Main Page

From LinuxFanBoy

Studying for the Redhat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Exam

If you are studding for the RHCE exam these pages should help. I have developed an outline of what you need to learn along with systems you can run using VMware Player. You can practice fixing broken systems.

1 Becoming Certified
2 What is the test like?
3 Study Guides
4 Test Day
5 Usefull Documents

Becoming Certified

The book

Becoming a Red Hat Certified Engineer requires passing a 3.5 hour hands-on exam and is a performance-based test that measures actual competency on live systems. For more information go to Redhat. I thought my experience would carry me after 30 years of working in the computer industry and my resume would demonstrate my experience. This is a quickly changing industry and no one cares about your knowledge of the Apple ][. So after more then half a lifetime of working without a degree or certificate, I'm studying for my RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam and I invite you to study with me.

This website is my study notes. I am publishing it so others may spring board off my work. Feel free to follow along and learn Redhat Linux yourself. Maybe I will see you at my testing center.

I am using the study guide "Red Hat certified Engineer Linux Study Guide - Fourth Edition" by Michael Jang. This guide is based on Redhat 3. The current RHCE test is given with Redhat 5. If anyone knows of a newer study guide, or is writing one, I'd be happy to buy or review it.

I'm not going to cover every detail in the book. There are a lot of Linux commands I know by heart and so I don't need to study them. If you don't know vi, ls, ssh or tar already this website study along is not for you. I've ready only 50% of the people taking the test pass. If you don't know these commands already you might want to take one of the expensive courses.

What is the test like?

There are several Red Hat Certifications. The Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam is a 3.5 hour hands-on exam. This changed Effective May 1, 2009. The RHCE exam previously had been in two sections lasting a combined 5.5 hours. Redhat says "The RHCT exam is a subset of the RHCE exam delivered separately" so I believe you must take and pass the RHCT before taking the RHCE. The RHCT is 2.0 hours.

The RHCT involves troubleshooting and system maintenance. You must fix x number of x problems on a misconfiguration system. You will need to boot use the rescue CD and/or boot into different run levels to diagnose and correct networking problems, diagnose DNS problems, configure X windows issues, add new partitions file systems and/or expand them.

The RHCE test requires that you can install and configure any of the network services avaible on the Redhat CD including HTTP/s, SMB, NFS, SMTP, SSH, DNS and more. For each of these you must be prepaired to configure SELinux, host based and use based security to support the service.

You should know, according to Redhat, less than 50% of first-time test-takers pass. The RHCE is not multiple choice tests and is not cheep! Redhat has Online Training. You can take their instructor-led virtual training, a self-paced eLearning course and/or use their live access labs provide full console access to a self-paced study lab environment. check here for prices.

Although anything on the Redhat cd could be included on the test, Redhat stresses package management, systems initialization, kernel services, system services and security, filesystem management, user administration, single system installation, virtualization installation, network configuration, network security (iptables, TCP wrappers), network infrastructure services (DNS, DHCP), web services (Apache, Squid), network filesharing services (FTP, NFS, SMB), mail services (postfix, dovecot), and troubleshooting. To judge your level of knowlage take the Redhat pre-assessment questionnaires.

As of May 2009, Redhat has changed the test and no longer has you install Linux. Redhat says, "Previously, candidates were required to install systems from "bare metal" in the second section of the exam. Our analysis found that installation is something virtually every candidate accomplishes successfully. However, the installation process is time-consuming. A significant amount of time was spent watching packages as they install, a task that is not indicative of an individual's abilities. Providing a pre-installed system saves valuable time."

You will need to Building a System to practice on.

I also have written a program to create Practice Breaks designed to simulate the first part of the test.