Handle With Linux

The LPI certification is a great way to show you have Linux system administration knowledge. Especially when you don't haven working experience a certification is a valid tool to show you do have special knowledge about the operating system. The problem is the LPI didn't create the certification for people without experience. As a matter of fact, the exam is actually aimed at finding experienced administrators. That's why they have a lot of questions about stuff you don't encounter all the time, like little used options for command line arguments.

The good part

The good part is that it is certainly possible to pass the exam without real Linux working experience. And if you do pass it may help you land a Linux job. I have personally experienced this as it got me a job as Linux administrator without previous working experience. I have some tips for people who want to pass the exam.

1. Force yourself to use the command line

If you are in a Linux job already there's no use for this. But if you are a hobbyist user of Linux, like I was, it really helps if you start using the command line tools for everyday tasks instead of the various GUI tools available. This will help you learn in a pleasant way the needed commands without repeating them to yourself all the time.

2. Install and use multiple Linux distributions for a while.

The LPIC exam is aimed at multiple distributions and therefore you should be comfortable using different Linux versions. You should know rpm as well as deb based. So try for instance Suse and debian for a while.

3. Practice multiple choice questions

A good part of the questions on the exam are multiple choice and it's common knowledge that it's a skill to be good at answering these. Most often a number of the answers are really bad you should learn to exclude them at first. There are more tips about answering these types of questions which can be helpful, search the internet for tips about answering multiple choice questions.

4. Use multiple resources

In my personal experience there is no really good single source of information for studying for this exam. I used a lot of different books all with their own take on the matter. The IBM study material on developer works was a great resource. But so were a lot of man pages and many books.

5. Study the man pages

Learn how to read the man pages, and study the options for common commands. A lot of questions on the exam are about options for commands. The more you know, the better.

6. Read up on and practice with vi

Knowing vi is one of the things which will probably help you answer some questions as well. Especially uncommon commands like the keyboard movement commands h,j,k,l Practicing and studying the vi tutorial will help you on your way. (it will also come in handy in the rest of your Linux live, by the way)

7. Try to find the free exam opportunities

Many times a LPI exam can be taken for free on a Linux event, trying the exam for free is a great way to test your knowledge with real exam questions. (Or maybe even pass it for free) Upcoming events can be found on the LPI site.

8. Practice exam questions on this site!

I've put up a quiz on the site which has 25 random chosen questions to test your level of knowledge. They are chosen random from a pool of questions. The difficulty level and material covered is that of the LPIC 101 exam. If there's demand I'll put up more questions and other exam levels. Register for free and try your skill level: (don't worry if you don't have enough time to finish, the test will resume where you left of when you come back.) LPIC level 1 exam practice (Also nice to do if you just like to know if you could make it) UPDATE: improved registration captcha, excuse for those of you who couldn't pass it. added the Level 1 second exam (lpic 102): LPIC level 2 exam practice UPDATE: 15 random practice questions about proc available: (more in the future) proc practice test (hard)