes out is supposed to be "cream of the crop" so to speak.
The RHCE is much harder since its a performance based test, but it is specifically for redhat which does have its limitations.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
I was an enterpreneur at the time I did the tests. Then I got a nice offer from one of the cool companies and have been working for them for half a year now and am quite happy with my job.
Dunno whether the certificates had anything to do with me getting the job, though...
++K
<[letter kay][at][number seventy seven][dot][finnish TLD]>
I did pass the two exams making up the Level 1 certification (Still waiting for certificate).
Compaines in the UK do not appear to be interested in the LPICs at the moment.
But the US and else where seem to be slowly picking up on the value.
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
I started reading Jeffrey Dean's "LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell" by O`Reilly and it was quite nice, maybe bit boring. But it was not at hand later when I needed it, and I prepared for the exam with IBM DeveloperWorks tutorials (Google for "lpi exam prep"). They are written by the Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins! I additionally skimped through some of the links he mentions, like PPP HOWTO, stuff which he does not cover and which I have never touched.
I passed with best scores in my company (630/640 out of 800/800).
But which book is really best?
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
I also have my LPI Cert. And this bood did help me quite a bit. My only problem with the book is some of the editing. Twards the end of the book it seems like they got someone who has no idea what linux is to edit. Server commands are listed with the same switches and stated that they do different things. For example ls -l this gives a long listing of files in the current dir ls -h this gives a long listing of files in the current dir (and just for ya'll the h is human terms when used with an l) However this plus several years of linux experiance did help me with my test quite a lot.
If you have experience then you should be good. Some people will easily pass the existing tests. The level 3 is supposed to be the one that seperates "junior" from "senior" level admins. Weather it actually does that or not remains to be seen ....
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Parentheses indicate additional information that might be useful but is not necessary to the sentence. That's all. As a Germanic language, we're more inclined towards comas for our phrase grouping, but in actuality, English punctuation is really just a way of writing pauses of various lengths. Most importantly, (In English (we don't group (subclauses and (noun-, adjective- or verb-) phrases) inside parentheses) to aid stack-based parsing). They're not structural hiearachical elements like programmers and mathematicians use. They're a device that shows that the content could be set aside, and may not be of interest or relevance to all readers. In other words, they are a tool for a dithering writer - someone who doesn't know whether to include a phrase in their writing or not.
This is precisely why they're frowned upon in published writing - because if you're writing to an audience, it's considered polite to make the decisions about which words to include or not in the final draft before you publish it. Parentheses are a way of deferring that decision to the reader, who is apt to be confused by their being forced to play editor at the same time as they're trying to understand what you're saying to them.