exam working environment

[ematav]

I recently realize that I always spent a lot of time preparing my work environment before begining my exam. As an example lastly, my settings for .vimrc did not work like on RHLS training lab servers. So it was a real pain working on yaml files.  Can we dicuss about some tips that can help you gain time as we know that Red Hat exams are all about performance where time and speed are fondamental.

[flozano]

AFAIK the exam environment brings all software at their installation defaults, except when explictly noticed on the exam tasks. So you cannot expect to see any pre-customizations to things such as .vimrc, but you can make any customizations you want. 

It is your choice to spend time configuring your text editor or performing exam tasks. I used to spend some time during my exams installing a few X packages on exam VMs just to be able to run gedit over ssh -X. :-)

You have access to everything that is on RHEL repos and any layered product repo that is part of the exam. You cannot download stuff from the internet, such as a text editor that is not on RHEL.

Beware that such customizations, as they take up disk space and RAM on the exam VMs, may impact your ability to perform some tasks, if the exam VMs are tight on resources. Again it is your choice to perform customizations, if they end up hurting you, you cannot complain.

[Velou03]

Hi

recently I did my first exam spent lots of time to find and login to the server. 

please help, is there any environment setup guid to gothru before appear the exam?

some utility not installed, is there any setup script (lab setup) need to be execute before start to answer.

thanks.

[flozano]

"lab setup" commands are part of courses only, not of exams. Exams assess what you can perform in similar to real world scenarios, where you have to make your decisions and customizations. There's no generic instructions and guides to check before the exam, everything you need is provided as part of the exam instructions and reading them is part of the exam time. You make your decisions on how to make best use of your time.

If you think the exam instructions were not clear enough and could be better worded (or ordered) to help candidates you can provide feedback during the exam or later using https://rhtapps.redhat.com/comments

[Velou03]

Thanks for your response.
in my exam ex280v42k one of the apache utility HTPasswd not installed.
installing HTPasswd id part of openshift exam?
please advise.

Thanks.

[ematav]

I think you're talking about configuring an HTPassword identity provider which is largely developed in the chapter 3 of the course. it's a importtant topic of the course and of the exam I suppose. 

[Velou03]

No, i am not talking about HTPasswd identity provider configuration.

the issue i am talking here is the htpasswd command it self not working. meaning the htpasswd command not found at OS level.

[ematav]

Whatever command or utility you want install, its repo/package can be retrieved using sudo yum whatprovides command. . 

[flozano]

Beware that we cannot discuss specifics of a certificatin exam, it violates the confidentiality agreement we all sign off when we take one and that could lead to us losing all our certifications and becoming forbidden to take Red Hat certification exams again.

That said, the exam environment has access to a private package server that should provide all packages you need to complete the exam. Figuring out if you need to install any package, and which ones, is considered part of the exam.