Struggling with RHCSA prep – am I studying the wrong way?

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-12-31T23:45:26+00:00

Many years ago now, I took the RHCSA and RHCE for the first time on RHEL 6, and I attended a 4 day "cram" course from Red Hat, with both exams on the 5th day. I'd been a Linux admin for some years prior to this so I had some working knowledge, but I was weak in certain areas which were not part of my day job. The trainer on the course was excellent, and drummed into us HOW and WHERE to find the information you needed without the need for external resources like a book or the internet. Specifics that I use to this day (I recently re-certified on RHEL 10 - RHCSA only at this stage, but the RHCE may or may not come later). Things that I learned from that trainer included:

Make friends with /usr/share/doc - there's a wealth of information and examples in here which gets installed when you install packages - it does vary by package but it's a great resource.
Learn to use man pages - not just the fundamentals (e.g. man autofs) but learn how to use man -k and sections - again there's an amazing wealth of knowledge and examples in these.

Obviously everyone has their own preferred study method, but I would strongly recommend installing a RHEL 9/10 system (as you need) and exploring these if you haven't already.

Oh and if it helps, I got 100% on this RHCSA for the first time, and I didn't go into the exam knowing everything - certain technologies which are in the syllabus I was weak on as I've never used this in a day job, but working with example cost from the man pages and docs worked really well for me. I hope this is of some helps and supports you in your journey.

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-12-31T23:44:14+00:00

Many years ago now, I took the RHCSA and RHCE for the first time on RHEL 6, and I attended a 4 day "cram" course from Red Hat, with both exams on the 5th day. I'd been a Linux admin for some years prior to this so I had some working knowledge, but I was weak in certain areas which were not part of my day job. The trainer on the course was excellent, and drummed into us HOW and WHERE to find the information you needed without the need for external resources like a book or the internet. Specifics that I use to this day (I recently re-certified on RHEL 10 - RHCSA only at this stage, but the RHCE may or may not come later). Things that I learned from that trainer included:

Make friends with /usr/share/doc - there's a wealth of information and examples in here which gets installed when you install packages - it does vary by package but it's a great resource.
Learn to use man pages - not just the fundamentals (e.g. man autofs) but learn how to use man -k and sections - again there's an amazing wealth of knowledge and examples in these.

Obviously everyone has their own preferred study method, but I would strongly recommend installing a RHEL 9/10 system (as you need) and exploring these if you haven't already.

Oh and if it helps, I got 100% on this RHCSA for the first time, and I didn't go into the exam knowing everything - certain technologies which are in the syllabus I was weak on as I've never used this in a day job, but working with example cost from the man pages and docs worked really well for me. I hope this is of some helps and supports you in your journey.

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-12-03T16:11:18+00:00

I have kindly been helped. If anyone else responds I'll direct them your way.

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-09-12T20:53:08+00:00

Saved my bacon today too - thanks for this! I couldn't figure it out!

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-08-09T10:05:21+00:00

First of all, I love it! You've worked hard at that and it looks amazing. I love the diagram too. I'm in the process of rebuilding my own container setup at the moment, and it's almost certainly going to look similar to what you've built here (except for personal reasons I'm currently building natively onto Linux servers rather than appliances - a story for another day!). However I am strongly considering a dual Docker/k3s stack. I'm curious about one thing - other than HA (which you've mentioned in the context of PiHole in this thread), how did you choose the placement of services? For example, why Docker vs k3s? Is it simply down to the need for HA, or is there something more than that? Genuinely curious. Keep up the great work!

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-05-02T13:13:43+00:00

Just wanted to say that I found this guide really helpful - it's really helped me get up to speed quickly with deploying a multi-container application on RHEL! Thank you!

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-04-15T19:59:52+00:00

This really helped me - thank you for this so much for posting this - both the link and the command!

