In this article I’ll be sharing my experience of going through RHCE exam and a few tips on how to crack the one-of -the-kind performance based exams. Before I proceed let me tell you that I will NOT be sharing any exam questions because I’ve agreed to the NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). For those who haven’t heard RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) is a certification offered by Red Hat Inc. for which you have to pass two “performance” based exams, RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) and RHCE. Performance based means you have to practically configure everything on the system they provide no objective type questions or theoretical ones where you can practice a couple of “dumps” and breeze through it.
The exam was scheduled on 26th April 2011 and I had two whole weeks to practice after my college semester exams where over. I had the Red Hat official books but they were for RHEL5 but the exam was on RHEL6 so I had to google many things like creating LUKS encrypted filesystems. Certain things like pam_tally.so had changed to pam_tally2.so. The exam centre also offered special “exam” training at an additional cost but I preferred learning things alone, so the two weeks I practiced all the exam objectives for RHCSA and RHCE which was specified in the official redhat website.
Finally the D-Day (examination day) arrived and I was determined to score 100% on arriving to the examination centre I found that all my co-exammates were employed people who wanted to earn a RHCE for a promotion. I was the youngest one there and they had all attended the exam training which made them familiar with the setup RHEL in the exam hall. After the examiner announced everything was ready we entered the exam hall. A couple of minutes were spent filling the forms and reading the terms and conditions, then the exam started. I hurried towards the first question but ended up messing damaging an important partition! ouch and I’m sorry I can’t reveal that question 🙁 the rest of the exam went smoothly until I banged my head on the last question. I knew the command but I didn’t know the correct parameter to be used with it. I though of peeking into the man (manual) pages, but there were rumors that a question would not be valued if I solved it by looking into the man pages. Finally after much struggling I solved it and left the exam hall satisfied that I completed most of it correctly.
Outside the hall an hour passed discussing how to crack the next (RHCE) exam, some were regretting for not configuring “something” properly which lead to “some” other problem (sorry again, I can’t reveal any question). So the second and final exam started, all questions were straight forward and easy except one about which I was clueless. I configured 90% of it within 1.5 hours including the firewall rules but one network service refused to work when accessed through the network so I started inserting new firewall rules till there was only 15 minutes left, I lost hope and rebooted my machine to check finally whether everything else worked. To my horror nothing worked over the network because I had messed with the firewall rules and saved them too ! gasp. My fingers ran impatiently over the keyboard deleting the existing rules and add new ones trying to make things work. Suddenly the system rebooted, the examiner go up from his place announcing that the time was over. I left the examination centre with a heavy heart not knowing how the results would turn up. Because redhat’s official website says “The unintended result of this rigorous testing method is that many candidates do not pass Red Hat certification exams the first time they take them. In fact, for some of Red Hat’s exams, the pass rate is less then 50% for first-time test takers.”
I wasn’t sure on which side of the 50% I stand. On reaching home I check my email to find the results of the first exam (RHCSA) as follows
Dear A.Jesin:
The results of your EX200 Exam
are reported below.
Passing score for the exam: 210.0
Your score: 211
Result: PASS
Congratulations — you have earned the EX200
Certificate.
I had passed RHCSA by 1 mark !!! The certificate was also attached with the mail.
I thought I did the RHCSA exam well but if I only score 211/300 what would be the situation for RHCE ? I waited for another email from redhat till 11.30PM refreshing my inbox but nothing came. The next day morning I went to check my emailbox right after waking up and I got good no GREAT news. The email read
Dear A.Jesin:
The results of your EX300 Exam
are reported below.
Passing score for the exam: 210.0
Your score: 273
Result: PASS
Congratulations — you have earned the EX300
Certificate.
Wow 273/300 means I’ve scored 91% in RHCE. The prestigious RHCE certificate was also attached
RHCE exam tips
What is the whole point of writing an article if I can’t say something informative so here are some tips from a RHCE (that’s me)
- Be thorough with each and every one of the RHCSA objectives and RHCE objectives specified in redhat’s official website
- Be an expert with “iptables” commands don’t expect to configure it through the GUI or TUI
- While preforming the RHCE exam reboot your system after configuring each service to check whether firewall rules are persistent
- After configuring firewall rules for each service check whether you’re able to access the previously configured services THROUGH THE NETWORK
- Never spend more than 15 minutes configuring anything just skip it and come back later after you’re done with the other questions
- If any installation or disk operation takes time switch over to another terminal and continue with the other questions
- Most importantly when you practice on your computer first run “yum remove man” to remove all man pages else you’ll get addicted to it and you may want to do the same during the examination
Before closing this article I’d like to express my heartiest thanks to the following websites/blogs for providing valuable and priceless content
My best wishes to all people out there who are planning to take up the RHCE exam. 🙂
Is there a GUI in the RHCSA/RHCE exam ?
