On September 4th, 2009, I took the new 3.5 hour, single-section RHCE exam. This was my first time taking the exam, and to be perfectly honest, it was nowhere near as challenging as I thought it would be. While I don’t want to downplay the significance of the RHCE certification or give anyone the false impression that the exam is necessarily easy, I do want to emphasize that contrary to popular belief, it is quite possible to self-study your way to a perfect score. Not only was I able to breeze through the entire list of test objectives, I had time to thoroughly check and double-check all of my work with almost an hour to spare. This meant I was done long before anyone else in the room, including those who took the official Red Hat training courses. So how did I accomplish this feat?
The first thing you should know is that I had already been working professionally with Linux for ~10 years before I began studying for the exam. I doubt that so much experience is really necessary, but because the exam measures actual competency on live systems rather than your ability to memorize or “read between the lines,” I think it’s highly unlikely that someone with little or no working knowledge of Linux could successfully cram for this test. So I’d have to say that experience is an important prerequisite, but I’d also have to say that experience alone is almost certainly not enough. Considering the wide range of subject matter, it’s very likely that you’ll be tested on something you’ve never had to touch before.
In my opinion, the hardest thing about self-studying for the RHCE exam is knowing how much you need to know about each study point in the RHCE Prep Guide. In other words, when it says something like “you need to know basic configuration of x,” it’s hard to know exactly what “basic configuration” means. Although I’ve signed an NDA preventing me from revealing any details about the exam itself, I can tell you that nearly all of my study material came from two places:
The rest of my study material came from search engines. I spent a lot of time comparing other people’s study notes to mine and reading anecdotes about the RHCE exam. While the result of this was usually a temporary blow to my confidence (there are a lot of horror stories out there!), I did find a few blogs and forum posts with some helpful information. Usually it was just an alternative way of doing something, but it was also nice to come across the occasional words of encouragement from a self-studied RHCE. Just knowing that other people had done it gave me a slight confidence boost (as I hope this post does for some of you).
The first thing I did was read Michael Jang’s book cover to cover, just trying to absorb what I considered to be the most important information from each chapter (i.e. concepts rather than commands). This took me a week or two. When I was done, I set up a test environment using VirtualBox. Then I decided it would help to have a condensed, single-page study guide to refer to, so I created a “wikified” version of the RHCE Prep Guide which I called my RHCE “cheat sheet”. For the next few weeks, I went through each study point on the “cheat sheet” and used my study material to test and document everything I thought I might need to know.
I found Michael Jang’s book to be a great study guide (the labs and example problems were a huge help), but I wasn’t completely happy with the amount of detail on some topics, as well as how it tends to follow the Red Hat course outlines rather than just sticking to the RHCE Prep Guide. I also found quite a few typos and just plain incorrect information, so that’s where the Red Hat Deployment Guide came in. While I was working on the RHCE “cheat sheet,” I would usually read the appropriate chapter(s) from Michael Jang’s book first, then I would supplement it with the appropriate chapter(s) from the Red Hat Deployment Guide. If I felt particularly weak in a certain area, I would also peruse the man pages and any HOWTOs I could find online. This was a long, arduous process, but it helped ensure that I wasn’t missing any important details.
For the last couple weeks, I tested myself by putting the “cheat sheet” away, doing a minimal install of CentOS in my test environment, and trying to configure everything I could without referring to any documentation whatsoever. Since the test takes place on a live system, I assumed from the beginning that the man pages would be available, but in order to save time, I wanted to make sure I could do everything off the top of my head. As a result, I ended up memorizing almost everything on the “cheat sheet,” which is probably why I was able to complete the exam so quickly.
Since I didn’t have a study partner, preparing for the troubleshooting section of the exam was a bit of a challenge. I did come across an interesting project called Trouble Maker which directly addresses this problem, but unfortunately, it has not been updated in several years and does not work on recent versions of CentOS. For a while, I actually considered writing my own trouble maker program, but I ultimately decided that this would be too much work. Luckily, I have a few friends who know enough about Linux to make a machine unbootable, so we made a game of it. I would give them my root password and challenge them to do something that would keep me from using my computer, then I would try to fix it as fast as I could.