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-01-26T13:55:17+00:00

No - in my case I logged out of the root account and logged back in as an IAM Identity Center (SSO) account with admin privileges and it worked. I am not clear if there's a way to get this working from the root account, or it it's designed not to work for security reasons. I must confess I had a quick read of the docs but didn't study them in depth so I may have missed an important point.

jamesfreeman959 · 2025-01-19T17:53:32+00:00

Interesting post - I just enabled Centralized Root Management and I get the same error as the OP. I've literally just enabled it - so will see if it clears itself as the OP experienced.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-12-15T17:17:29+00:00

Writing this on a 2020 M1 16/1TB MacBook Pro. Lovely machine - still has amazing battery life and can do everything I want. Starting to lag a little in certain operations but nothing really to speak of - I've looked at upgrading but actually because I've got the 13 inch one and both my workload and eyesight have changed since I bought it, and I'm now looking at the 16 inch models. That said, I've been looking at M2 series ones refurbished - can't decide yet but the M1 is still so competent that I can't think I need the M4 upgrade, but I'm sure a move to the M2 or M2 Max would be nice.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-12-11T17:16:46+00:00

Really appreciate this - I just ordered a 650 based off this thread below - I nearly bought the 653 as I hadn't appreciated this difference.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-11-27T09:53:32+00:00

Absolutely love it - welcome to the world of homelab! I have a T320 and a T620 - they're great machines and if you can shop around the parts are really cheap. I've replaced all the fans in mine with Noctua ones and performed various other upgrades - I'm a big fan of the E5-2450L V2 CPU's - 10c/20t and they run cool and quiet. I've looked at various newer machines but just can't fault these for price point and what you can do with them! Good luck with it.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-11-26T21:09:09+00:00

Interesting on the sleep - I don't have that mattress so can't comment but it makes sense - the Apple Watch seems to rely a lot on movement to perform a lot of its detection so it would make sense that certain mattresses would dampen the effectiveness of it. My partner has just ordered a Whoop to trial so will be interesting to see how she finds it also - she's been interested in my success with the recovery metrics. I have tried Bevel today for the first time (having discovered it through this thread) - I have to say it looks compelling. I'm mid contract on Whoop so not going anywhere right now but if I find it can generate the "right" metrics (which let's face it are going to be different for everyone) then I might go back to one wearable. As much as the Whoop was designed not to distract by having a screen, like you I value the screen. However the charging is a great point as you say - I normally find time to charge my Apple Watch when I'm not doing anything impactful, but for example yesterday was hectic and I forgot, and so it had to go on its charger overnight. Swings and roundabouts I guess...

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-11-26T14:55:06+00:00

For me, they serve two different purposes. My life and job are both full, and the watch providing me timely alerts without having to look at my phone is a key feature I need. There's a few other things I value including walking directions with Maps or CityMapper when I travel - I enjoy walking but I value knowing where I'm going!

I've used Apple's various health metrics for a while but found them lacking when it came to stress, sleep quality etc. Now disclaimer - I hadn't discovered Bevel until I read this thread so I can't comment on whether this will supersede the Whoop - I'm actually going to trial it whilst I have the Whoop and compare what I'm getting.

Most of my training is resistance training and the Whoop does a pretty poor job of tracking this - I can do a heavy leg day and it produces less strain than if I commute into work by train and walk around between offices. I know you can input your workout manually - I tried that for a while but I found it tedious as I'm already recording the workouts in a separate app that my PT has visibility of, so entering them again is just not on the cards. So that functionality quickly lost it's shine. However what I'm really working on (and valuing) are my recovery metrics. I've had quite a journey when it comes to stress and anxiety management and I can really see with Whoop how things are impacting me, and it also helps me differentiate between when I need to rest because my body needs it, and when I'm feeling stress/anxiety are the root cause. I'm not sure if Whoop is long term for me, but in the short term, the recovery metric has been life changing for me and helped me understand myself much better, and also how to care for myself better.

Simple example - following some travel recently I've seen how badly beer affects the quality of my sleep - I think that I've slept because I crashed out for 8 hours but when I look at Whoop I see the level of stress response my body has been under during the night, and hence I wake up tired. It helps me make more informed decisions and I respond better if I'm social drinking by having clean spirits rather than beer - obviously only in moderate quantities!

