Audience
This course will be of great benefit to anyone wishing to formalise their Linux knowledge and gain the skills to perform basic installation, operation, and troubleshooting services on Linux workstations and servers. Microsoft professionals seeking to add Linux expertise will also find this course useful. On completing the course you'll be ready to take and pass the LPIC-1 102-500 exam. This is the second of two exams and is included as part of the course, assuming you have already passed the first exam you'll be fully LPIC-1 qualified.
LPIC-1 is the first certification in LPI’s multi-level Linux Professional certification program. LPIC-1 will validate your ability to perform maintenance tasks on the command line, install and configure a computer running Linux and configure basic networking. To become qualified you must pass two exams:
- This course covers the second exam.
- For training for the first exam please see: LPIC-1: Linux Administrator Certification (Part 1 - Exam 101).
- For training for both exams in one package please see: LPIC-1: Linux Administrator Certification Fast-Track Bootcamp (Exams 101 & 102).
Prerequisites
It is strongly recommended that delegates first complete the LPIC-1: Linux Administrator Certification (Part 1 - Exam 101) course.
The two LPIC-1 exams may be completed in any order, but candidates must pass both in order to obtain the LPIC-1 certification.
Duration
5 days. Hands on.
This course is available on site only. Please call for details.
Course Objectives
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is the premier certification body for vendor independent Linux certifications. This course prepares students for the second LPIC-1 exam (Exam 102-500), which may be taken on the fifth day of the course. The exam covers the following topics:
- Shells and Shell Scripting
- Interfaces and Desktops
- Administrative Tasks
- Essential System Services
- Networking Fundamentals
- Security
With the included revision sessions, practice tests and hands-on exercises delegates will be confident sitting the exam.
Course Content
Shells and Shell Scripting
Customize and use the shell environment
Candidates should be able to customize shell environments to meet users' needs. Candidates should be able to modify global and user profiles.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Set environment variables (e.g. PATH) at login or when spawning a new shell
• Write Bash functions for frequently used sequences of commands
• Maintain skeleton directories for new user accounts
• Set command search path with the proper directory
Customize or write simple scripts
Candidates should be able to customize existing scripts, or write simple new Bash scripts.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Use standard sh syntax (loops, tests)
• Use command substitution
• Test return values for success or failure or other information provided by a command
• Execute chained commands
• Perform conditional mailing to the superuser
• Correctly select the script interpreter through the shebang (#!) line
• Manage the location, ownership, execution and suid-rights of scripts
User Interfaces and Desktops
Install and configure X11
Candidates should be able to install and configure X11.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Understanding of the X11 architecture
• Basic understanding and knowledge of the X Window configuration file
• Overwrite specific aspects of Xorg configuration, such as keyboard layout
• Understand the components of desktop environments, such as display managers and window managers
• Manage access to the X server and display applications on remote X servers
• Awareness of Wayland
Graphical Desktops
Candidates should be aware of major Linux desktops. Furthermore, candidates should be aware of protocols used to access remote desktop sessions.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Awareness of major desktop environments
• Awareness of protocols to access remote desktop sessions
Accessibility
Demonstrate knowledge and awareness of accessibility technologies.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Basic knowledge of visual settings and themes
• Basic knowledge of assistive technology
Administrative Tasks
Manage user and group accounts and related system files
Candidates should be able to add, remove, suspend and change user accounts.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Add, modify and remove users and groups
• Manage user/group info in password/group databases
• Create and manage special purpose and limited accounts
Automate system administration tasks by scheduling jobs
Candidates should be able to use cron and systemd timers to run jobs at regular intervals and to use at to run jobs at a specific time.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Manage cron and at jobs
• Configure user access to cron and at services
• Understand systemd timer units
Localisation and internationalisation
Candidates should be able to localize a system in a different language than English. As well, an understanding of why LANG=C is useful when scripting.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Configure locale settings and environment variables
• Configure timezone settings and environment variables
Essential System Services
