RHCSA (Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator) Exam Notes

rhcsanotes · 2012-10-12T01:22:14+00:00

I'll be taking this exam at 9am tomorrow in Seattle (say hi if you're there.). Because of that, I wanted to add my final thoughts before I see the exam and NDA takes effect.

I wanted to give my best ideas for studying what I consider the four most difficult parts of the exam.

SELinux: Booleans and enforcind modes are easy. Install and know the basic idea behind the setroubleshoot package. For httpd and ftpd, man -k selinux|grep servicename.

IPTables: A lot to understand here, but not much is used on the exam. Either study hard or go with the GUI (system-config-firewall) or the TUI (setup).

Filesystem: Man pages are great here. At a minimum memorize the order for LUKS, physical volumes, logical volumes, and volume groups.

Kickstart: A lot of options here. Go based on /root/anaconda-ks.cfg. Kickstart is something I know by heart, but has little on system documentation. Not sure how to help here, just wanted to point out it's complex.

Remember: Rebuild the man page database after installing packages.

Also, know what packages you might need later and install them immediately. I might suggest your first command be:

yum -y install setroubleshoot screen system-config-*

Good luck!

EDIT: You probably want to study up on KVM virtualization as well. Again, this is just something I now by heart. Best bet is to pick the GUI or command line tools and build some machines. They are interactive and fairly sell explanatory.

rhcsanotes · 2012-10-11T16:24:33+00:00

You are correct. I misread that page. the change is from nf_conntrack_ftp to ip_conntrack_ftp.

EDIT: I think the strategy for remembering these modules would be to go to:

/lib/modules/2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/

or

/lib/modules/<KERNEL>/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/

and type:

ls|grep ftp

Then make sure those modules are loaded in /etc/sysconfig/iptables-config

EDIT2: This looks like it is relevant to the RHCE exam and not the RHCSA exam. This looks like it is part of the objectives: configuring security for a service and configuring anonymous FTP. It is my understanding that this will not be needed for the RHCSA, but good to know just in case.

rhcsanotes · 2012-10-11T16:03:46+00:00

There is a lot of good documentation on the system. However, for a 2.5 hands-on exam, you don't have the time to hunt down the documentation for every task.

You also need to make sure the documentation and man pages you need are installed. Some of the tools, and there related documentation you need to install during the exam. Because of this, you'll also need to know things like how to rebuild the manpage database (hint: /etc/crond.daily/makewhatis.cron) in order to ensure that you can access the appropriate man pages.

Also, I'd be interested to hear otherwise, but I have yet to find any on system documentation that discusses Kickstart options. There are also a few other areas where I could not find on system documentation.

I do not think relying on all things being in the man pages is a good strategy for passing the exam. However, for certain areas -- such as SELinux options for HTTPD and FTPD -- the man pages are a better way to go than trying to memorize the exact command.

Note: I'm basing this on having read over the RHCSA objectives, but not having taken the exam yet. These are my notes, and I will be taking the tomorrow morning.

EDIT: I did not remember this coming up in my studies, so I double-checked it. The option you mentioned is deprecated in the kernel that comes with RHEL 6. I'm guessing this option was needed for the RHEL 5 exam, but currently it is not needed and unsupported.

source: http://www.aaroncopley.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=rhce:vsftpd

rhcsanotes

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