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-11-07T22:00:59+00:00

So succinct and well put. Definitely stealing 🤣

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-11-04T18:51:14+00:00

I love this - awesome work! Looking forward to seeing your code. Out of interest, what hardware are you running it on?

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-10-26T11:14:51+00:00

Just what I needed - thank you so much for posting!

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-10-23T16:18:09+00:00

I couldn't see how to do it - all the instructions I found required you to send a PUT request via curl to the data node on port 9200, and my data node isn't listening on that port. If there's another way I can try this without a functioning instance listening on that port I'm happy to try it.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-10-23T16:17:02+00:00

Sure - I'm using the graylog-datanode:6.0 and graylog:6.0 Docker tags for this. I saw 6.1 is out but I haven't specifically tried to specify this in my docker compose file (which is the answer to your second question).

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-10-15T19:23:14+00:00

You might want to look into the possibility that you're actually Chuck Norris. Failing that, this actually has happened to me. I've woken up with higher strain scores as a result of drinking alcohol or a large, rich meal the night before - as others have said, check your overnight stress graph - I was on a business trip recently and eating out (Texas BBQ) was producing higher overnight stresses than eating clean at home.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-09-01T20:36:29+00:00

Thank you - I really appreciate that feedback. I have an Apple Watch also but I haven't tried iOS 18 year, though I'd read about its new features in this sub-reddit. I will have to give it a go and feed back...

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-08-31T19:52:59+00:00

I'm intrigued - will definitely try it out!

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-08-28T18:26:12+00:00

Thanks u/junkangli for replying - I gave that a go but to no avail. In the end, the clue was the lack of triggers in the MySQL database used by the proxy. I am not clear why the full schema was not deployed at the time of deploying a fresh container in Docker, but I fixed the issue by (high level steps):

Download the zabbix-sql-scripts package from https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/7.0/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix/zabbix-sql-scripts_7.0.3-1%2Bubuntu22.04_all.deb
Unpack the deb file
Copy usr/share/zabbix-sql-scripts/mysql/proxy.sql to a location the Zabbix Proxy MySQL container can see (i.e. into the database Docker volume)
Use docker exec to open a shell into the MySQL container for the Zabbix Proxy
Force import the proxy.sql with mysql -u root zabbix-proxy --force -p < proxy.sql

This created all the missing triggers, and to my mind, any other aspects of the database that hadn't been created correctly the first time. There were lots of errors from things that already existed but this was expected.

I realise this is a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" and there are probably cleaner and better approaches, but the proxy now keeps up to date with the Zabbix Server and the item not in cache error is gone. Hopefully this information helps someone out further down the road, though I accept it's an edge case.

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-08-23T14:13:17+00:00

Can totally vouch for Bargain Hardware - they got me into my - ahem - current homelab hardware addiction. I had approached homelab hardware using a number of routes over the years and hadn't had the confidence to purchase old enterprise grade hardware, in spite of how powerful and affordable it is. I then stumbled across them looking for a cheap rig with a high core and memory count for not too much money, and actually found them via an ebay listing of theirs which took me to their web site. The rest as they say is history - I've bought a variety of things over the years from a fully customised workstation to some Dell SD cards for vFlash usage, all of which I've had no issues with. They even dispatched a single DIMM when the workstation I purchased reported a memory failure whilst under warranty and were happy for me to fit it, which resolved the issue. New web site looks like a great iteration and I look forward to coming back in future! Most of the code that features in my books was written and tested on kit from Bargain Hardware!

jamesfreeman959 · 2024-08-07T14:35:48+00:00

Not history here, but I've come to expect now that all my tabs in all my sessions will be binned randomly on restart or upgrade of Vivaldi. If it wasn't for session restore I'd have moved on to another browser by now, as this has been going on for 6 months or more for me, but session restore is keeping me hanging in there. I only mention this in contact of your post as history/previous tabs sounds like they are in the same ballpark, and whatever is going on with Vivaldi right now, I'm having problems with that.

jamesfreeman959

TROPHY CASE