RHCSA Exam Mistakes

[Goran-Topic]

Not too sure if this post belongs here, please let me know if I'm in the wrong place.

I recently took the RHCSA and failed in spectacular fashion.

In hindsight, I attribute the reason for my failure to the way would set up my lab while taking a practice test.

I would use 2 VM connected over a network with DHCP enabled and internet access.

I would use online free registers for my container images, instead of practicing subscribing to the RedHat registries.

I would also exclusively practice configuring my repositories from RedHat ISO, instead of a server.

To say the least, I neglected anything that had to do with a network. I hope my post will help someone not make the same mistake.

I was wondering if anybody knew how to construct a better lab environment where I can more effectively practice for my retake. Especially when it comes to repositories and registries.

Thank!

[Goran-Topic · Accepted solution]

EDIT: I took the exam again and passed it, yay ^^

[JS_Learning]

Hi so... how did you solve your issue?

Congratulations by the way, on passing the RHCSA! I also failed the first attempt, as I had some understanding problem with some of the instructions.

For the preparation, I did use the Red Hat University labs, part of the standard learning subscription. It is somehow expensive, yet it gives access to many courses, some exams attempts and I think something like 400 hours of cloud based lab. For the course Rapid Track to RHCSA RH199, the lab is very easy to use and convenient.

In all transparency, I also used some labs from "Linux Academy" (I think it's called Cloud Guru now) in addition to the Red Hat labs. Sometimes it's helpful, in that case for the RHCSA preparation, the Red Hat lab were very adequate.

I suspect making your own lab would be difficult because usually exams objectives are rather vague and its rather easy to miss important exercices to teach you specific concepts...I know some people who sometimes do their own lab, I am not sure in the end if it's worthy in terms of time and learning results.

[Goran-Topic]

Hey @JS_Learning,

Sorry for the tale reply.

I don't think I need to provide and solution because it is a problem in my approach to how I prepared for the exam, not a singular solution.

I didn't take the Red Hat course, although I believe it would have been the best preparation for they exam since they can answer specific question about the the environment you will work in on the test.

Alas, I be poor, so the resources I used where where two books I bought in Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1775062147?tag=29834000-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08171QYYJ?tag=29834000-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

I took some time to go thought all the subjects, and at the end I attempted multiple time doing the practice tests, on the back of the books while timing myself.

My mistake was to assume that the VMs in the test would behave the same way they did when I sent up my environment in my computer. I used VirtualBox and I put the VMs on the same network. It enables DHCP by default and I, naively, practiced using it. This not guaranteed on the exam, so when I could not connect the Virtual Machine to the network I panicked, and from there it all down hill.

I didn't think making your own set up was difficult at all. I encourage you to do it, just don't forget to turn the DHCP off ;)

Best, Goran

[BRIANWALLACE]

Good advice anyway ! Congratulations! Kudos for recognizing the weaknesses and sharing them with the community. I am still studying and practicing. Also trying to deep dive into where Openshift meets Kubernetes :)

[MarcoAurelio]

Congratulations

[CarlosPGomes]

Good morning , i had exam last friday but i fail for something very stupid ,

there was 2 nodes , node 1 and node 2.

i could not enter node 1 , how can we enter node 1 on exam?

they gave me a root password that does not work , and i didnt know the username to enter...

i just manage to enter node2 on exam by reseting root password.

can someone give me a hand on this for this dont happen next time...

[Hlokomelo]

I incurred the same thing of the root password not working until I realised my mistake after more than 30 minutes of thinking that the password was wrong. How did I fix it? I removed the inverted " " commas then boom it worked!

[Goran-Topic]

Hey @CarlosPGomes,

I thinks this is a part of the exam which is hard to prepare for because it involve the environment with the virtual machines with set up that one does not have a precise specification for. Hence it is hard to replicated in you own computer when participating for the exam. Plus many book don't really go over it too much in depth, they just tell you that that there are two VMs (Nodes) and you have access to them.

What I found in the exam is that they are on the same network. Thus they connected to the same router, but they don't know about it. In a normal environment a computer asks the router for the network information and it automatically connect to it (DHCP), but here it is different. You have to tell manually the nodes how to connect to the to the router (network).

Thus if you want to connect from Node 1 to Node 2 through the network, you must:

1.- Configure Node 1 manually with the network details. Make sure it can ping the router and has the router as a gateway.

2.- Configure Node 1 manually with the network details. Make sure it can ping the router and has the router as a gateway.

3.- Try to ping the Node 2 from Node 1, then you should be able to ssh into it, provided the service is enabled in Node 2, of course.

For steps 1 and 2 you have to access the VM 'directly' as if you where physically next to the device, there should be a VM menu with a button that opens up a terminal.

I recommend trying to recreate this set up in your own computer, I used VirtualBox and put the both VM's in the same network with DHCP off.

I hope this helped.

Don't be afraid to try it again and best of luck =D,

Goran

[manuelrrojas]

Fist of all two nodes maybe running KVM on a Centos or Fedora Virtual Machine Manager is enough.

If you are considering for example an RHEL image,you could susbcribe into a developer option, download the image and create an ftp server on Virtual Host and share the packages. if not, use Centos, Alma or Rocky flavors.

Practice creating a repo from scratch is recomended, also create some docker images and made some deployments is a good practice.

Add some virtual free  disk in order to practice some partition setups, (Create, Resize, Delete) LVM, Stratis, activating swaps and  other stuff.

Check how to restore a system (rescue mode, restore root password, fix some boot files)

And write here, is the best know people in the same challenge in the world.