Why am I failing my RHCSA V9 exam?

[Wael_Abdellatif]

 Hello Everyone, 

I have been retaking the EX200V9K (RHCSA) exam and I can't even reach the passing score. 

This is how my exam results looked like, and I do appreciate your thoughts on how to improve:

         OBJECTIVE: SCORE
         Manage basic networking: 100%
         Understand and use essential tools: 56%
         Operate running systems: 33%
         Configure local storage: 50%
         Create and configure file systems: 50%
         Deploy, configure and maintain systems: 88%
         Manage users and groups: 100%
         Manage security: 100%
         Manage containers: 67%

It has been like this for the many times I have retaken the exam. 

Appreciate your suggestions on how to increase the score of every objective.

Thanks,

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

Hello @Wael_Abdellatif !

First of all, I want to commend you for your perseverance and determination in retaking the RHCSA exam. It takes courage to keep trying even when faced with challenges. Your commitment to improving your skills is admirable.

Looking at your results which you have shared ( I consider it your private information and in no way I want to pass any judgments or comment to it ) - I can see that you have done fairly well in most of the objectives. There is hardly 2-3 objectives on which you have to work a little bit. 

keeping the NDA in mind, I can share some of the tips that you can follow to improve the score in those areas :

1. Understand and use essential tools: This is an important objective, as you'll need to be familiar with the essential tools for managing a Linux system taught in RH124 & RH134. I recommend reviewing the documentation for the tools you're not familiar with, and practice the related labs extensively like tar, unzip, targets , List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions and input redirections etc.

2. Operate running systems : Boot systems into different targets manually, identify CPU/memory intensive processes and kill processes , Start, stop, and check the status of network services etc. 

3. Create and configure file systems : Practice the concepts and related lab exercises for Create, mount, unmount, and use vfat, ext4, and xfs file systems, Extend existing logical volumes, Create and configure set-GID directories for collaboration and troubleshooting file permission problems etc.

4. Manage containers : Practice topics like Build a container from a Containerfile, perform basic container management such as running, starting, stopping, and listing running containers, run a service inside a container, configure a container to start automatically as a systemd service, attach persistent storage to a container - in the labs .

Try to do the labs at the end of every chapter ( that has grading ) independently and see what sort of grading is happening - when the grading is all pass and when it is a fail. Work on those scenarios, troubleshoot your errors yourself , try to read the logs for a configuration or a service issue and use man pages wherever necessary. 

**************************************************************************

These all objectives can be found at : https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam?... 

Locate the respective topics and practice till you are confident about them.

Read the instructions carefully and understand the requirements of the question.

Remember not to do any spelling mistakes and the configuration must persist after reboot !

All the best !

[khokha]

@Chetan_Tiwary_  can you please mention these points are which parts of the courses RH124 & RH134 as they differ from one version to another?

what is the difference between local storage & create and configure file system points?

Depoly configure and maintain systems?

        Manage basic networking: 
        Understand and use essential tools: <------
        Operate running systems: <--------
        Configure local storage: 
        Create and configure file systems: <-------
        Deploy, configure and maintain systems: <--------
        Manage users and groups: 
        Manage security: 
        Manage containers: 
        Create simple shell scripts:

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

Hello @khokha !

Creating local storage means creating partitions, creating Swap , creating LVM, mount them and Create & COnfigure file system means managing / creating file system from command line , creating file links etc. 

Depoly configure and maintain systems --> like maintaining services/ daemons , logs , network security , selinux , package management , process management , set the timezone etc. 

Both RH124 and RH134 contains these objectives : check the table of contents in both for reference.

[khokha]

The outlnes mentioned in the courses are specific to each lesson but the ones provided in the exam results i think includes more than one lesson that's why i'm asking as i couldn't determine which lesson or lessons are included within the exam objectives.

If there's anyway to determine the lessons included in each point the in exam resuls please mention as they're completely general and we cannot determine what are our weakness points.

Thanks

[Chetan_Tiwary_]

My suggestion would be to NOT limit your learning to the results outcome which categorises a number of tasks as broader objective heading ( which does not contain only one chapter things - but a range of topics discussed in the course ). For the exam you should learn and understand each and every topic / GE / Lab / notes mentioned in the course to have a wider understanding of concepts as well as have a pratcical skill to perform a real life production tasks.

The learning is not the outcome of exam results but it is the reverse. When you learn and understand each topics mentioned in the course and can confidently handle the things mentioned - the certification is the automatic outcome of it. 

[Travis · Accepted solution]

@khokha -

In addition to @Chetan_Tiwary_ 's reply I would also like to add ... we talk about other types of storage (NFS) which is a network-based filesystem. It is important to know those differences and how everything is configured. 

