[rescue] off topic - red hat linux book

[Andrew Jones]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 08:49:26PM -0700, Rick Hamell wrote:
> Jerry Kemp wrote:
> > I wear several hats, and I have noticed uniqueness and oddities 
> > surrounding most certification test.
> 
> ANY certification test. I have a really hard time getting certs of any 
> type for this reason because the answers they want usually don't make 
> sense. And the afore mentioned white space thing bit me on the ass a 
> couple of times.

This is exactly why the RHCE is so much better than e.g. Microsoft or Cisco exams.

* They give you real PC hardware, no emulator BS.

* For installation, you get the regular Red Hat install media.

* After installation, you get a real, uncrippled system.  Yes, this includes man pages.

* The official Red Hat site gives you a precise list of topics that you might be tested on.

During the actual exam, for eac hsegment, you have a list of clear, concise objectives that can be tested in an obvious way.  You won't wonder whether you finished the objective in the "correct" and grade-able fashion, you'll know.  You have a reasonable time limit to achieve the goals.  You have the system documentation on hand if you happen to forget some miserable bit of trivia.

If you know what you're doing, at all, you just can't fail.  I frequently recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Engineer-Linux-Study-Certification/dp/0072264543/

It's just a large number of labs in sequence, covering all the mandated topics.  If you run someone with a modest amount of UNIX experience through the book's labs, there's a good chance he'll pass.  Odds are he'll remember at least enough to reference the correct man page on exam day, just like a real UNIX sysadmin.

For all its flaws, RHCE is as far as possible from say, VMware VCP.  I wanted to take my eyeballs with a spoon after taking that exam.