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lpic certification courses

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  lpic certification courses mj <lists@merit.unu.edu> - 2018-11-28 10:20 +0100
    Re: lpic certification courses Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2018-11-28 12:20 +0100
      Re: lpic certification courses john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com> - 2018-11-28 12:50 +0100
        Re: lpic certification courses Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2018-11-28 13:40 +0100
          Re: lpic certification courses Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2018-11-28 15:30 +0100
    Re: lpic certification courses Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2018-11-29 03:00 +0100
      Re: lpic certification courses mj <lists@merit.unu.edu> - 2018-12-01 11:50 +0100

#202857 — lpic certification courses

Hi all,

So I decided to LPIC certify myself, and after some googling, I ended up 
doing the ucertify courses, purchased via lpimarketplace.

I started the first (mandatory) LPIC course "Linux Essentials", but 
immediately became a bit frustrated with the ucertify training, and 
would like to ask here for alternative course recommendations, if any.

Reason of my frustration are questions/answers like this:
Q: "Please name the other user interface, besides the command line, 
which requires more system resources".

My (free text) answer: "GUI".

Wrong. No abbreviations. Ok, then the same question came up again, this 
time I answered: "graphical user interface". Wrong again! Correct answer 
being: "Graphical User Interface". :-(

Another example: A question on determining the ip/mac/broadcast of an 
nic, I used the "ip" command. Also wrong, as they preferred "ifconfig".

Ok, so now I have to either spend time learing the commands and spelling 
they prefer to see, or find better online courses.

I guess many have have taken the LPIC examinations... Are their exams as 
strict as ucertify, counting for example capitalisation wrong?

Any tips for other good online lpic prep courses..?

mj

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#202858

mj wrote: 
> So I decided to LPIC certify myself, and after some googling, I ended up
> doing the ucertify courses, purchased via lpimarketplace.

In general, certifications aren't worth much.

Notable exceptions:

- when you have neither formal education nor work experience, a
  certfication is better than nothing. 

- if a particular prospective employer requires it *and* you are likely to
  get the job with the certification

- if your current employer commits to paying for it, either in
  reimbursement or (preferred) in an automatic pay rise

- CCIE (cisco), JNCIE (Juniper), RHCE (Red Hat) are moderately
  respectable in their own right.

I manage systems administrators and network engineers. I've never made a
decision based on a certificate. I weigh the three certs above as being
slightly positive, and all others as being distractions.

When I hire a junior sysadmin, if I can't get relevant employment
experience, I look for an ability to explain their home system(s) and
detail it enthusiastically and clearly. An ability to do minor programming
(shell plus an interpreted language, Python or Perl or Ruby or...) is
a good indicator.

Good luck to you,

-dsr-

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#202859

On 11/28/2018 12:12 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> mj wrote: 
>> So I decided to LPIC certify myself, and after some googling, I ended up
>> doing the ucertify courses, purchased via lpimarketplace.
> 
> In general, certifications aren't worth much.
> 
> Notable exceptions:
> 
> - when you have neither formal education nor work experience, a
>   certfication is better than nothing. 
> 
> - if a particular prospective employer requires it *and* you are likely to
>   get the job with the certification
> 
> - if your current employer commits to paying for it, either in
>   reimbursement or (preferred) in an automatic pay rise
> 
> - CCIE (cisco), JNCIE (Juniper), RHCE (Red Hat) are moderately
>   respectable in their own right.
> 
> I manage systems administrators and network engineers. I've never made a
> decision based on a certificate. I weigh the three certs above as being
> slightly positive, and all others as being distractions.
> 
> When I hire a junior sysadmin, if I can't get relevant employment
> experience, I look for an ability to explain their home system(s) and
> detail it enthusiastically ...
> 

Out of curiosity, what would it take for a home system(s) to be
considered as being sufficient?

-- 
John Doe

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#202863

john doe wrote: 
> On 11/28/2018 12:12 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > 
> > When I hire a junior sysadmin, if I can't get relevant employment
> > experience, I look for an ability to explain their home system(s) and
> > detail it enthusiastically ...
> > 
> 
> Out of curiosity, what would it take for a home system(s) to be
> considered as being sufficient?

