LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell
Posted by Admin on December 2nd, 2009 at 06:08am
Review
Yου mау nοt hаνе heard οf thе Linux Professional Institute (LPI) οr іtѕ professional certifications, bυt thеу′re becoming аn іmрοrtаnt раrt οf proving professional competence іn thе Linux operating system. Thаt aside, LPI Linux Certification іn a Nutshell іѕ a fаntаѕtіс introductory Linux book, well suited tο introducing a curious newcomer tο thе environment аnd bringing аn intermediate user up tο expert status. Thе book іѕ organized around thе LPI’s published standar…
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3 Comments for LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell
1. Yamha | December 2nd, 2009 at 7:43 am
The first thing I want to say about reading this book is : I passed! Certification books serve four purposes: first, they serve as a way to prepare for computerized certification exams. Second, they provide a training plan for learning the objectives in the certification. Third, can a book explain system administration concepts while limiting a readers exposure to difficult, elusive topics until later? Fourth, can a book like this still be useful post-certification?
Part One (covering the 101 test) contained generous amounts of examples for text-processing commands and a really top notch discussion of permissions, ownership, booting and documentation. Helpfully, need to know boxes are scattered throughout the book to indicate how important a topic is on the test. Frequently, the author will point out that although he explained a certain topic in depth, it wont be covered in depth on the test. I really appreciated that, although I found that the actual test covered certain topics (such as X Windows) in much more depth than Dean leads us to believe. One thing, by the way, to remember, is that often the book gives only the 5 or 6 most popular switches for each command. If you learned about these commands only from this book, you might be overlooking some important switches. I found this especially to be true when Dean discussed user management. I consider usermod g and usermod G to be really important commands, but this book didnt even mention them. On the other hand, Dean gave an explanation of regular expressions which was quite adequate for the purposes of this book. Although omitting some switches proved exasperating at times, the simplified view of the commands can be helpful for linux newbies.
Part Two (covering 102 test) covered a lot more ground: Apache, sendmail, nfs, dns, tcp-ip; heck, books have been written on each of those topics. The book covered well these topics in particular: compiling a kernel, troubleshooting tcp-ip and using rpms. I found his discussion of Debian package management to be hard to follow, although that may be because Ive never used it before in real life (but watch out! The test covers this in depth!). The books discussion of network services (nfs, sendmail, apache, samba) was shallow at best, but I doubt anyone would rely on such a book for maintaining a web server, for example. But it provided some of the basics at least. The section on X Window was succinct and helpful. Also, some of the information presented is outdated, at least on Red Hats latest distribution. Red Hat, for example, no longer uses inetd for startup, and some of the directory paths have since changed. These are minor quibbles, and one of the challenge of passing a certification like this is asking yourself: should I be learning things for the exam that are no longer accurate or relevant in current distributions? Certifications test the knowledge available at the time of test creation, when in reality new applications are being added and processes streamlined every day.
The book contains lots of sample multiple choice items, review questions and exercises. The multiple choice items didnt really add much to the book, but I frequently referred to the review questions. (Remember, the LPI exam has fill-in-the-blanks questions). Dont overlook the excellent highlighters index at the back of the book.
Two minor quibbles. First, the cover is not very strong and is bent, torn and curled over. The other is that the LPI exam objectives are not located at the front or back of the book. Rather, the table of objectives for 101 are in the front, and objectives for 102 are in the middle. I referred to this table constantly to see the amount of weight LPI was giving to a particular topic. Also, because the table of contents follow the LPI learning objectives (probably a smart thing), it is often difficult to find documentation about a certain command. For that I might recommend Linux in a Nutshell , 3rd Edition, which serves as a comprehensive index of commands and system utilities. It is excellent. Also, General Linux I Exam Prep (Exam: 101) by Dee Ann LeBlanc (published in 2000), is an extremely helpful book (and available for significantly reduced price used). Although it was one of the first to market and didnt address the LPI objectives explicitly, the exercises and presentation of material are every bit as good as Deans book. Keep in mind also that LPI Linux Certification is not sufficient in and of itself. You will probably end up referring to other books such as Matt Welshs Running Linux, Olaf Kirchs Linux Network Administrator’s Guide or the unbelievably good Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition .
2. Nuala | December 2nd, 2009 at 8:30 am
I’m happy with this book. I’d been running Linux in an academic environment for several years, so I had a bit of a head start before reading this book. I took the first LPI Level 1 exam this afternoon, and passed with about 45 minutes to spare. As a professional AIX and Linux consultant, I was surprised to have acquired new knowledge from reading this book. However, I did encounter a few questions on the exam that weren’t covered in the book, as well as a few tricky (or maybe just ambiguously/poorly written) questions that required multiple rereads. Despite being the first of the lowest level of LPI certification, this exam became surprisingly difficult during the last third of the questions (I don’t think this is an adaptive test). I’ve taken Microsoft, IBM, and Sun certification exams, and this test ranks among the tougher ones. That’s good, in my opinion, because it sorts out the knowledgeable people from, ahem, the others. I strongly advise you to read O’Reilly’s Running Linux in addition to this book before attempting the exam. I hope O’Reilly plans a similar book for LPI Levels 2 and 3.
3. Fairly | December 2nd, 2009 at 9:03 am
This is an excellent book, very comprehensive. Organized by subject matter. The explanations are very clear and easy to understand. The writing style is easy to follow and direct without being too cutsey or annoying. I will say there are a number of shortcomings that will hopefully be fixed in edition 2. 1. Not enough practice problems (there is just 1 practice exam for each one exam) 2. Sometimes they screw up the topics. For instance, there is a whole mess of stuff on shell scripting in the “LPI101″ section; yet the LPI website says that shell scripting is in part 2. 3. There are a few typos.
I will say that after having taken LPI 101, but not 102, and passed, that there are some holes in the book. For instance, (and this is not a real example) the book may tell you about “ls” and “ls -l” and “ls -a” but the test may ask about “ls -c” or “ls –sort=size” or something. So there are some holes in the book! You have to be careful. But OVERALL it’s a good book, if you learn everything in the book you will pass. Just don’t expect that it will give you the keys to the test.
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