A lot of people are googling around this question so here I am to answer it. YES the GUI has also been installed, you can opt for the command-line method or the GUI method for completing tasks.
Congratulations and thanks for the detailed post.
If it doesn’t come under NDA< will you be able to share many questions(or configuration tasks) will be there for RHCSA and RHCE exams and do they all carry equal weightage(marks)? Will there be any mandatory questions which must be done right in order to pass the exam?
Also, are you stopping with RHCE or are you planning to pursue other Specialist RedHat ceritifications?
Good Luck & Thanks again.
Yes of course if there was no NDA everyone would be able to share the questions and there would be no secrecy (which is the reason why the NDA exists)
And redhat doesn’t reveal any information about the marking scheme of individual questions and all questions are mandatory but all of them don’t have to be done right to pass the exam. I telling this from my experience because I completely omitted a question in RHCE and still managed to get 273/300.
I’ve heard from people that if you perform a question incorrectly again and again, even if you finally get it right you won’t get full marks for it. I don’t know how far its true.
As for your last question. No I’m not stopping with RHCE, I plan to do RHCVA but not in the near future atleast after 6 months.
Thanks for your comments
Just a couple of questions, if the NDA permits:
– can you use man pages ?
– if you use man pages, does this count against you ?
– yum package manager works? (to install packages, etc)
Thank you
I’m not sure about man pages, but a faculty (not examiner) said if you look at the man pages for a command the question relating to that command will be devalued. It might be true because I viewed the “–help” for a couple of commands in RHCSA, even though I completed all questions I scored only 211/300 it MIGHT be because of this but I’m not too sure. Its always better if you don’t depend on the man pages.
As for yum yes it will and it should work and its a part of the exam
I used man pages and -help and earned full mark 300 , you can use them without any problem.
This. I did likewise, back in 2011 for RHEL6.
Internet access is not available, but any and all documentation that comes as part of the RHEL distribution is fair game, including –help, the man-pages and httpd-manual packages. Of course, you don’t want to be spending loads of time trawling the docs, but it’s available if you can’t quite remember the option / syntax and there were no penalties for using them.
(I also scored 300 for RHCSA and RHCE.)
I’m now preparing for RHEL7 RHCE, and the biggest fear? Systemd.
Did a little digging and found that:
Format of the RHCE Exam: The RHCE exam is a hands-on, practical exam that lasts 2.0 hours. Internet access is not provided during the exam. Outside materials are not permitted. Documentation that ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available during the exam. Red Hat reserves the right to make changes to format, including timing and the policies above.
source: http://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/objectives/
so man pages, –help should be allowed without being devalued.
That is great news Catalin. I would definitely utilize man pages and –help in the Red Hat exams I’ll be performing in the future. 🙂
Thanks for the info.
Sorry Jesin, I checked my comment again and realized I missed a word “how” in my first question which gave wrong meaning to it. I did not mean to ask you to reveal the actual questions, which I know you cannot.
I meant to ask, if NDA does not apply, will you be able to tell us how many questions will be there in the exam and how many we need to get right to pass the exam. I hope I put my question right this time 🙂
Thanks for your response. Good luck in your pursuit of other exams.
I can’t reveal the number of questions but all of them were mandatory. I don’t know what is the minimum number of questions to be performed to pass, the pass percentage is 70% (210/300).
But I can tell you this, if you’re well prepared you’d be able to finish all questions in 60% of the allotted time 😉
So you only studied for 2 weeks? Did you had previous experience with RHEL based systems?
I did not study from scratch during those two weeks I only prepared for the exam. Yes I had previous experience with RHEL. I signed up for a course on RHEL in a computer training institute months ago, I decided to attend the RHCE exam after my college exams were over, during those two weeks I prepared for the exam by solving all RHCSA and RHCE objectives.
Congrats! They don’t send “paper” certificates any more?
