{"id":421,"date":"2009-02-07T02:42:48","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T01:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/?p=421"},"modified":"2009-02-07T03:03:39","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T02:03:39","slug":"guide-to-lpic-1-certification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/2009\/02\/guide-to-lpic-1-certification\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide to LPIC-1 certification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I lead a team of highly specialized IT personnel, who are mostly certified LPI level 1, level 2 or even level 3, I decided it was my turn to give it a try. I passed LPI 101 (part one of LPIC-1) on 2009-01-28 and LPI 102 (part two of LPIC-1) on 2009-02-02.<\/p>\n

Here’s what you might wanna know about how to get LPIC-1 certified:<\/p>\n

I did not learn a lot,\u00a0because I’m used to Unix administration since about 1995. But I can highly recommend to buy and read the following book: LPIC-1 by Peer Heinlein<\/a>. If you’re experienced, most parts may sound very familiar, but do you know all switches and all parameters of certain\u00a0commands? Do you know, which commands and what paramaters LPI might ask? No? I guessed.<\/p>\n

Here’s (in a very brief abstract), what you should know before trying to get certified:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Hardware & Architecture\n
      \n
    • Do you know what interrupts are and where information are stored during the system’s runtime?<\/li>\n
    • What is IO?<\/li>\n
    • Do you know how to configure PCI expansion cards manually?<\/li>\n
    • How to connect and eventually configure a USB device?<\/li>\n
    • What is a Winmodem?<\/li>\n
    • Can you configure serial settings for a modem or a sound card?<\/li>\n
    • Do you know the difference between SATA, SCSI or even external USB drives?<\/li>\n
    • How does the system connect, name\u00a0and use them?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Linux Installation & Package Management\n
        \n
      • Do you know how to set up partitions?<\/li>\n
      • And why exactly this way?<\/li>\n
      • Why can some directories be on its own partition? Why should some be? Why must some not be?<\/li>\n
      • You can install and use LILO and Grub?<\/li>\n
      • What are the differences?<\/li>\n
      • Can you unpack, compile and install program sources?<\/li>\n
      • You know what shared libraries are and why they exist?<\/li>\n
      • Do you know the difference between RedHat and Debian package management?<\/li>\n
      • Do you know the most important switches and parameters (nearly all of them) of those packaging tools?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
      • GNU & Unix Commands\n
          \n
        • Do you know what a shell environment is?<\/li>\n
        • When and how will an environment be inherited?<\/li>\n
        • Can you set and unset variables?<\/li>\n
        • Do you know (including the usage) of all of the following tools? cat, cut, expand, fmt, head, hexdump, join, nl, paste, pr, sed, sort, split, tac, tail, tr, unexpand, uniq, wc. <\/em>If not, get used to them!<\/li>\n
        • Do you know how to create, delete, read, move and copy files?<\/li>\n
        • Have you understood what STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR are and how they may be (re)directed?<\/li>\n
        • Can you kill processes, stop them, send them into the background or get them back to the foreground?<\/li>\n
        • Do you know what the process priority means and how it can be manipulated?<\/li>\n
        • Do you know how regular expressions work?<\/li>\n
        • Do you have problems using vi<\/em>? If so, get used to this editor!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
        • Devices, Linux Filesystems, Filesystem Hierarchy Standard\n
            \n
          • Do you know how to set up a partition manually?<\/li>\n
          • Even a swap partition?<\/li>\n
          • Can you add new swap space while your system is running?<\/li>\n
          • Can you check, tune and repair a filesystem?<\/li>\n
          • Do you know when and how partitions are mounted? And why?<\/li>\n
          • Can you set up and use quotas?<\/li>\n
          • Can you get and read quota reports?<\/li>\n
          • Do you know what file and folder permissions are? And how they usually should be?<\/li>\n
          • Can you modify them?<\/li>\n
          • Do you know what special bits (files\/folders) are?<\/li>\n
          • Can you explain the difference between hard and soft links? Can you create, use and delete both of them?<\/li>\n
          • Do you know how find<\/em>, which<\/em> and locate<\/em> work? How and why?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
          • The X Window System\n
              \n
            • Do you know where the X configuration is stored?<\/li>\n
            • Have you understood the difference between a xserver, a window manager and a display manager?<\/li>\n
            • Can you redirect the graphical output of a program onto another machine?<\/li>\n
            • Do you know in which part of the xserver’s configuration fonts are defined?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
            • Kernel\n
                \n
              • Do you know what kernel modules are?<\/li>\n
              • How can you query them?<\/li>\n
              • How do you add or remove them?<\/li>\n
              • Do you know how to reconfigure a kernel?<\/li>\n
              • And how to compile and install it?<\/li>\n
              • What about LILO and Grub? Anything to do after you installed a new kernel? Why? Why not?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
              • Boot, Initialization, Shutdown and Runlevels\n
                  \n
                • What are runlevels?<\/li>\n
                • Where are they defined?<\/li>\n
                • What about logfiles during a system boot?<\/li>\n
                • Do you know how to shut down a system safely? Even if still users are logged in?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                • Printing\n
                    \n
                  • (Just my opinion: printing has been a freakin’ show ever since!)<\/li>\n
                  • What printing systems do you know?<\/li>\n
                  • What commands are used to print or\u00a0to (re)configure the printing queue?<\/li>\n
