RH300 Red Hat Certified Engineer Course and Exam Prerequisites

The following is an outline of prerequisite skills required for the RHCE course. We strongly suggest participants in RHCE arrive with all prerequisites.

The RHCE course is challenging!  Participants arriving without the prerequisites below will make less than optimal progress in the training (first 4 days) and will be unlikely to pass the RHCE Certification Lab Exam (last day).

The prerequisites outline, together with the RHCE outline, serve as a study guide for those planning to attend the RHCE course and take the Certification Lab Exam. It is highly recommended that all prospective RHCE participants review these outlines in preparation for the course and exam.

Note: Technical content subject to change without notice. Significant changes in course content will generally be available in posted outlines at least two months prior to being implemented in scheduled courses, to allow enrolled students adequate prep time. Reload this page regularly to ensure up-to-date information.

1. Basic hardware knowledge
   1. Intel and Intel clone architectures
   2. IRQs and IRQ settings for standard serial ports
   3. Disk subsystems (IDE, EIDE, SCSI)
   4. Disk partitioning
2. Basic UNIX/Linux knowledge
   1. Basic text editor usage
      1. Opening, closing, writing, and abandoning files
      2. Basic text editing
   2. UNIX Filesystem Hierarchy and Structure
      1. UNIX/Linux filesystems
      2. SCSI, floppy, CD-ROM, and IDE devices
      3. Referencing /dev devices
      4. ISA and PCI hardware issues
      5. Filesystem formating and checking, fdisk, mkfs, fsck
      6. Span multiple partitions with root filesystem
      7. Mount misc partitions with mount
   3. Basic file operations and manipulation
      1. Basics: cp, mv, ls, more, less, cd, pwd, tar, find, etc.
      2. Filters: cat, grep, egrep, wc, cat, tail, head, sort, etc.
      3. File Name wildcards: *, ?, [ ], etc.
   4. Printing
      1. lpq, lprm, lpr
      2. adding local and remote printers
   5. UNIX/Linux Shell
      1. Basic Shell Programming
      2. Piping, I/O and error redirection
      3. Script execution and permissions
      4. Variables and parameters
      5. The inherited environment
   6. Basic security
      1. Shadow passwords
      2. File permissions
      3. Understanding users, groups and umask
      4. suid, guid
   7. UNIX System Administration
      1. /etc/skel/... and home directories
      2. Daemons
      3. Cron
      4. Superuser
      5. Syslogd and logging
      6. Backup and Restore Tasks
      7. Control of Network Services and Daemons
      8. System crontab
      9. Using and managing the system log files
      10. Basic system backup and restore operations
   8. Basic TCP/IP Networking
      1. IP numbers and classes
      2. The network address, broadcast address and subnet mask
      3. Tools and commands
         1. ping
         2. ifconfig
         3. netstat
         4. Name resolution configuration
            1. /etc/hosts
            2. /etc/resolv.conf
            3. /etc/host.conf
            4. /etc/nsswitch.conf
         5. Familiarity with Standard Networking Services
            1. NFS and remote filesystems
            2. Sendmail
            3. POP, IMAP
            4. FTP
            5. DNS
            6. DHCP
            7. SMB
            8. httpd
            9. YP, Nis
            10. Inetd
         6. Basic Network Security

The prerequisites are important! Participants arriving without a large portion of these prerequisites will make less than optimal progress in the training and will be unlikely to pass the certification exam. Please do not sign up for RH300 unless you are experienced with systems administration or are a power user in UNIX / Linux environments.