RHCE and RHCT Exam Preparation Guide
Nitin(RHCE)
the RHCT or RHCE exam.
The Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Technician
(RHCT) exams are performance-based evaluations of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux system administration skills and knowledge. Candidates perform a
number of routine system administration tasks and are evaluated on
whether they have met specific objective criteria. Performance-based
testing means that candidates must perform tasks similar to what they
must perform on the job.
Prospective employers of RHCEs and RHCTs should verify any and all
claims by people claiming to hold one of these certificates by
requesting their certificate number
Only Red Hat and Red Hat Certified Training Partners administer the
RHCE and RHCT exams. Prospective candidates should exercise due
diligence when purchasing a seat in an RHCE or RHCT exam from a
provider other than Red Hat itself. They should verify that the
provider is, in fact, an authorized training partner in good standing.
Please notify greym...@redhat.com about organizations that purport to
offer the RHCE or RHCT exams, but who are not Red Hat Certified
Training Partners.
Official scores for the RHCE and RHCT exams come exclusively from Red
Hat Certification Central. Red Hat does not authorize examiners or
training partners to report results to candidates directly. Scores on
the exam are usually reported within three (3) US business days.
Exam results are reported as section scores. Red Hat does not report
performance on individual items, nor will it provide additional
information upon request.
Preparation for the RHCT and RHCE Exams
Red Hat encourages all candidates for RHCT and RHCE to consider taking
one or more of its official training courses to help prepare for the
RHCE or RHCT exam. Attendance in these classes is not required, and one
can choose to take just an exam. Many successful candidates who have
come to class already possessing substantial skills and knowledge have
reported that the class made a positive difference for them.
While attending Red Hat's classes can be an important part of one's
preparation to take the RHCE or RHCT exam, attending class does not
guarantee success on the exam. Previous experience, practice, and
native aptitude are also important determinants of success.
Many books and other resources on system administration for Red Hat's
OS products are available. Red Hat does not officially endorse any as
preparation guides for the RHCT or RHCE exams. Nevertheless, you may
find additional reading deepens understanding and can prove helpful.
Components of the RHCE and RHCT Exams
The RHCT exam is a subset of the RHCE exam, and is organized as
follows:
Troubleshooting and System Maintenance - 1 hour
Installation and Configuration - 2 hours
In order to earn RHCT, one must successfully complete all the
requirements in Troubleshooting and System Maintenance, and must
achieve a score of 70 or higher on Installation and Configuration.
For RHCE exams given on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and higher, the exam
is organized as follows:
Troubleshooting and System Maintenance - 2.5 hours
Installation and Configuration - 3.0 hours
In order to earn RHCE, one must successfully complete all the
RHCT-level Troubleshooting and System Maintenance requirements, and
successfully complete enough additional RHCE items to earn a score of
80 or higher overall on the section.
In addition, one must score 70 or higher on the RHCT items of
Installation and Configuration, and 70 or higher on the RHCE components
of that section. We describe the skills associated with RHCT and RHCE
below.
Study Points for the RHCE Exam
Prerequisite skills for RHCT and RHCE
Candidates should possess the following skills, as they may be
necessary in order to fulfill requirements of the RHCT and RHCE exams:
use standard command line tools (e.g., ls, cp, mv, rm, tail, cat, etc.)
to create, remove, view, and investigate files and directories
use grep, sed, and awk to process text streams and files
use a terminal-based text editor, such as vi/vim, to modify text files
use input/output redirection
understand basic principles of TCP/IP networking, including IP
addresses, netmasks, and gateways
use su to switch user accounts
use passwd to set passwords
use tar, gzip, and bzip2v
configure an email client on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
use mozilla and/or lynx to access HTTP/HTTPS URLs
use lftp to access FTP URLs
RHCT skills
Troubleshooting and System Maintenance
RHCTs should be able to:
boot systems into different run levels for troubleshooting and system
maintenance
diagnose and correct misconfigured networking
diagnose and correct hostname resolution problems
configure the X Window System and a desktop environment
add new partitions, filesystems, and swap to existing systems
use standard command-line tools to analyze problems and configure
system
Installation and Configuration
RHCTs must be able to:
perform network OS installation
implement a custom partitioning scheme
configure printing
configure the scheduling of tasks using cron and at
attach system to a network directory service, such as NIS or LDAP
configure autofs
add and manage users, groups, and quotas
configure filesystem permissions for collaboration
install and update RPMs
properly update the kernel RPM
modify the system bootloader
implement software RAID at install-time and run-time
use /proc/sys and sysctl to modify and set kernel run-time parameters
RHCE skills
Troubleshooting and System Maintenance
RHCEs must demonstrate the RHCT skills listed above, and should be able
to:
use the rescue environment provided by first installation CD
diagnose and correct boot failures arising from bootloader, module, and
filesystem errors
diagnose and correct problems with network services (see Installation
and Configuration below for a list of these services)
add, remove, and resize logical volumes
Installation and Configuration
RHCEs must demonstrate the RHCT-level skills listed above, and they
must be capable of configuring the following network services:
HTTP/HTTPS
SMB
NFS
FTP
Web proxy
SMTP
IMAP, IMAPS, and POP3
SSH
DNS (caching name server, slave name server)
For each of these services, RHCEs must be able to:
install the packages needed to provide the service
configure the service to start when the system is booted
configure the service for basic operation
Configure host-based and user-based security for the service
RHCEs must also be able to:
configure hands-free installation using Kickstart
implement logical volumes at install-time
use PAM to implement user-level restrictions