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SAIR Linux Certified Administrator course: a review
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Dave Engbers
Mar 12, 2002, 3:50:31 AM3/12/02
to
Allow me to introduce myself: I am 34, Dutch and landed in the IT field due
to hobbyism that has since gotten strongly out of hand. My formal education
comprises translation and interpreting from Dutch to English and vice
versa. I started off computing on an Atari 600XL which was subsequently
replaced by a Commodore 64, 128, Amiga 500, Amiga 3000T and, to get to the
present, an AMD PC and an Apple iBook, both of which run a flavor of Linux.
I have held many jobs and contracts since I started in the eighties in
language quality, helpdesk guy, systems administration, network
administration and network management, getting ITIL-certified and MCSE'd on
the way.
I currently work in the role of IT manager for a chemical substances
transforwarder in the Rotterdam docks where I (only) have some 50 desktops
and 6 servers under my wings, coming from contracts where there would be
tens and in one instance, hundreds of servers to baby-sit (yes, Windows
NT). In order to facilitate all the transactions at this company, we are
using a logistics package called Chainware. When I started my job in July
of 2001, this was running inside a Linux emulation on Windows NT, the whole
powered by a single Pentium Pro @ 200MHz. My first concern was stability,
my second was speed and up-time. Speed, as truck drivers are not keen on
waiting for customs documents and ships really do cost a lot of money being
tied-up due to red tape.
Sometimes the leaky memory structure that is Windows NT would simply go
ballistic, taking the whole system down in its wake and leaving database
records invalid. A change was needed and the vendor indicated that
stability and performance would be greatly increased if we were to migrate
to Linux. Of course, this provided the vital point of entry of Linux in my
company. It was to provide me with a much more stable server that runs at
such a high-performant level that some users have actually complained
thinking the reports could not possibly have ended up in their personal
network drives in such a short time.
They got a bit mean about me taking their extended coffee breaks
away...then again, I decide who gets the Java =)
Management was a bit weary at first, but after I'd budgeted and
rationalized the project, I got the go-ahead for conversion and
implementation. I also managed to land a 2-week crash course that would
plant me firmly on Terra Tuxus: the SAIR LCA course. This article is about
that very course, aiming to give you and IT Managers all over some insight
into the level and depth of this course, as well as its validity in
real-world terms.
I booked early and received the self-study materials in September. I was
glad of it, as one really needs all the hours one can get installing and
configuring all the distributions that come with it, as well as doing all
the sample questions. Favored by a lot of experience, I cut through the
books relatively fast, but at six kilograms (13lbs.) of non-compressible
paper media, even the quickest reader needs vast amounts of time. 2.712
pages to cover all the lessons, 368 pages of sample test questions and a CD
containing practice exams. I kept on reading and reading, finishing my
perusal of the books during a holiday to Egypt. Must be the Red Sea spell
of the Pharaoh that yanked me out of my Security & Privacy spell. Or maybe
it was my girlfriend who insisted that, for my Security, we needed a bit of
Privacy from penguin-starring book covers.
The course itself started 4 February 2002. I was staying in a hotel in
Arnhem at the time, as commuting would have cost me three hours a day which
would have seriously cut into my act of becoming The Penguin. That day, we
were greeted by our teacher Klaas, a skilled trainer well-versed in the
larger, proprietary Unixes with system-level programming experience to
boot.
The first week, the objective was to study for and obtain the Linux
Fundamentals and System Administration certificates. One of these two will
get you the Linux Certified Professional status, much like the Microsoft
Certified Professional blot you get passing the first course.
Fundamentals took us from the history and licensing of Linux to using the
build-in help, installing all the accompanying distributions, setting up
the shell (text) and X-windows (graphical) environments. All of this (as
well as the workshops) was outlined in a separate, teacher-distributed
folder, using the self-study materials only for personal reference. During
the second half of the week, we focused on System Administration, including
kernel compilation, package installation, process, disk and user
management, the creation of backups, the effective use of system logs and
printing under Linux. At night, I would be trying and training on these on
my trusty Apple, handily equipped with Yellowdog Linux.
Friday came and I had to move early and quickly, this time to Utrecht, to
sit the first two exams. I was as nervous as a tender reed in the gale, yet
managed to finish the first exam in 30 minutes, half the allotted period. I
scored 80% on Fundamentals and proved consistent on the Admin test,
repeating both time taken and final score. What was most testing was that I
tried and fetch my girlfriend from a famous cathedral in Utrecht, but I got
firewalled every single time due to the Utrecht City Council's devious
combination of one-way streets and bus lanes. Even the natives told me I
did not have a chance in hell, but after two (!) hours of driving I managed
to get the satisfying click of a closing car door next to me. I think the
Dutch need a Utrecht Certified Driver course as well.
