Published: Fri 29 April 2016
By rilindo
In Blog .
tags: linux RHCE
A month ago, I took the RHCE exam, fairly confident I will pass after
spending hours studying and practicing.
It did not happen. I was not even able to complete the exam on time. I
was hoping when I came home that I somehow squeaked though, but then
came the exam notification::
Passing score for the exam : 210
Your score : 206
Result : NO PASS
For the next few hours, I was pretty depressed. I actually studied for
the test far more extensively than the last time I took the RHCE, so it
was a big blow to my confidence. At one point, I thought about not
continuing on the RHCA path.
Then I decided to re-group and give it another go.
After signing up for the exam again (which, I will add, came at
considerable cost, as Red Hat do not offer free re-takes), I took
another look at the exam objectives and realize that in order to pass
the exam, I need to complete all objectives in 3 1/2 hours (or 210
minutes). So I consolidated the list of objectives as follows:
Configure a caching-only name server
Configure a system to forward all email to a central mail server
SSH Key Configuration with ACL
Synchronize time using other NTP peers
Apache - Configure a virtual host - with acl
Apache - Configure private directories
Apache - Configure group-managed content
Apache - Deploy a basic CGI application
Apache - Configure TLS security
Produce and deliver reports on system utilization (processor,
memory, disk, and network)
Configure a system to authenticate using Kerberos
NFS - Provide network shares to specific clients
NFS - Provide network shares suitable for group collaboration
(multi-user)
NFS - Use Kerberos to control access to NFS network shares
Samba - Provide network shares to specific clients
Samba - Provide network shares suitable for group collaboration
Use firewalld and associated mechanisms such as rich rules, zones
and custom rules, to implement packet filtering and configure
network address translation (NAT)
Route IP traffic and create static routes
Use /proc/sys and sysctl to modify and set kernel runtime parameters
Configure IPv6 addresses and perform basic IPv6 troubleshooting
Use network teaming or bonding to configure aggregated network links
between two Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems
Install and configure MariaDB
Use shell scripting to automate system maintainance tasks
Configure a system as either an iSCSI target or initiator that
persistently mounts an iSCSI target
Then I put them spreadsheet and start logging the time it takes me to
complete each task over the course the week. The results were not pretty
- it took about 162minutes complete mostof them.
(Actually, some of the tasks (in particularly, Apache), took far longer
than I expected and some others I gave up after 10-15 minutes).
The important thing, though, is after that practice run, I know where my
areas of weaknesses were. So I review the material again on my way to
work and back, did some quick practice sessionsand then went through the
tasks again.
As the result, the following week was a different storyI was able to cut
my time down by almost 40 minutes - down to 128 minutes.
Again, I look at areas where I was weak at, practice and review. By the
Sunday before the exam, I was able to cut my time to under 2 hours. Then
I did some final review on some parts on Sunday and Monday.
As the result, when I re-took the exam Tuesday afternoon, I was able to
breeze through all the items, and complete all of them with an hour to
spare. At that point, I was able to spend the remaining time validating
the setup, and going back and correcting things that I missed.
Later on that evening, I received the results:
Passing score for the exam : 210
Your score : 271
Result : PASS
Boom, baby.