Thanks Russell! I’ve never heard about RedHat giving paper certificates. In fact you don’t need a certificate at all, just by providing your certificate number anyone can verify the certificate at https://www.redhat.com/wapps/training/certification/verify.html
Self study will be the hardest part since you will go deeper in every topic. But when you attend the RH300 training 99 percent of the topic will be used in the exam. of course 1% remaining is the skill you’ve earned in using Linux in general. Exam scenario would be your challenge(i mean not the actual question but how REDHAT performs the testing).
Dear friend. Here in Ecuador, Latin America, the Red Hat partner told me that I will need to wait for some other three people interested in take the exam (EX100 or EX200) for me to be able to take it. Could you confirm this. Is there a minimum for the exam to be taken??
Thank you very much!!!
According to Red Hat there is no minimum number of candidates. It seems the exam center doesn’t want to conduct an exam for just one candidate. You can wait or take up the exam in another center.
First, Congratulation to you to pass the RHCSA/RHCE exam. I am from in China, and I want to take this exam, too. But I didnot how to enroll for it, is there have any related manual about it ?
Thanks …..
Congratulations on this achievement. I enjoyed reading how you kept refreshing your mailbox, waiting for the RHCE result to come through.
I passed the RHCSA exam a couple of weeks ago and will be taking the RHCE in a little over a week’s time. Is the RHCE much harder than the RHCSA? I don’t like it being 30 minutes shorter! Also, which topic did you find the hardest, and which did you find the easiest? Personally, ACLs and SELinux were my biggest problems.
Thanks for the write-up.
Hi Bicko congratulations on passing RHCSA. Don’t worry about RHCE its much much easier than RHCSA because it mainly focuses on network services, so everything goes in the same manner like installing the service, editing its configuration files, starting it and setting the correct firewall rules. Just be careful with the firewall rules, make sure one rule doesn’t affect another one.
The toughest topic was NFS, I configured it perfectly but couldn’t make it work through the firewall. Everything else was easy which is why I got 273/300 in RHCE. Is ACL difficult for you ? OK I’ll write an article about ACL:to make things simpler. As for SELinux, its mainly file contexts which might get into your way while configuring something, to get it done correctly just see what context a correctly working file has, example if a file in your Apache DocumentRoot shows a 403 error take a look at the file context of a properly displaying file using the “ls -Z” command then apply the same context to that file also.
And all the best for your RHCE exam.
Hi, thanks for your quick reply – I really appreciate it. I hope you are correct about RHCE being much easier than RHCSA! It sounds like I’d better go and set up some NFS servers and try to access them through a firewall. Regarding you writing an article about ACLs; thank you, but I think that’s a done deal now. I learned enough to pass the RHCSA and I’m thinking that subjects tested on the RHCSA exam ought not to be tested on RHCE also – is that a fair assumption?
Thanks.
Hi Bicko, yes you’re right RHCSA and RHCE do NOT have any similar questions. You can confirm this by verifying the RHCSA objectives and RHCE objectives.
Hi Jesin
Can we schdule RHCSA and RHCE exams in different days(may be 30-60days) ?
Thanks,
Chaitu
Hi Chaitanya,
Yes you can do it because both are separate certifications. Once you complete RHCSA you’ll receive a certificate for it, later on when you complete RHCE you’ll get a certificate for that too. You can see separate certificates for each in this article.
Take note that it isn’t mandatory to do both I know people who just stop with their RHCSA. But RHCSA is a prerequisite for RHCE so if you complete the latter first you won’t get a certificate till you finish the former.
All the best for your exam!!!
Hi, here’s an update for you…. I failed my RHCE, however I booked another exam for the following week and passed. My problem was the speed that you have to work in the exam. I like to test things fully and extensively before moving on to the next step but, with only two hours allowed, this just isn’t possible. I spent the week between the exams configuring services against the clock, to make sure I could do things quickly. I finished the exam with twenty minutes to spare, so I’d definitely improved my speed!
Hi Jason,
First of all my Heartiest Congratulations of being certified. Jason, how much time Redhat takes to provide the exam results? and is there any expiration date of the RHCE certification? like CCNA has 3 yrs. of validation.
Hi Sandy,
Usually you will get your results in less than 3 business days and even Red Hat certification holds good for 3 years.
hi jesin congratulation
This is shaleen kaushik i want some information how to apply for red hat certificate(RHCSA) in india ,how many attempts are there how to prepare for that exam at home
Hi Shaleen,
Thanks!