The weekend was very welcome, Monday arrived through the fog of victory and
the spray of aqua-planing car tires ahead of me. Once again we had to focus
hard, this time on the Networking and Security & Privacy courses.
Networking covers the TCP/IP stack, IP devices and topologies, routing,
frames, packets, DNS, DHCP, RPC, NNTP, NIS, SMTP, POP, IMAP, NFS and Samba.
All quite theoretical, but well-flavored practically by Klaas who also
added a vast collection of personal tips and tricks of the trade. The
course was similar to, but deeper than Microsoft's Networking offering.
Security took us through encryption, authentication, user security,
security practices, logging, securing the network, types of attack,
intrusion detection and countermeasures, all nicely accompanied by hands-on
installation and testing. The Privacy part is really irrelevant to the
European scene: if I were to browse through users' files at my company,
this would likely cost me my job and possibly lead to prosecution unless I
were in the possession of a court order. The exam states that US employees
cannot expect privacy: with a Government as is in place in Washington right
now, I will not be moving there at all.
After some grueling nocturnal bouts with Linux, I managed to pass with an
80% score on the Networking and a just-passed 74% on the Security and
Privacy exams.
This leads me to the final verdict for this course:
Course name Practical applicability Overall Score
Linux Fundamentals 90% 90%
Linux System Administration 95% 90%
Linux Networking 95% 85%
Linux Security and Privacy 70% 65%
Quality and clarity of the books: 85%
Quality of distributions: 80% (some a bit old)
Quality of practice exams: 60%*
* The practice exams, as well as their live-ammo equivalents, have actual
errors in them. This made me as a candidate having to guess the direction
the exam committee wanted me to take. I am certain this is costing
candidates valuable points and should be addressed forthwith. The SAIR site
informs me this process is already taking place. Secondly, my practice exam
CD would not install on Redhat Linux, a known problem that is not really as
big a problem as it sounds as there are a number of additional
distributions there. Full marks for the Windows version.
Graduation day
Not long after finishing the course, I received my LCP certificate. Shortly
after, I received my LCA certificate, as well as a Linux-credits card and a
badge to wear togeeky clubs. I also gained access to the LCP/LCA home site
on http://www.linuxcertification.com where I could find all the details as
to the exam times, scores and dates.
All in all, I can say that I can now with greater confidence administer and
troubleshoot the Chainware server we have. Meanwhile, this course enabled
me to plan a new proxy server (Squid), domain controller (Samba), firewall
(IPTables) as well as several other ECMs (Electronic Counter-Measures).
Which leads me to the...
Benefit to business
Prior to my course, I calculated that replacing only 3 NT servers and their
Client Access Licenses would pay for my entire course. While this
break-even point still exists, the fact that current Chainware users are
able to work so much faster is probably a bigger advantage in terms of cost
reduction as productivity, which comes at an hourly wage, has improved
greatly.
Currently, I am interrogating the viability of replacing all Windows
desktops by Mandrake Linux instead of moving on to pricey slow Windows 2000
(XP is out of the question for me, our documents are OUR documents). There
are only about 4 employees using an application that requires Windows, i.e.
our bookkeeping software. Have to keep Windows there, if only to receive my
salary...
Conclusion
This course is well-suited for creative IT people who have IT Managers to
match, i.e. who do not feed off every word proprietary software makers give
them. The level of support is unprecedented, with newsgroups and HOWTO
documents galore. Furthermore, the stability and small footprint of Linux
makes consolidating resources on older machines not only possible, but
extremely cost-effective.
Final verdict: even though this is the second-hardest course I did in my
life, it is very much worth it. I feel it well surpasses the MCSE course in
terms of skills accrued.
As for me personally, I am going to try and advance to the Linux Certified
Engineer level doing self-study. I hope this document has given you some
insight into the quality of the course and the personal and professional
benefits you may obtain.
Regards,
Dave Engbers
dave at futurity dot xs4all dot nl
Copyright: this text may be distributed unaltered and used for any goal,
either free of charge or commercial, by any person or entity, subject to
e-mailed approval by me (dave at futurity dot xs4all dot nl)
Special greetings go to my mother, my geek-proof girlfriend Wanda, Klaas
the super-teacher of onestep.nl, and Jon 'Maddog' Hall who inspired me
during Linux 2001 into the ways of linux.
to hobbyism that has since gotten strongly out of hand. My formal education
comprises translation and interpreting from Dutch to English and vice
versa. I started off computing on an Atari 600XL which was subsequently
replaced by a Commodore 64, 128, Amiga 500, Amiga 3000T and, to get to the
present, an AMD PC and an Apple iBook, both of which run a flavor of Linux.
