But despite all that, the exam still had me thinking. A few tasks took longer than I expected. Fair enough. Having experience doesn’t mean you’ll immediately remember every option or the exact syntax for something you haven’t touched in a while.
Probably the most useful thing I’ve learned from years of using Linux is how to use the man pages. That helped a lot.
When you understand what a task requires but can’t remember a particular option, you can look it up and carry on. The same goes for configuration files. Their man pages often explain the format, the available settings, and sometimes include examples.
I’ve written another article about finding help on Linux if you want to check that out.
For preparation, I used the exam objectives to check what I needed to cover and practised the tasks in a lab. My book covered a good portion of the foundation, and I also watched Red Hat’s Into the Terminal series with Nate Lager and Scott McBrien.
Even with experience, I think it’s worth going through the objectives individually. There will probably be things you rarely use in your normal setup. Those need some practice too.
I also made a habit of checking the result after making a change. If I configured a mount, I checked that it mounted correctly. If something needed to persist after a reboot, I checked that too. It’s easy to miss a small detail when you’re moving between tasks.
So that’s pretty much how I prepared: years of using Linux, the work that went into writing my book, practice around the exam objectives, and knowing where to find help when I needed it.
I was happy to pass. Seeing 300/300 was a nice bonus.