Exam 101 Topics
Exam 101 tests five Linux administration topics, each containing a series of objectives:
- Topic 1.3, GNU and Unix Commands. This is a broad
topic, comprising these objectives:
- Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line. This means understanding the nature of commands, environment variables, history and command editing, and other shell capabilities. This objective will be a challenge for those who haven't used command-line text interfaces (and DOS doesn't count!).
- Process Text Streams Using Text Processing
Filters. The idea of piping data through filters is
fundamental to the "Unix way." This objective includes a long list
of commands used as filters, such as
- Perform Basic File Management. No GUI here -- strictly command line, including wildcards.
- Use Unix Streams, Pipes, and Redirects. All about redirection. Again, this may be unfamiliar to Windows users.
- Create, Monitor, and Kill Processes. This
objective includes a list of relevant commands such as
- Modify Process Execution Priorities. Check out
- Perform Searches of Text Files Making Use of Regular
Expressions. This involves basic regular expressions using
- Topic 2.4, Devices, Linux Filesystems, Filesystem
hierarchy Standard. This Topic details much of the activity
surrounding the filesystem. It has these objectives:
- Create Partitions and Filesystems. This is
essentially the use of
- Maintain the integrity of filesystems. This
objective covers inodes, free space,
- Control Filesystem Mounting and Unmounting.
Contained in this objective is just about everything on mounting,
including the contents and syntax of
- Set and View disk Quotas. This involves
filesystem quotas, using commands such as
- Use File Permissions to Control Access to
Files. This objective covers the mode bits, including
- Manage File Ownership. This one is
straightforward and involves
- Create and Change Hard and Symbolic Links. If
you've never seen links before (maybe because NTFS doesn't support
them) you'll like
- Find System Files and Place Files in the Correct
Location. This is essentially requires that you study the
Standard, and understand commands such as
- Create Partitions and Filesystems. This is essentially the use of
- Topic 2.6, Boot, Initialization, Shutdown, and Run
Levels. As the name implies, this topic covers startup and
shutdown, along with
- Boot the System. This objective requires more than a cursory exposure to the Linux boot procedure. Lilo is covered a little here, as well as messages and kernel module setup.
- Change Runlevels and Shutdown or Reboot the
System. This objective covers everything about
runlevels, including shutdown.
- Topic 1.8, Documentation. This is a general
overview of documentation for Open Source.
- Use and Manage Local System Documentation. Man
pages, man sections, and
/usr/docare covered here.
- Find Linux Documentation on the Internet. Be aware of Linux Documentation Project, et. al.
- Write System Documentation. Open source programmers are encouraged to write docs for their projects. This is a general-purpose objective that essentially proposes the same without getting very specific on methods.
- Provide User Support. This one's a bit vague as an exam objective, but serves to remind us that end users are people, not people's computers.
- Use and Manage Local System Documentation. Man pages, man sections, and
- Topic 2.11, Administrative Tasks. Users, cron,
logs, and backup.
- Manage Users and Group Accounts and Related System Files. Everything pertaining to users except Pluggable Authentication Modules, which is beyond the scope of LPIC-1.
- Tune the User Environment and System Environment
Variables. This involves stuff in
/etc/skel. Note that the exam is
- Configure and Use System Log Files to Meet
Administrative and Security Needs. This covers the
- Automate System Administration Tasks by Scheduling Jobs to Run in the Future. Cron configuration.
- Maintain an Effective Data Backup Strategy.
This objective is sketchy on the details, and is not specific to any
particular tool (such as
dump). It's basically an overview of good backup practice.
Admittedly, that's a lot of information. Even if you're already a Linux admin, there are bound to be items in the objectives that you haven't had to deal with (like quotas, perhaps). More detail on these topics is available from the LPI list of objectives.
LPI's Program Objective Management System
In addition to the list of objectives already cited, the LPI maintains a CGI-based Program Objective Management System (POMS). This system is primarily used during the development phase of exam objectives, but a few additional clues on established objectives may be found there. For example, Topic 1.8 Objective 4 (Objective 1.8.4 in POMS) reads as follows:
Provide technical assistance to users via telephone, e-mail, and personal contact.
You may wonder just how the LPI intendes to test something as personal as user support. If we examine POMS for item 1.8.4 we find this note:
This objective has been considered important and therefore is retained to remind would-be sysadmins; it will be difficult to test.
Based on the comment, be advised that user support is part of the job, but not part of the exam. Other details not mentioned in the summaries can be found in POMS, particularly for exam 102.