Dear Community,
I am going for the RHCSA EX200 exam, and I need some materials i.e book, video, and guide if you can help me with my course, that will be highly appreciated.
Cheers,
Fareed
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I don’t know what the exam implies. If you’re here to learn Linux, just watch most of Jay’s videos on Linux commands, like grep, awk and stuff.
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Just what he @ThatGuyB said, I agree and watch all the video tutorials that @jay has posted on the YouTube channel and buy his book @jay, it’s very good for you! And finally, just practice, practice, practice! Good luck! 
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I apologize for resurrecting the thread, but Red Hat/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux is not the same as Debian-based distributions. For example, Debian and Ubuntu does not have SELinux installed and the Apache configurations are completely different from other non-Debian-base distributions. I’m in the same boat but for RHCSA 9 and the quality from Sander Van Vugt does not cut it.
For example, in one of the practice exams, the RHCSA 9 book told me to start a rootless container using Podman that is owned by linda (/home/linda) and that the /var/lib/mysql should be bind-mounted to /home/student/mysql, which is owned by the user “student” by default. Even if the permissions have been setup properly, I would get a “permission denied” when trying to start a MySQL container because /home/student is not world-readable and world-executable (o+rx). The book did not tell me to work around that, but I did and that is bad practice.
Another example from the second practice exam is with mounting an NFS share /user with the mountpoint /user automatically in the same server. To put it simply, that’s like executing the following command:
mount localhost:/users /users
So with autofs (dnf install autofs), that would mean I have to do the following:
# mkdir -p /users/{linda,lisa}
# vim /etc/exports
/users *(rw,no_root_squash)
# exportfs -va
# vim /etc/auto.master
/users /etc/auto.users
# vim /etc/auto.users
* -rw localhost:/users
# systemctl enable --now autofs
# ls /users
That /users directory is blank and I do not know why.
At the end of the day, you get what you pay for when studying and getting certified for an RHCSA exam. And now I’ll be looking for another material so I can add my RHCSA certification to my resume.
Should I have started a new thread? Sure, but I thought I should chime in here and let others know that some books have lower quality than others. This is the book that I am referring to:
Ubuntu and OpenSUSE have AppArmor, which by default allow everything, in order to get around the high restrictions of SELinux. Most people either disable SELinux, or put it in permissive mode to only log what the issue is and fix it with a new selinux policy.
Who bind mounts things from /var into /home? That’s insanity!
I was having a conversation with some of my colleagues. This also kinda tells you how reliable certifications are. I told my colleagues if I was the one recruiting, I wouldn’t look at certifications, but at experience and knowledge, maybe learning potential as well.
I love autofs, but the RHEL certification should’ve moved to systemd-mount long ago. What are these guys doing? I use autofs, because my systems don’t have systemd and I’m used to it, but still…
Normally upon an ls the directory gets mounted. Are you sure the exam doesn’t tell you something like “how to export /other/path/to/users as /users, then mount localhost:/users to /users?” Because that would completely change the operation order, it would be something like “bind mount /path/to/users to /users, then edit /etc/exports and add /users as an export.”
I believe you. I personally haven’t paid a dime to learn linux, because the man pages are my friend. When all else fails, a quick web search is all I need to find what I need (because man pages in linux are just not as good as BSD man pages, that also have absolutely fantastic examples, but I digress).
As much as I don’t like copying text from a text book due to copyright, here’s what the instructions said in the practice exam section:
- Create a directory with the name /users and ensure it contains the subdirectories linda and anna. Export this directory by using an NFS server.
- Create users linda and anna and set their home directories to /home/users/linda and /home/users/anna. Make sure that while these users access their home directory, autofs is used to mount the NFS shares /users/linda and /users/anna from the same server
And here’s another one:
…following conditions
â– It runs as a rootless container in the user linda account.
■… host directory /home/student/mysql to the container directory /var/lib/mysql.
â– It automatically starts through a systemd job, where it is not needed for
user linda to log in.
(I wonder if having snippets of text could prevent me from getting myself into trouble… I’m trying to be careful here even for fair use…)
If the texts from the book that I linked above had to be removed, then I’m okay with it. Like I said, I don’t like violating copyright at all.
So, how can I put all my experiences in my resume if Linux certifications do not help me at all?
mkdir /users
mkdir /home/users
groupadd users #unless one already exists, idk
chgrp users /home/users
chgrp users /users
chmod g+rwx /home/users
chmod g+rwx /users
umask 077
mkdir /users/linda
mkdir /users/ana
vim /etc/exports #export each via nfs - anecdote: this is a linux nfs server thing only, in FreeBSD you can only export a FS and you'd have to mount underneath directories instead, just something to be aware of in other OS.
exportfs -var
#then create the autofs nfs automount for each user in /home/users/
ls /users/linda > /dev/null
ls /users/anna > /dev/null
useradd -m -d /home/users/anna -G users anna
useradd -m -d /home/users/linda -G users linda
I think that’s what the 16 and 17 parts meant.
I don’t understand what it meant by host directory to the container directory, unless the directory /home/student/mysql should be mapped inside the container /var/lib/mysql. Is there any reference to /home/student user? I don’t see how that could be done without exposing the student dir to the world and make it world writable. Maybe you could check the mysql container’s ID and change group ownership of /home/student to the ridiculous numbers that containers use, like chgrp 100997 or something like that, then chgrp g+wrx /home/student. Still a ridiculous thing to do, but in production environments, you wouldn’t be working with home users’ folders, but with mountpoints for logical volumes (most things in my experience from seeing other environments just get dumped into /opt/whatever-dir, which has a dedicated LVM mountpoint, with oracle being the only exception, where it gets things like /u01 to /u0n, each with its own lvm mount - personally I used to use the /srv folder, which doesn’t see much use, but is good as a data directory; I also saw /data to be used often, which is smart, but not part of FHS).
That set of commands are way more than what the book asked me to do. I think you are overcomplicating things…
Anyway, I’m not going to derail this thread any further (this thread has ran it’s course already). Maybe I’ll find some other materials that are suitable for studying for RHCSA9 exam.
Thank you for your help.
I sat this a few years back. Here are the list of requirements that may or may not be covered in the exam (therefore you should learn/memorise them all):
You will of course need access to a RHEL machine (or derivative) to practice beforehand.
To prepare, I printed out that requirements list and just went through them one-by-one, ticking them off when I was comfortable having mastered each.
Remember that in the exam situation there is no external advice available (no internet, no mobile phones allowed) and you’re be relying on your prep/memory and man pages.
Also - I highly recommend that you master how to reset the root password from the console.
I also found the tutorials made by a Dutch guy called Sander Van Vugt very helpful, and thorough. Just checked, and it looks like he’s still around: https://www.youtube.com/@Rhatcert
I have purchased an unofficial RHCSA 9 practice exams book from Amazon in Kindle format.
https://www.amazon.com/Unofficial-Certified-System-Administrator-Preparation/dp/B0B4KFSMN5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DLZ507IRC7BW&keywords=rhcsa+9+practice+exams&qid=1692876931&sprefix=rhcsa+9+practice+exams%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1
The practice exams covered a whole lot more questions than the Sander Van Vugt’s study guide, but maybe this might help me pass the RHCSA 9 exam.