I have held many jobs and contracts since I started in the eighties in
language quality, helpdesk guy, systems administration, network
administration and network management, getting ITIL-certified and MCSE'd on
the way.
I currently work in the role of IT manager for a chemical substances
transforwarder in the Rotterdam docks where I (only) have some 50 desktops
and 6 servers under my wings, coming from contracts where there would be
tens and in one instance, hundreds of servers to baby-sit (yes, Windows
NT). In order to facilitate all the transactions at this company, we are
using a logistics package called Chainware. When I started my job in July
of 2001, this was running inside a Linux emulation on Windows NT, the whole
powered by a single Pentium Pro @ 200MHz. My first concern was stability,
my second was speed and up-time. Speed, as truck drivers are not keen on
waiting for customs documents and ships really do cost a lot of money being
tied-up due to red tape.
Sometimes the leaky memory structure that is Windows NT would simply go
ballistic, taking the whole system down in its wake and leaving database
records invalid. A change was needed and the vendor indicated that
stability and performance would be greatly increased if we were to migrate
to Linux. Of course, this provided the vital point of entry of Linux in my
company. It was to provide me with a much more stable server that runs at
such a high-performant level that some users have actually complained
thinking the reports could not possibly have ended up in their personal
network drives in such a short time.
They got a bit mean about me taking their extended coffee breaks
away...then again, I decide who gets the Java =)
Management was a bit weary at first, but after I'd budgeted and
rationalized the project, I got the go-ahead for conversion and
implementation. I also managed to land a 2-week crash course that would
plant me firmly on Terra Tuxus: the SAIR LCA course. This article is about
that very course, aiming to give you and IT Managers all over some insight
into the level and depth of this course, as well as its validity in
real-world terms.
I booked early and received the self-study materials in September. I was
glad of it, as one really needs all the hours one can get installing and
configuring all the distributions that come with it, as well as doing all
the sample questions. Favored by a lot of experience, I cut through the
books relatively fast, but at six kilograms (13lbs.) of non-compressible
paper media, even the quickest reader needs vast amounts of time. 2.712
pages to cover all the lessons, 368 pages of sample test questions and a CD
containing practice exams. I kept on reading and reading, finishing my
perusal of the books during a holiday to Egypt. Must be the Red Sea spell
of the Pharaoh that yanked me out of my Security & Privacy spell. Or maybe
it was my girlfriend who insisted that, for my Security, we needed a bit of
Privacy from penguin-starring book covers.
The course itself started 4 February 2002. I was staying in a hotel in
Arnhem at the time, as commuting would have cost me three hours a day which
would have seriously cut into my act of becoming The Penguin. That day, we
were greeted by our teacher Klaas, a skilled trainer well-versed in the
larger, proprietary Unixes with system-level programming experience to
boot.
The first week, the objective was to study for and obtain the Linux
Fundamentals and System Administration certificates. One of these two will
get you the Linux Certified Professional status, much like the Microsoft
Certified Professional blot you get passing the first course.
Fundamentals took us from the history and licensing of Linux to using the
build-in help, installing all the accompanying distributions, setting up
the shell (text) and X-windows (graphical) environments. All of this (as
well as the workshops) was outlined in a separate, teacher-distributed
folder, using the self-study materials only for personal reference. During
the second half of the week, we focused on System Administration, including
kernel compilation, package installation, process, disk and user
management, the creation of backups, the effective use of system logs and
printing under Linux. At night, I would be trying and training on these on
my trusty Apple, handily equipped with Yellowdog Linux.
Friday came and I had to move early and quickly, this time to Utrecht, to
sit the first two exams. I was as nervous as a tender reed in the gale, yet
managed to finish the first exam in 30 minutes, half the allotted period. I
scored 80% on Fundamentals and proved consistent on the Admin test,
repeating both time taken and final score. What was most testing was that I
tried and fetch my girlfriend from a famous cathedral in Utrecht, but I got
firewalled every single time due to the Utrecht City Council's devious
combination of one-way streets and bus lanes. Even the natives told me I
did not have a chance in hell, but after two (!) hours of driving I managed
to get the satisfying click of a closing car door next to me. I think the
Dutch need a Utrecht Certified Driver course as well.
