[olug] Review of SAIR GNU/Linux certification

[Adam Haeder]

Hello OLUGgers...

I know I don't post to the list a whole lot (although I do read it - my
nic should be Lurk), and since I haven't been to a meeting in a long
time (Sunday's don't seem to work well for me) most of you probably
don't even know who I am. I am the sysadmin/netadmin/security
guy/trainer at the AIM Institute (www.aiminstitute.org). I've been doing
Linux since about 1995. Anyway, my company is in the process of beefing
up our training center. We are currently a Regional Academy in Cisco
Networking Academy Program (so we only teach teachers, no competition
with Ascolta who can teach anybody) and we offer MS/MOUS/A+/Net+ to the
general populace. 

We have talked for a long time about doing Linux training since many of
the schools and businesses that we work with have been asking for it. 
I was a little hesitant at first, because of all the different
certifications available, and the desire to not pander to one specific
distribution. My sister-in-law is a saleswoman for New Horizons in KC,
and she told me a few months ago that they would soon be offering Linux
training. She wasn't sure exactly what training, but she said they would
start offering the classes in January or February. This peaked my
interest because I was curious as to which of the many Linux
certifications were going to be offered in a mainstream training center.
It turns out that it's the training offered by the SAIR group
(www.linuxcertification.com). I had heard of them but didn't know a
whole lot about it. I went to their web site and read up on it. They
have a certification track that attempts to cover the 7 biggest linux
distros (Corel, Debian, Caldera, RHAT, Slackware, SuSe, TurboLinux).
They have a 3 tier model, each tier consisting of 4 tests. The tests
are:
Installation and Configuration
System Administration
Networking
Security, Privacy and Ethics

Currently only the first tier is available. If you pass either of the
first 2 tests, you are a Linux Certified Professional (LCP) and if you
pass the first tier (first 4 tests) you are a Linux Certified
Administrator. You can get a feel for what subject material you are
expected to know by looking at the Knowledge Matrix section of their web
site.

I took the online quizzes that they have on their website to get a feel
for what they are doing. I signed up for the first test just to see how
well I would do off the top of my head. This is a review of the tests
that I have taken so far.

All tests are 50 questions. You get an hour and you have to score 74% to
pass (you can miss 13 and still pass).

Overview of Level 1 - Installaion and Configuration Test (3X0-101)

This test was pretty basic. The say on the web site that the first tier
covers the minimal amount you need to know, and this one didn't get too
complicated. Some of the questions were poorly worded and ambiguous. I
found myself asking a few times "I assume that they mean this and
this...". There were also some typos and grammatical errors. Probably
the biggest error I found was the misuse of case in some of the
questions. 2 or 3 of the questions about lilo referred to it as LILO, as
in "You run the command /sbin/LILO". Taken at face value, this command
will not work, because Linux is a case-sensitive OS. I didn't feel they
were intentionally trying to trip me up, but some of the questions could
have been worded better. The had a few questions about the GPL and one
odd one that asked who created SAMBA (options included Bill Gates).

I passed this test and signed up for the Networking test next (the
following week).

Overview of Level 1 - Networking (3X0-103)

This test was quite a bit harder then the first test. Also the questions
were more poorly worded. I got the feeling that English was not the
first language of the author of many of the questions. There were a
number of ambiguous questions and some annoying double-negatives. One
poor question centered around an admin wanting to restrict access to an
apache web server, and what line you'd add to /etc/hosts.deny to make it
happen. Of course, they were assuming that httpd was being launched by
inetd. That kind of quesiton might confuse someone that went through the
standard SAIR training course. A number of the questions were along the
lines of "What option to you pass to netstat to see this?" One of their
questions was flat out wrong. It was a questions about a firewall
scenario, and what ipchains rules were required to meet the scenario
criteria. None of the possible answers even came close. One would have
been if you switched "ACCEPT" and "DENY" in 2 of the lines. 

I passed this test, but did not score as well as I did on the first one.

Overview of Level 1 - System Administration (3X0-102)

I took this test this morning. I was a little nervous for this test,
because if you look at the section in their Knowledge Matrix, it pretty
much runs the gamut of sysadmin topics, from filesystems to NIS to user
administration and accounting. Most of my Linux experience has been web
server/mail server/workstation based, so I'm not as familiar with things
like NIS and low-level user accounting. I spent some time last night
looking over some topics and reading the Filesystem-HOWTO, NIS-HOWTO and
some others. As it turned out, this was the easiest test of the bunch.
Most of the questions were total softballs (what file do you edit to
control init's behavior, for example). They could have made this test a
lot harder, but I guess that is reserved for the higher tiers. Overall,
the questions here were much better, few ambiguities and only a few
annoying double-negatives. Felt like a higher-quality product.

Passed this test easily.

I'm signed up to take the 4th test, Security, Privacy and Ethics next
week. That should be an interesting one. I'll be interested to see what
ethics questions they have.


Anyway, that's my general overview. Like I said, it's nice to see
mainstream training centers offer this training and certification.
Overall, I think the certification is a good one, although I'm looking
forward to the 2nd tier too see how much harder it is then the first. I
purposely didn't study a whole lot for these, wanting to know how well a
small-time linux admin could do just with general knowledge. It reminds
me a little of the first level Cisco test, the CCNA. Not too difficult,
but if you aren't familiar with the subject matter (more so then you'd
get by attending a 5 day training course) it's going to be tough.

Hope this was helpful to some of you. We hope to start offering the
training ourselves in Q1 2001. If you have any other ?s about it, ask
away.

--
Adam Haeder, CCNA, LCP
Technical Coordinator, AIM Institute
adamh at omaha.org

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