Local storage typically requires the configuration of partitions and managing filesystems which can include the creation and management of Logical Volumes. The creation of the storage and filesystems go hand-in-hand in those instances as you do PVCreate -> VGCreate -> LVCreate -> mkfs.xfs to basically create the storage. Managing it then is something else such as persistent mounts /etc/fstab and other things.

For NFS, you share that out differently and may just be sharing a directory over the network from an existing filesystem, but you still need to mount it and do other things.

SELinux plays roles in here on filesystems and needs to have consideration (a little more with NFS), but again that can fall into that category and others.

Operation of running systems could be things like systemctl and other commands or firewall-cmd to manage running firewalls. All of these things take practice and unfortunately, some of the categories on how they grade can be very broad and subjective where something might be placed. Some of the things also go hand-in-hand ...

SystemD Services would be using the systemctl command to control boot processes and other system services. However, if you took the course, the RH134 last chapter discusses creating containers and containerized services and even shows how to take those containerized applications and turn them into SystemD services. If there are questions asking you to do that, if could fall into a few of the categories you are being graded on where you may have lost points.

The suggestion I have to you is examine and think back to what you did on the exam. Where did you have issues? Did you finish with plenty of time? Did you take too long looking up man pages or remembering syntax for certain things? Are there ways to improve accuracy and speed (again the difference in fonts and interpreting I (i) l (L) or 1 (one) can all sometimes look alike) so you can copy/paste from exam questions to terminal to prevent typos. If you ran out of time on the exam, look at man pages ahead of time for the problem areas, think of where you can get examples from man pages for copy/paste/tweak and execute.

For example

man nmcli-examples - gives nothing but NetworkManager examples and some of the interesting ones start with Example 8.

man semanage-fcontext - Then type /EXAM as it will take you to the examples section 

man semanage-boolean  or man semanage-port - same as above

Some things also have documentation directly in configuration files ...

vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config and look at the top comments in the file and it has examples of how to set SELinux context for the network port where you copy/paste/tweak and execute.

Be ready and approach the tasks you know you can do before spending lots of time researching during the exam.

The final recommendation for this exam and a few others ... anytime you can make systems non-bootable (messing with Kernel, or in the case of these objectives filesystem) always do the things that could kill your system first and make sure you get them right. If you mess up, the machine can be reset and you start over. If you wait until the end for killing a filesystem, there is little chance to recover from a mistake making the system non-bootable.

Hope this helps!

[Wael_Abdellatif]

Thanks Chetan! 

I have gone through the labs as well as the comprehensive reviews, and made sure to PASS each and every comp review I had. 

However, I'm stuck at 50% in the local storage and filesyetems related topics. Also don't know what's wrong with both "operating running systems" and "essential tools" topics. 

Does it count against my grading that I correct my self during the exam? 

Also, if I have two questions addressing storage topics, do I need to define local storage drives in the first question as "MPR" while I go for "GPT" in the second question? 

Do I need to use as much commands, options and regular expressions as possible? Does it count for higher grades? 

Also for containers, I always get 67% although I did everything the same exact way as I did in the labs. 

I think it would help me more If you tell me what the grading system is looking for.

Thanks again. 

[kaiser · Accepted solution]

I would never judge your skills because in my experince I can tell sometimes redhat exams gets tricky. Even I got confused on the DO180 exam.

I passed RHCSA V9 on may and found no issue. Everything was pretty much clear. Its not allowed discuss redhat exam questions directly, since there is no question's here I want to add something.

- Read the question properly and understand what they want you to do.

- Becareful with the Typo. IE. dont get confused with the 1 and l. 

- As far as I know there are two vms in exam and according to your previous reply It seems like you created a storage with MBR table and then you changed the partition table as GPT. This may clear the existing volumes on the disk. And I guess you have had fstab entries for that. System went into rescue mode after reboot, resulting 50% marks.

- Always reboot after configuring a storage. This will let you know on which storage question you made it wrong.

- Learn to check the manuals. IE. man find

- Leard to read the logs properly. It will help you a lot in the exam.

- Most Important: Read the whole book again, including the Notes on each chapter.

you need to score 210 out of 300. You should focus more on :
         Operate running systems: 33% 
         Configure local storage: 50%
         Create and configure file systems: 50%

- Read more about the mount options for remote storages.

[Wael_Abdellatif]

@kaiser Well, I can definitely take all these points into consideration. 

Regarding the storage part, I believe I haven't been clear enough. I was wondering whether I should demonstrate as much knowledge as possible, even if not expplicitly asked to do. 

For example, I had two storage questions in my last retake and I went for GPT partition scheme in both, so I was asking if I should have configured MPR on one of them just to showcase my knowledge. I was thinking that grading system might be taking such a thing into account.

I can certainly adopt these techniques you advised with. They sound like game changers. 

Thanks Kaiser!