To apply for the exam visit the link http://www.apac.redhat.com/training/india/schedule.php and choose an exam center convenient for you.
Then it is best to visit that center and schedule the exam.
As for the number of attempts it depends on exam voucher offers available at that time. When I took the RHCE exam I was given two attempts only for RHCSA.
can i use
Hi Rohit,
Yes you can use all those commands.
In the exam you’ll be using the actual RHEL OS in a Virtual Machine so all commands will work (if installed)
You can edit the config file by hand as well and then save it directly if there are any fears of lacking persistence.
/etc/sysconfig/iptables-config
You can also use system-config-firewall to configure the firewall. Also “If application of the firewall rules from /etc/sysconfig/iptables fails, the fallback file is applied if it exists. The fallback file is named /etc/sysconfig/iptables.fallback.” In redhat 6.5 (https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Security_Guide/sect-Security_Guide-Firewalls-Basic_Firewall_Configuration.html)
It could be that your instructor told you about this (using man) so as for you to really memorize the use of commands. Maybe if you didn’t use the –help you could’ve scored higher than 211 (whew!! you almost blew it!). CONGRATS!!!!
When you took the exams, all of them was taken in one day? You said after an hour passed, you guys were discussing how to crack the next RHCE exam. I think this is not allowed anymore since you have to pass the RHCSA first before you can take the next for RHCE.
You took two exams in one day? Only a matter of one hour gap? As far as I know you cannot take RHCE until you pass the RHCSA.
Hi Jon,
Yeah could be.
Thanks! I don’t think so, the RHCE exam objectives say
Documentation that ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available during the exam.
so the low marks could be because I accidentally formatted a partition.
You can take the RHCE exam before passing RHCSA but you’ll get the RHCE certificate only after clearing RHCSA.
Hey first of all well done. How long were you using linux before you took the exam and would you say you are some sort of computer whizz kid or just an average computer literate non geek 🙂 In what country did you take the exam I am thinking of going to study with Koenig in Shimla 🙂
Thanks!
I’m was new to the Linux command-line at that time. Earlier I’ve used only Linux GUI for very basic desktop stuff.
I would say I’m something in the middle (intermediate). After seeing so many experts on plenty of online forums, saying that I’m a “computer whizz” is too much.
At the same time I’m not any average computer literate (as you may see from this blog 😉 ).
I took it in Chennai, India because that is where I live.
Hello there,
Thank you for sharing your story. It made me feel good about myself.
I just finished my exams yesterday. I think i did well..
Cheers,
Hany
Hi first of all thanks a lot for your valuable information but I need one information from you. when i can give rhcsa / rhce exam is there any fixed date is there, per year how many times they will conduct exam. I am worried about my exam, in some website its mentioned date is 26 nov , i am not ready right now, so plz provide the info about exam dates.
Hello Rahul,
I don’t know much about the dates but I think they are decided by each exam center. Instead of searching the internet for exam dates search for exam centers in your city.
Call or visit them and enquire about the dates.
All the best for your exam!
Thanks for the reply jesin. Thanks a lot.
Hi jesin, thank you for sharing these valuable information. I am also very much interested and planning to do RHSE.
All the best Bhaskar!!!
Do you know how to schedule exams like rhcss rhcds in chennai?
You have to visit an exam center. The center I took the exam is Advantage Pro in Nungambakkam, Chennai.
Find more details on their website http://www.vectratech.in/
what is preparation required the RHSA & RHCE exam
plz help me
Hi Jesin,
Last Month I cleared RHCSA with 100% and I’m going to take RHCE in next month. I have finished my Exam in 1 hr 20 min. I’ll suggest everyone that if you practice every objective the Exam is going to be easy. But if you start practicing in the Exam you are going to do a big mess !!! For any further assistance on RHCSA mail me at asramateja at gmail dot com … I’m wondering is the 2 Hr time sufficient ( at least OK ) for RHCE ? Can you give your personal mail ID so that i can ask few doubts regarding the Exam ?
Hi Ram,
Yes the 2 hours time is very much sufficient if you don’t think too much.
You can get in touch with me using the contact form on this site.
All the best for your exam!
Hi Jesin,
I have Taken up RHCE and ended up with scoring 208 marks, I would like to know where i am going wrong in below aspects.
