General Information

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam study notes.

• RHCSA Objectives Link
• Linux Academy (Interactive Training)
• RHCSA RHEL 7 Quiz
• RHCSA RHEL 7 Sample Exam

Taking an individual exam means you will sit at a kiosk style computer and be monitored via a camera at an exam center.

• Buy an exam voucher from Red Hat (good for 1 year): https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/individual-exams
  • Click on Red Hat Certified System Administrator (EX200)
  • Under “How will you train/test?”, select “Individual Exam” and then click “Enroll”.
  • Purchase the exam voucher.
  • If you already have a login
    • Login, which brings you to your Red Hat Training page.
    • At the top, click “Request Learning”
    • Above the “Request Booking” form, click “Search Catalog”
    • Type “RHCE” and then search
    • Add the “Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam (EX300K)” to your cart and checkout.
• Schedule an exam using the voucher.
  • Note: You will need to wait 2-3 days for your exam voucher to be fully processed before you can schedule the exam.
  • Sign up at Innovative Exams (create an account or sign in): https://www.examslocal.com/ScheduleExam/Home
  • Schedule a date/time/location to take the exam with Innovative Exams using the exam voucher purchased from Red Hat.

You will need:

• Photo ID card (Drivers License)
• Confirmation code
• Innovative Exams login and password (to actually login and take the test at the kiosk)

Expect:

• Individual Exam: A kiosk style computer and being monitored remotely via web cam
• Tasks, not questions: You will be given tasks to complete on a live system.
• Exam Results e-mailed to you within 3 business days, but many report getting results back within a few hours.
• Red Hat Version: May or may not be updated! You could find yourself with a version of Red Hat anywhere from 7.0 - the latest. This is important to note when certain configuration steps differ between versions.

Objectives are listed below in each of their sections.

For a lab setup, using something like VirtualBox works great.
In order to practice the objectives below, setup a virtual machine lab:

• server1.example.com
  • Description: Main VM to perform anything local only and anything from a “client” perspective
  • CPU/Memory: 1 CPU/1024 MB memory
  • IP: 192.168.1.150 (bridged adapter)
• server2.example.com
  • Description: Secondary VM to function as a source for “server1” to perform tests (ie NFS/CIFS/HTTP server)
  • CPU/Memory: 1 CPU/1024 MB memory
  • IP: 192.168.1.151 (bridged adapter)
• ipa.example.com
  • Description: FreeIPA LDAP server to install for client authentication practice
  • CPU/Memory: 1 CPU/1024 MB memory
  • IP: 192.168.1.152 (bridged adapter)
  • Install FreeIPA

Install CentOS 7 on all VMs (Basic Server) and set to the multi-user target.

• Note: Do not expect to have a access to a GUI on the exam.

• Access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax
• Use input-output redirection
• Use grep and regular expressions to analyze text
• Access remote systems using ssh
• Log in and switch users in multiuser targets
• Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2
• Create and edit text files
• Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
• Create hard and soft links
• List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions
• Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc

• Boot, reboot, and shut down a system normally
• Boot systems into different targets manually
• Interrupt the boot process in order to gain access to a system
• Identify CPU/memory intensive processes, adjust process priority with renice, and kill processes
• Locate and interpret system log files and journals
• Access a virtual machine's console
• Start and stop virtual machines
• Start, stop, and check the status of network services
• Securely transfer files between systems

• List, create, delete partitions on MBR and GPT disks
• Create and remove physical volumes, assign physical volumes to volume groups, and create and delete logical volumes
• Configure systems to mount file systems at boot by Universally Unique ID (UUID) or label
• Add new partitions and logical volumes, and swap to a system non-destructively

• Create, mount, unmount, and use vfat, ext4, and xfs file systems
• Mount and unmount CIFS and NFS network file systems
• Extend existing logical volumes
• Create and configure set-GID directories for collaboration
• Create and manage Access Control Lists (ACLs)
• Diagnose and correct file permission problems

• Configure networking and hostname resolution statically or dynamically
• Schedule tasks using at and cron
• Start and stop services and configure services to start automatically at boot
• Configure systems to boot into a specific target automatically
• Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux automatically using Kickstart
• Configure a physical machine to host virtual guests
• Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems as virtual guests
• Configure systems to launch virtual machines at boot
• Configure network services to start automatically at boot
• Configure a system to use time services
• Install and update software packages from Red Hat Network, a remote repository, or from the local file system
• Update the kernel package appropriately to ensure a bootable system
• Modify the system bootloader

• Create, delete, and modify local user accounts
• Change passwords and adjust password aging for local user accounts
• Create, delete, and modify local groups and group memberships
• Configure a system to use an existing authentication service for user and group information

• Configure firewall settings using firewall-config, firewall-cmd, or iptables
• Configure key-based authentication for SSH
• Set enforcing and permissive modes for SELinux
• List and identify SELinux file and process context
• Restore default file contexts
• Use boolean settings to modify system SELinux settings
• Diagnose and address routine SELinux policy violations