                  • Do you know what happens to you print job after you startet it?<\/li>\n
                  • Do you know when (and when not) it has to be converted? And how this happens?<\/li>\n
                  • Can you set up a remote printer?<\/li>\n
                  • Even a remote printer on a Windows system?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                  • Documentation\n
                      \n
                    • Do you know the different type of man pages?<\/li>\n
                    • And have you ever heared of whatis<\/em> or apropos<\/em>?<\/li>\n
                    • Do you know which messages users get before or after the log on to a system? And why?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                    • Shells, Scripting, Programming and Compiling\n
                        \n
                      • Do you know all BASH fundamentals including profile, variables, environment or built-in functions?<\/li>\n
                      • Can you write your own (simple) BASH scripts?<\/li>\n
                      • Can you let your script perform a loop?<\/li>\n
                      • Do you know how to compare strings or expressions (using test<\/em> or if [ …]<\/em>)?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                      • Administrative Tasks\n
                          \n
                        • Do you (exactly!) know what a shadow system is? What is it? How does it work? And why is it used?<\/li>\n
                        • Can you add, remove or reconfigure users or groups using tools?<\/li>\n
                        • And can you even do it right within the config files?<\/li>\n
                        • Do you know what the skeleton is used for?<\/li>\n
                        • Do you know what syslog is used for and how it works?<\/li>\n
                        • Can you read and\/or rotate logfiles?<\/li>\n
                        • Even if they are stil locked by a process?<\/li>\n
                        • Do you know how to set up certian jobs which should be started once in the future or even frequently?<\/li>\n
                        • Do you exactly know the syntax of a cronjob?<\/li>\n
                        • Do you know how to make backups? How to store them and how to restore and use them?<\/li>\n
                        • Can you set the correct time and date on your system?<\/li>\n
                        • Even for the hardware clock?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                        • Networking Fundamentals\n
                            \n
                          • Have you understood what an IP address is and how it looks like?<\/li>\n
                          • Can you calculate the netmask and broadcast of a network?<\/li>\n
                          • Do you know what IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP mean? And the difference?<\/li>\n
                          • Do you know the ports of the most common services?<\/li>\n
                          • Can you change the IP address of a running system?<\/li>\n
                          • Could you debug TCP connection failures?<\/li>\n
                          • Do you know what routing means and when it is needed?<\/li>\n
                          • Can you configure a modem as your PPP device?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                          • Networking Services\n
                              \n
                            • Do you know how incoming connections are handled?<\/li>\n
                            • What is the difference between inetd and xinetd?<\/li>\n
                            • How could you migrate?<\/li>\n
                            • Can you block or allow certain connects using simple files under \/etc\/?<\/li>\n
                            • Do you know how mail aliases are handled?<\/li>\n
                            • And what if they have changed?<\/li>\n
                            • Can you start, stop, restart and even configure an Apache webserver?<\/li>\n
                            • Do you know how to mount or export filesystems using NFS?<\/li>\n
                            • Can you mount a samba share?<\/li>\n
                            • Do you know how to configure your system using DNS servers? How?<\/li>\n
                            • Can you maintain a SSH server?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
                            • Security\n
                                \n
                              • Do you know how incoming packets are handled by the kernel?<\/li>\n
                              • Can you add new iptables rules?<\/li>\n
                              • What are sockets?<\/li>\n
                              • Do you know netstat?<\/li>\n
                              • Do you know how to secure your system using xinetd, iptables, syslog, etc.?<\/li>\n
                              • Can you block logins to your machine using a single file?<\/li>\n
                              • Do you know how to secure access to files using permissions?<\/li>\n
                              • Do you know what the umask is?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                This is wow, isn’t it?!<\/p>\n

                                If you’re using a linux\/unix system for quite a while, most of the questions should sound easy. But, indeed, nearly every tool has switches and\/or parameters, you’ve never ever heard of. So, I highly suggest, you should read at least the man pages of every program, tool or task I mentioned above.<\/p>\n

                                If you do know the (of course right) answer for every question, you should have no problems passing the tests for LPIC-1 certification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                Since I lead a team of highly specialized IT personnel, who are mostly certified LPI level 1, level 2 or even level 3, I decided it was my turn to give it a try. I passed LPI 101 (part one of LPIC-1) on 2009-01-28 and LPI 102 (part two of LPIC-1) on 2009-02-02. Here’s what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[81,61,71,91,101],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-certification","tag-linux","tag-lpi","tag-lpic-1","tag-unix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasgericke.de\/v4\/interactive\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}