Maduranga's posterous

LPI Linux certification - A beginners' review

I just passed the LPI level-1/part-1 examination. One more part to pass to get the certification. I decided to write this entry to give my review about this examination, from a beginner's perspective.
I have been using Ubuntu exclusively for about two years now but I am no expert by any means. I can get around the system but the internals of Linux completely beats me. That was the first reason I wanted to do this certification. I will briefly discuss the materials I used for studying and the types of question I got.

Primary study material:
Linux Certification in a Nutshell - O'Reilly

Secondary study materials:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/lpi/

Practice exams:
http://www.mcmcse.com/forums/exams/index.php
http://www.penguintutor.com/cgi-bin/quiz/index.pl

Study duration:
3 months/ part-time

Points to note:
The primary study material I used is a very popular study resource and rightly so. It gives you a wealth of knowledge, not just to pass the examination but you can actually learn a lot about Linux. The secondary study materials are also very good, sometimes complementing the primary materials. But sadly, the primary study material will not get through the exam easily. I guess this is true for any study material on any certification. But it gives you almost all of the concepts you need to study but it is your responsibility to gather optional knowledge about each topic, command, etc. Please note that this only applies to if you are a Linux beginner. If you are a seasoned Linux user you may find this easy going.  But then again, no matter how much you are used to a Linux distro, there are somethings that you may have never used. So it's very subjective.

Some topics I did not come across in my study materials:
I got some questions which I had no idea about. I'd like to give some pointers so you can study those.

* I only studied about /proc/dma, /proc/ioports, /proc/modules and /proc/interrupts. These four are what you will come across most of the time. I had a different question on /proc about the bootloader. So you need to know a little bit more (not in depth) about other files in /proc.

* I only knew about sending KILL signals. You might also need to know about sending some signal SIG to a process started by a command CMD.

* Learn about copying image files.

* Learn a little bit about "Yum". I had only heard of it before the exam and knew it is used in Fedora. 

* A little bit about runlevels, init, etc.

* UPDATE: After reading the first chapter of the primary study material for the 102 exam contents, I found out that some questions I got in 101 exam are from this part. Will update as I go through the chapters.

There were some more that I heard for the first time in the exam but cannot recall right now. I am not supposed to disclose questions so I will only be giving topics to study if you are relying on the primary study material I used.

This is a great exam which is worthwhile if you are interested about inner workings of Linux.

UPDATE (IMPORTANT): I apologize that I have made a mistake in saying that some 102 exam questions appeared in the 101 exam. It seems I have been studying the objectives prior to the revision. If you are studying materials with the revised objectives you should be fine.