Last year, I passed RHCSA 7 exam with a great score, 300 out of 300! I prepared from home without admitting any institutions. Special thanks to LinuxAcademy, CertDepot, RootUsers, Lisenet, Sander van Vugt, google and youtube (hope I didn’t miss anyone who deserve my deepest gratitude).

The exam was very easy for me. I completed within 1 and half hour. Then I revised and left the exam hall. It was the only exam in my whole life that I didn’t worry a bit (lol). My preparation was very good that I didn’t find any difficulty to complete any task. However, I wrote some notes to myself that helped me a lot to achieve my desire score. So here is the tips and advices that I wrote to myself:

Tips:

  1. Setup your own lab within vmware/virtualbox
    • Use CentOS 7 or download the free copy of RHEL from redhat website
  2. Create other vms and setup the following servers
  3. Don’t rely on GUI. If you want to SSH onto your guest vm from host, use ssh with -X option
  4. For managing firewall, don’t rely on GUI also. Use #firewall-cmd command
  5. Know how to use man/info/help/locate/find/rpm -qd command
  6. Have a clear understand on Linux filesystem and how to work on lvm
  7. Understanding on filesystem extend, reduce/resize command. For example: extend the size (by using logical extent or specific size), reduce size of partition/logical volume, resize to exact size without hampering the files on the filesystem, check the filesystem health, labeling etc.
  8. Clear understand on logical extent. Here is the good topic on it that helped me to understand logical extent http://bit.ly/2Yvpls8
  9. Be familiar with RHCSA objectives keep yourself up to date.
  10. Use multiple ssh window and watch audit.log, messages (tail -f) and journalctl (journalctl -xf)
  11. Watch Sander van Vugt’s advices on RHCSA exam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tok9qimRw6k
  12. Every service MUST survive reboot. So give extra care about persistency. Reboot reboot reboot & reboot in order to check if everything working or not
  13. Install bash-completion package (might be already installed) which help you to autocomplete the command
  14. If you forgot how to setup cronjob, just look inside /etc/crontab file
  15. Give extra care on:
    • File system partitioning (Use UUID when you add your file system in /etc/fstab for persistency)
    • ACL
    • firewall-cmd (with –permanent option)
    • setuid/setgid
    • File/folder permission
    • Selinux
    • Seboolean (with -P option)
    • breaking root password
    • ldap
    • autofs
    • nfs
    • network setup
  16. Instead of memorizing big command for managing virtualization, remember the following group commands: #yum groups install “Virtualization Hypervisor” “Virtualization Client” “Virtualization Tools” “Virtualization Platform”
  17. Forgot the above command also? No worries! just execute: #yum group list hidden
  18. If there are any filesystem related task, try to solve that task at first. Then reboot to see if your system boot properly or not.
  19. Give extra attention on time
  20. Always practice each RHCSA objectives unless you feel ready
  21. Don’t consult guide/help from other if you forgot anything. Just learn to use man/info/help/locate/find/rpm -qd command

Advices

  • Use nmcli to setup network
  • Install some useful packages first. For example: yum-utils, bash-completion, setroubleshoot-server etc
  • Make sure you know how to add new repository. Use yum-config-manager
  • In exam hall, don’t stress. Just relax. Also don’t hurry. If you complete early, just reboot the machine couples of times and review the question answers.

Good luck!