I was able to get all the outputs in virtual machine and also tested HTTP in Physical machine successfully.
My question is should I use iptables for all the server ports to allow or deny access, Because i used iptables only for FTP and SSH, for NFS and Samba i used respective configuration files to allow access to said domain, Configuring SMTP server also worked for me but dint used iptables.
Need clarification on using host.allow and host.deny .
Regards,
Karthik.k
Hi Karthik,
You must be able to access all the configured network services from the physical machine (after all they are network services so they should be available on the network).
Stick with iptables for access control, the host.allow/host.deny file works based on the daemon whereas iptables firewall works at the kernel level. Network traffic passes the iptables firewall first. So if you don’t allow access to a port on iptables traffic will be dropped at the iptables level itself.
All the best for the next attempt! 🙂
Hello Jesin,
Thanks for you reply and suggestion.
Regards,
Karthik.k
Do you need any training Id to schedule an exam with RH. I mean do you have to compulsorily go through training in a authorized RH center to earn RHCSA & RHCE or can i do my preparation at home and only pay for the exam vouchers please solve my doubt?
Hi Kiran,
All you need to register for a RHCSA + RHCE exam is your government issued photo ID.
You can prepare through any means.
Thanks mate 🙂
Hi all,
Regarding RHCSA, I have attempted all the questions and mostly all the answers are correct, in between the exam I have upgraded the kernel and booted with new kernel successfully. But on the last question I made mistake accidentally deleted one partition the kernel went in to panic that is grub mode.
Can you tell me is there any possibility to pass exam?
One more question , how many attempts we can try until pass the exam both RHCSA and RHCE.
Hi Jesin..
Could u please confirm me what if I use only tcp wrapper or other configuration files like main.cf in samba and all to block and allow hosts and skip iptables??? Is that count or do I have to master in ip tables?? RHCE is not about security I guess!! RedHat got another cert for that!
Hi Madhurima,
I do not know if the exam is evaluated based on the commands entered or by checking if a network service is accessible. IPTables is a part of the RHCE exam objectives so it is better to learn it.
A system administrator (Windows, Linux or any other OS) is expected to know how a firewall works and how to configure it so it is highly recommended to know iptables.
Hi Buddy,
Thanks for sharing ur experience 🙂
I have some queriesas I am preparig for RHCE Exam.Hope u vl help in resolving them.
1:one main system and one virtual system will be there on which i will have to operate.right or wrong?
2:what will be the firewall and SELinux status on those systems??
Regards,
Prabodh
Hi
1. You have to operate Virtual Machine VM not physical machine.
2. Selinux should be either in permissive/enforcing. It depends on the instructions and qsns. Should not be disabled.Firewall rules should be flushed by you before the start of the exam and you should write your own rules depending on the qsns..
Hai,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have some queries regarding RHCSA/RHCE. Can i write only RHCSA exam without writting RHCE yet??
Hi Haritha,
Yes you can, you’ll receive a RHCSA certificate if you pass it. Then you can take up RHCE before RHCSA expires (within 3 years).
Hello,
I took RHCE exam after preparing for 6 months and failed with score zero, yes zero. I did my exam very well and I just missed only one question and I’m very sure that other than one question , I got the right o/p for rest of the question, as I tested each and every o/p from vm and physical machine. One big thing I missed to check was by rebooting the vm. I did not had time to check by rebooting the VM. And I believe something got screwed because of that system did not come up after reboot.
After getting the result I tried with all the questions I remember from rhce exam at home lab and for none of the questions/scenario , system start-up was not screwed up. Not able to recreate the same scenario.
I will be re-taking the exam in next available slot and definitely this time I will be practicing each and every config by rebooting and not sure If I will be able to recreate the same scenario during my practice like screwing up system-start-up.
I may not be able to discuss any specific questions and answers here. What I’m loking for is which services or commands could have screwed up the start-up of my exam vm. I’m looking for answers like – fdisk /dd / mount /fdisk/iscsi/iptables/selinux.
Is there any other non-technical reason this would have happen ?
Do you think the non RHCE questions , like the questions which we fill before the exam starts ?
I was working till the moment 00:00 Mins left , Can this be a problem ?
Thanks in Advance.