Maintain system time
Candidates should be able to properly maintain the system time and synchronize the clock via NTP.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Set the system date and time
• Set the hardware clock to the correct time in UTC
• Configure the correct timezone
• Basic NTP configuration using ntpd and chrony
• Knowledge of using the pool.ntp.org service
• Awareness of the ntpq command
System logging
Candidates should be able to configure rsyslog. This objective also includes configuring the logging daemon to send log output to a central log server or accept log output as a central log server. Use of the systemd journal subsystem is covered. Also, awareness of syslog and syslog-ng as alternative logging systems is included.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Basic configuration of rsyslog
• Understanding of standard facilities, priorities and actions
• Query the systemd journal
• Filter systemd journal data by criteria such as date, service or priority
• Configure persistent systemd journal storage and journal size
• Delete old systemd journal data
• Retrieve systemd journal data from a rescue system or file system copy
• Understand interaction of rsyslog with systemd-journald
• Configuration of logrotate
• Awareness of syslog and syslog-ng
Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) basics
Candidates should be aware of the commonly available MTA programs and be able to perform basic forward and alias configuration on a client host. Other configuration files are not covered.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Create e-mail aliases
• Configure e-mail forwarding
• Knowledge of commonly available MTA programs (postfix, sendmail, exim) (no configuration)
Manage printers and printing
Candidates should be able to manage print queues and user print jobs using CUPS and the LPD compatibility interface.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Basic CUPS configuration (for local and remote printers)
• Manage user print queues
• Troubleshoot general printing problems
• Add and remove jobs from configured printer queues
Networking Fundamentals
Fundamentals of internet protocols
Candidates should demonstrate a proper understanding of TCP/IP network fundamentals.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Demonstrate an understanding of network masks and CIDR notation
• Knowledge of the differences between private and public "dotted quad" IP addresses
• Knowledge about common TCP and UDP ports and services (20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 53, 80, 110, 123, 139, 143, 161, 162, 389, 443, 465, 514, 636, 993, 995)
• Knowledge about the differences and major features of UDP, TCP and ICMP
• Knowledge of the major differences between IPv4 and IPv6
• Knowledge of the basic features of IPv6
Persistent network configuration
Candidates should be able to manage the persistent network configuration of a Linux host.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Understand basic TCP/IP host configuration
• Configure ethernet and wi-fi network using NetworkManager
• Awareness of systemd-networkd
Basic network troubleshooting
Candidates should be able to troubleshoot networking issues on client hosts.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Manually configure network interfaces, including viewing and changing the configuration of network interfaces using iproute2
• Manually configure routing, including viewing and changing routing tables and setting the default route using iproute2
• Debug problems associated with the network configuration
• Awareness of legacy net-tools commands
Configure client side DNS
Candidates should be able to configure DNS on a client host.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Query remote DNS servers
• Configure local name resolution and use remote DNS servers
• Modify the order in which name resolution is done
• Debug errors related to name resolution
• Awareness of systemd-resolved
Security
Perform security administration tasks
Candidates should know how to review system configuration to ensure host security in accordance with local security policies.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Audit a system to find files with the suid/sgid bit set
• Set or change user passwords and password aging information
• Being able to use nmap and netstat to discover open ports on a system
• Set up limits on user logins, processes and memory usage
• Determine which users have logged in to the system or are currently logged in
• Basic sudo configuration and usage
Setup host security
Candidates should know how to set up a basic level of host security.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Awareness of shadow passwords and how they work
• Turn off network services not in use
• Understand the role of TCP wrappers
Securing data with encryption
The candidate should be able to use public key techniques to secure data and communication.
Key Knowledge Areas:
• Perform basic OpenSSH 2 client configuration and usage
• Understand the role of OpenSSH 2 server host keys
• Perform basic GnuPG configuration, usage and revocation
• Use GPG to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify files
• Understand SSH port tunnels (including X11 tunnels)