The weekend was very welcome, Monday arrived through the fog of victory and
the spray of aqua-planing car tires ahead of me. Once again we had to focus
hard, this time on the Networking and Security & Privacy courses.
Networking covers the TCP/IP stack, IP devices and topologies, routing,
frames, packets, DNS, DHCP, RPC, NNTP, NIS, SMTP, POP, IMAP, NFS and Samba.
All quite theoretical, but well-flavored practically by Klaas who also
added a vast collection of personal tips and tricks of the trade. The
course was similar to, but deeper than Microsoft's Networking offering.
Security took us through encryption, authentication, user security,
security practices, logging, securing the network, types of attack,
intrusion detection and countermeasures, all nicely accompanied by hands-on
installation and testing. The Privacy part is really irrelevant to the
European scene: if I were to browse through users' files at my company,
this would likely cost me my job and possibly lead to prosecution unless I
were in the possession of a court order. The exam states that US employees
cannot expect privacy: with a Government as is in place in Washington right
now, I will not be moving there at all.
After some grueling nocturnal bouts with Linux, I managed to pass with an
80% score on the Networking and a just-passed 74% on the Security and
Privacy exams.
This leads me to the final verdict for this course:
Course name Practical applicability Overall Score
Linux Fundamentals 90% 90%
Linux System Administration 95% 90%
Linux Networking 95% 85%
Linux Security and Privacy 70% 65%
Quality and clarity of the books: 85%
Quality of distributions: 80% (some a bit old)
Quality of practice exams: 60%*
* The practice exams, as well as their live-ammo equivalents, have actual
errors in them. This made me as a candidate having to guess the direction
the exam committee wanted me to take. I am certain this is costing
candidates valuable points and should be addressed forthwith. The SAIR site
informs me this process is already taking place. Secondly, my practice exam
CD would not install on Redhat Linux, a known problem that is not really as
big a problem as it sounds as there are a number of additional
distributions there. Full marks for the Windows version.
Graduation day
Not long after finishing the course, I received my LCP certificate. Shortly
after, I received my LCA certificate, as well as a Linux-credits card and a
badge to wear togeeky clubs. I also gained access to the LCP/LCA home site
on http://www.linuxcertification.com where I could find all the details as
to the exam times, scores and dates.
All in all, I can say that I can now with greater confidence administer and
troubleshoot the Chainware server we have. Meanwhile, this course enabled
me to plan a new proxy server (Squid), domain controller (Samba), firewall
(IPTables) as well as several other ECMs (Electronic Counter-Measures).
Which leads me to the...
Benefit to business
Prior to my course, I calculated that replacing only 3 NT servers and their
Client Access Licenses would pay for my entire course. While this
break-even point still exists, the fact that current Chainware users are
able to work so much faster is probably a bigger advantage in terms of cost
reduction as productivity, which comes at an hourly wage, has improved
greatly.
Currently, I am interrogating the viability of replacing all Windows
desktops by Mandrake Linux instead of moving on to pricey slow Windows 2000
(XP is out of the question for me, our documents are OUR documents). There
are only about 4 employees using an application that requires Windows, i.e.
our bookkeeping software. Have to keep Windows there, if only to receive my
salary...
Conclusion
This course is well-suited for creative IT people who have IT Managers to
match, i.e. who do not feed off every word proprietary software makers give
them. The level of support is unprecedented, with newsgroups and HOWTO
documents galore. Furthermore, the stability and small footprint of Linux
makes consolidating resources on older machines not only possible, but
extremely cost-effective.
Final verdict: even though this is the second-hardest course I did in my
life, it is very much worth it. I feel it well surpasses the MCSE course in
terms of skills accrued.
As for me personally, I am going to try and advance to the Linux Certified
Engineer level doing self-study. I hope this document has given you some
insight into the quality of the course and the personal and professional
benefits you may obtain.
Regards,
Dave Engbers
dave at futurity dot xs4all dot nl
Copyright: this text may be distributed unaltered and used for any goal,
either free of charge or commercial, by any person or entity, subject to
e-mailed approval by me (dave at futurity dot xs4all dot nl)
Special greetings go to my mother, my geek-proof girlfriend Wanda, Klaas
the super-teacher of onestep.nl, and Jon 'Maddog' Hall who inspired me
during Linux 2001 into the ways of linux.
--
>---- if you are reading this, you must be bored...
Dave Engbers
SAIR Linux Certified Administrator http://www.linuxcertification.com
Microsoft Certified System Engineer http://www.billsmonopoly.com
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