Thanks,
rohit
I have Taken up RHCE and ended up with scoring 208 marks, I would like to know where i am going wrong in below aspects. i used this command also
iptables -F
service iptables save
service iptables restart
(chkconfig iptables on) this commmand not confirm that i use or not
is it posible i am going wrong in host-name configuration
my mistake in configuring host-name or ip tables
Firewall should be disabled or not ? in RHCE exam.
When you finish the exam the firewall should be enabled and allowing access to whatever is required.
Thank you for sharing such a valuable info.
hi Jesin,
First of all congratulations passing both exams. May i know what book you used for studying? i just bought Asghar Ghori’s ” Red Hat Certified System Administrator – Training Guide and a Quick Deskside Reference” . I’m not sure if the book is enough for study for the exams.
Hi Darrell,
Thanks! I used Michael Jang’s “RHCSA/ RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification: Exams (Ex200 & Ex300)”. I think you’re aware that RHEL7 exams are out and the syllabus bas also changed.
All the best!
Hello Jasin,
Congratulations for you to pass RHCE/RHCSA. I have some question which I think you are right person to answer:
1. I am new in linux field and I want to learn it more better as I am Build & Release Engineer and work on linux environment and want to do linux certification.
2. I am totally dont know in which direction I have to go and which is the first certification I have to do.
3. from where I would get the study material either online or I have to purchase(but what).
4. what is the procedure and fees for the certification.
5. Bottomline : from where I would start.
Please help me and take me out from this confusion mud.
Thanks in Advance.
Hi Rohit,
Thanks! All Red Hat exams have moved to version 7 OS with a new syllabus. So I suggest contacting the nearest Red Hat Training partner for the exact details.
Hi Jesin,
Before start RHCE exam do we need to execute below commands ?
Just I have doubt on service iptables stop to execute before start exam
#iptables -F
#service iptables save
#service iptables stop
#service iptables restart
#Reboot
If you suggest it would be help me .
I just failed my RHCE and am at a bit of a loss on where and why.
Scored 195/300. I actually expected to not get 100% and have a couple of ideas where I could have lost my marks, but actually am really shocked that I got 35% incorrect. Before anyone says, I Have been studying for about 18 months and had multiple books and use CentOS as my main OS 90% of the time.
Really kinda bummed and actually pissed at RH that they dont at least give you an arbitrary score on sections of the exam – eg. proficient at iptablesfirewall access, poor on vitual hosts or something. Seems unfair that you can be so confident yet so far and no clue where. Fuck those guys.
Any ideas from other failure-ees?
Which version did you take? RHEL 6 or 7?
Did you recheck all the services after a reboot?
Hi,
I will appear only RHCSA exam next week . Can I disable the firewall for this exam ?
Thanks.
with regards,
Tarun
Hi Tarun,
Which version of RHEL is it? 6 or 7?
It is version 6.
Yes you can disable firewall on RHCSA (RHEL 6) and use host.allow and host.deny files.
Hey Jesin,
Thanks for sharing your experience 🙂 . I am planning to give RHCSA exam . I have some questions :
Please reply asap 🙂
Hi Shunbhangi,
Question #2 has a lot of variables in it. So I’ll be answering the rest of the questions.
I don’t see much resources on version 7 and Red Hat hasn’t retired version 6. So it is safe to take up RHEL 6.
RHCSA is valid for 3 years from the date of passing. So you can take RHCE within this 3 years gap.
This is a very good book that covers each objective of RHCSA and RHCE. If you’re not confident with self-learning purchase this book and join a good training center.
All the best!
Hey Jesin,
Thanks alot for answering my questions 🙂
It would be very useful if you could please give me a little overview about the scope after doing these cert?
If I self study covering all the topics in the book you mentioned, will it be enough to clear RHCSA/ RHCE ?
Hello Shubhangi,
To get accurate details search for keywords like linux, rhcsa and rhce on online job portals. That is where you can get a direct outlook.
A lot of practice is also required. Install RHEL on VMware or Virtualbox and try out the exercises in the book.
Hey Jesin,
I am writing RHCSA exam at the end of October 2014. Unfortunately the RHEL 6 is no longer an option for me 🙁
What would your suggestions be in preparing for the RHCSA 7 exam, especially with virtually not resources available.
Any input will be so much appreciated.
A very desperate, Thando Isaacs…
Hi Thando,
I would suggest enrolling with a RedHat authorized training center. The following link has a list of training partners:
http://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/locations-facilities
Hi Jesin,
First I really appreciate you to answer people’s question since 2011.