When it was all said and done, I spent roughly six weeks (studying a few hours each day) to prepare for the RHCE. Considering how easy the exam was for me, I believe that I worked a lot harder than I needed to, but the results were clearly well worth the effort. The best advice I can give to prospective RHCEs is to take your time and practice until you can do everything in the RHCE Prep Guide off the top of your head. If you feel weak in anything, do yourself a favor and postpone the exam.
congrats on your success. I am studying for my Linux+ and want to get my LPIC one too. thanks for sharing your info.
Congratulations on a well-deserved 100%! When you posted a link to your cheat sheet, I knew you’d do just fine. I was in a similar boat (first install of Red Hat was RH 5.2). For anyone debating, the RH300 course is basically a substitution of money for time. You still have to know your stuff, because the course covers so much material in so little time. What it does for you, however, is limit the scope of your studies to what is actually testable material.
Personally, I think I would have got 100% via self-study too, but it would have taken me weeks of study instead of just 5 days. Since my employer paid for the course, it was money well spent ;-)
Congrats again!
Justin
Nice going on the exam – I really liked the RHCE cheat sheet you posted, very nice work, it should come in as an extremely valuable learning resource to anyone that will be taking the exam in the near future. Excellent post Michael :).
Thank you for your sharing. It is very useful and helpful for people who want to study themselves but don’t know how to start.
I took the exam today and just got the results … It’s a PASS !!! OK not a 100% but I’m pretty sure I’m lazier than you ;)
Your post had a lot to do with my achievement as it helped me organizing my own ideas and method of study. When I read it I already had more than half of Michael’s book digested, and your comments and results just helped me to finish the book and more.
Thank You.
Congrats Daniel!
I used ONLY Jang’s book and CentOS and that got me a pass…
But you are right…you need to at LEAST have 3+ years working on Linux systems in the field before attempting to self study.
-C
Congrats Chrish!
I think the amount of experience needed will depend on the individual, but I’m sure we can all agree that what’s important is to actually know how to do things on a live system. The key is to practice and understand rather then memorize!
Congratulations!! Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Congratulations !! Thanks for your help.
I worked many years on Unix from the first version of BSD tektronix machine to Sun Solaris Sparc as C/C++ developer not as an administrator.
Soon I am going to attend the RHCE and I hope the RHCA later, I am quite confuse about how the Red Hat training courses are out the scope of the Linux administrator daily work.
I thought, I would have been trained on how to set up a production box, scripts configuration management,commands/screens snapshots, and documentation.
What parts from Michael Jang Book are weak and need extra help from RH Deployment Guide?
Sorry Mike, I don’t remember the specifics. What really made me nervous was the incorrect information and typos I kept finding. I actually tried everything I read, so for example, when the book said I could restrict access to Dovecot IMAP via tcp_wrappers, I tried it and found that dovecot actually has no support for TCP wrappers. After enough experiences like that, I felt I was being foolish by relying on just one source.
Thanks Mike for the information.
Just dropping by to say thanks for your wonderful cheat sheet. :D
After 2 months of self-study, I passed my RHCE last Friday.
woo0o0h0o0o!!!!
I finished the exam after 2hours and used my remaining time to test(2x) my answers. It was all correct, but I still didn’t get 100 on the RHCE part(I had a feeling that I ace the exam :D). I wonder how they check it. hmmnnn…..
Anyways, its still a PASSED and I’m happy with that.
Any free gifts from RedHat after passing the exam? :D
Thanks again!!!
Congrats Headstrong! I heard that Red Hat gives you some free stuff if you take their classes, but as far as I know, you don’t get anything for passing the test.
Hello Michael …
First of all , Congrats. for the RHCE
I’m interested in Linux specially redhat products , and now I like to have RHCE “after long study ahead of course” , but I’m confused now .. which study material should I study ? which versions ? which curriculum is validated now to study ?
I appreciate your suggestion and help in advance
Thanks …
Hi Harith. That’s kind of a weird question, since the whole point of this post was to outline everything I did to study for the exam. I also linked to the official RHCE pages at redhat.com, which tell you exactly what you need to know for the test and how it’s validated.
Great info Mike,
I am 2 weeks into self study and you provide some very useful info.
Please leave your cheat sheet online for a while ;) Thanks for sharing!
Hi,
It’s very good to know about your experience. I am also preparing for RHCE and would like to get some feedback. I have installed CentOS on virtual machine but not sure how can we practice network installation?
Regards,
well, you can try running two virtual machines.