Towards getting Linux Expertise – Passed LPIC1 Exam 102 last week

As I said earlier in my previous post, I prepared for a month for the LPIC1 Exam 102. I passed the exam last Monday with “comparatively” higher score than the previous Exam 101. I was really happy about it because I really prepared well this time... I don't want to fail such an entry level exam like this. Now, I am LPIC1 certified. I am happy that I am able to get the LPIC1 certification now. I checked the LPI web site about my certification, they confirmed it the next day on the web site that I am LPIC1 certified now.


Apart from the reason that I prepared well for this Exam, one another reason I think is the exam center is really good this time. They had this 19” flat screen monitor and it didn't itch my eyes like it did last time. Another reason is probably I slept very well before the exam day. Also, I reached the exam center 15 mins early and had been asked to wait for around 20 mins. I really took that time to relax ( I didn't touch my notes at that time).


More about the exam, I prepared from the book “LPI LINUX Certification in a nutshell” - 2nd Edition. This book is a valuable resource for the preparation. Along with this book, I used all the tutorials listed on the IBM Developerworks website. Also, one more book is from Alan McKinnon and Michel Bisson. You can do a quick search on google with the author names, you will get a pdf link. Also, I borrowed a book called “Linux for Dummies” and found interesting to read about some fundamental stuff described on that book.


There are totally 9 topics for the exam 102:


Kernel
Boot, Initialization, shutdown and runlevels
Printing
Documentation
Shells, Scripting, Programming and Compiling
Administrative tasks
Networking fundamentals
Networking Services
Security.


Please note the the LPI Exams Objectives are going to Change after April 2009, so please refer the LPI web site LPI.ORG for latest objectives if you read this after April 2009.


I have totally two laptops setup in my home. I installed Ubuntu 8.10, Fedora 10 and Windows XP in one of the laptop for the exam preparation. The other laptop runs Windows Vista. I need to get some other Linux flavor running on this Vista laptop soon.


I prepared Samba, Apache, Sendmail and DNS topics very well. Also I reviewed the complete Network fundamentals very well. Items like UDP, TCP, ICMP and IP are important from the exam perspective.


Also, iptables is important as well. If you are good with bash shell along with networking, it will be very easier to pass the exam.


Now, time to prepare for the Exam 201. I will write more about the preparation in coming week. Until then.


Vijay Chinnasamy