I think I am the last who will take RHCSA 6 exactly 2 days before stopping RHCSA 6. I have couple question about exam :
as far as I know exam time is around 2.5 hours. What would you suggest/recommend me about during the exam?
Honestly, I had good study from couple sources and I am working with RHEL around 4 years but I don’t have any idea about exam and exam environment.
Thank you Jesin,
Moh
Hello Moh,
Sorry for the delayed reply.
You are given a virtual machine with root access running RHEL. The host (physical system) contains questions, you can also access the command line and web browser on this host to test network services configured in the VM.
Even if yocu’ve been working with Linux the chance of working with every feature present in EX200’s objectives is very slim.
There is a book named “Rhcsa/Rhce Practice Exam (Ex200 & Ex300)” by Michael Jang which includes a DVD. You may want to try that. ISBN: 9781259029479
Thanks for your answer Jesin, You have mentioned to the VM. What kind of questions are related to the VM (I should do on VM)?
That means I should “Only” work on VM? or some task should be done on host machine.
Actually, I have Michael Jang’s book and that is very helpful to me. I am familiar with RHCSA objectives byt I am little worry about exam !!!
Thank you,
Moh
All requirements must be worked out in the VM only. Use the host to check if the firewall was configured properly to all/deny specific network services.
Hello,
recently i have given RHCE and ended up with high hope to pass but I FAILED !! so I need some clarification where did i do wrong :
1. There are questions of SSH and FTP blocking and allow. What my instructor told is to use commands like this :
iptables -I INPUT -s 192.168.1.1/24 -p tcp –dport 22 -j REJECT (for allowing SSH only form my domain)
iptables -I INPUT -s 192.168.0.0/24 -p tcp –dport 21 -j REJECT(For blocking FTP on 192.168.0.0 mynet133.net domain)
while surfing in internet after i failed, I have seen many places where this questions were solved by /etc/host.allow and /etc/host.deny.
So my question is which one is correct ?
also, do i need to use iptables -F in the beginning of exam?
Thanks
ASHZ
Hi again Jesin,
I have big concern about my RHCSA exam in 3 next week. I really apreciate if you tell me about below issues:
When they ask me about create a new VM and install new RHEL on that (for example by Kickstart) how they give me the RHEL source : DVD, FTP or …
If they give me a FTP address, is that possible I put FTP address in KVM-management wizard in during creating the new VM or I should first boot my VM with DVD then in boot install menu type [Tab] and put the address like ks=ftp://1.1.1.1/ks.cfg ???
Plesae help me in this way. I don’t have any Idea about what should I do for that.
Thank again,
Mohammad
Hi Rohit, I also took the RHCSA exam today and got a 0. All questions were answered. As i completed each task on the system, I checked off the radio button for each answer and went on the next question. I completed within the time alloted I was confident I’d walk away with 100% or somewhere near. Even the freebies were answered.
From reading the blog, rebooting the one thing i did not do after completing the exam. Can anyone confirm ?
I will be retaking making sure that I reboot the darn VM.
Thanks in advanced.
JKB
Can you copy and paste in the VM for RHCE RHEL 6? Can you ssh to VM with root login from physical machine?
You can SSH to the VM using root login. I’m not sure if you can paste in the VM using its console. But if you SSH from the physical machine you’ll be able to copy paste.
Thanks a lot for your response! I was able to use copy & paste in the exam VM console.
I passed! I self-studied using Michael Jang’s RHEL 6 Cert Guide & Practice Exams along with various Internet resources and lots of practice, practice, practice, practice, practice! Oh, did I mention practice?;)
Hi. Regarding the issue of using man pages, I took my RHCSA yesterday and used the man pages a pretty good bit. I scored 300 – that’s right 300, I kid you not! (I was pretty surprised myself!) So I think the rumor that using the man pages reduces your score must be just that – a rumor. I suspect that the scoring is done by a script that simply boots the machine and checks everything out to make sure it’s all done, and that it doesn’t look at your history or anything. I don’t really think they care how you get there, as long as you “get there”.
I’ve used this study guide to prepare for RHCE and passed on my first try: https://www.lisenet.com/rhce/
It took me a fair amount of time to learn topics, not to mention setting up a home lab etc. The exam isn’t hard but rather challenging, there are a couple of gotchas but in summary it’s not complicated if you practiced each topic.