It's not what it is*, it's what the person knows about it and can explain,
on the spot, demonstrating their existing depth of knowledge and their
ability to communicate that.

One should be able to sketch a diagram of your house network out to the
ISP; talk about your choices for routing, switching, and firewalling;
discuss hardware choices (presumably on a small budget, so there should
be a keen awareness of price/performance and tradeoffs); explain DNS
and any services run, both internally and externally. What would you
change if you had to do it over? What's the most important change you
would want to make on a small budget? On a large budget?

I expect a junior sysadmin to tackle new projects starting by defining
requirements, researching options, evaluating tradeoffs, and establishing
success criteria. The step from master of your home to servant of a
working group starts with realizing that the job is about handling other
people's needs.

-dsr-

* I can tell you what would be insufficient, though: if everything you
have or do is aimed purely at being an end-user, that's not an indication
that you want to herd systems. Show the hacker spirit.

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#202871

On 11/28/2018 06:35 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> john doe wrote:
>> On 11/28/2018 12:12 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
>>>
>>> When I hire a junior sysadmin, if I can't get relevant employment
>>> experience, I look for an ability to explain their home system(s) and
>>> detail it enthusiastically ...
>>>
>>
>> Out of curiosity, what would it take for a home system(s) to be
>> considered as being sufficient?
> 
> It's not what it is*, it's what the person knows about it and can explain,
> on the spot, demonstrating their existing depth of knowledge and their
> ability to communicate that.
> 
> One should be able to sketch a diagram of your house network out to the
> ISP; talk about your choices for routing, switching, and firewalling;
> discuss hardware choices (presumably on a small budget, so there should
> be a keen awareness of price/performance and tradeoffs); explain DNS
> and any services run, both internally and externally. What would you
> change if you had to do it over? What's the most important change you
> would want to make on a small budget? On a large budget?
> 
> I expect a junior sysadmin to tackle new projects starting by defining
> requirements, researching options, evaluating tradeoffs, and establishing
> success criteria. The step from master of your home to servant of a
> working group starts with realizing that the job is about handling other
> people's needs.
> 
> -dsr-
> 
> * I can tell you what would be insufficient, though: if everything you
> have or do is aimed purely at being an end-user, that's not an indication
> that you want to herd systems. Show the hacker spirit.
> 

I would suggest the applicant think about his impression of such an 
interview. Although I've an analog rather than a digital background, I 
still smile when recalling similar interviews from over 50 years ago.

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#202881

Hello,

On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 09:50:05AM +0100, mj wrote:
> Any tips for other good online lpic prep courses..?

My early dealings with LPI as an organisation put me off of it for
life so I am unable to make any recommendations I'm afraid.
Admittedly that was more than 10 years ago.

As someone who has interviewed people for Linux sysadmin positions,
I can tell you that if you spent an equal amount of your time on
stackoverflow.com / superuser.com / unix.stackexchange.com as you
would taking and studying for LPI courses, and then showed me your
username on those sites, I would learn more about your abilities as
a sysadmin than just seeing an LPI certification on your resume. Or
an RHCE for that matter.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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#202938

Hi!

Thanks everybody for the interesting responses/discussion.

MJ

On 11/29/18 2:51 AM, Andy Smith wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 09:50:05AM +0100, mj wrote:
>> Any tips for other good online lpic prep courses..?
> 
> My early dealings with LPI as an organisation put me off of it for
> life so I am unable to make any recommendations I'm afraid.
> Admittedly that was more than 10 years ago.
> 
> As someone who has interviewed people for Linux sysadmin positions,
> I can tell you that if you spent an equal amount of your time on
> stackoverflow.com / superuser.com / unix.stackexchange.com as you
> would taking and studying for LPI courses, and then showed me your
> username on those sites, I would learn more about your abilities as
> a sysadmin than just seeing an LPI certification on your resume. Or
> an RHCE for that matter.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andy
> 

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