Exam description
The performance-based Red Hat Preliminary Exam in System Administration I (PE124) tests your knowledge in areas of system administration common across a wide range of environments and deployment scenarios. The skills tested in this exam are the foundation for system administration across all Red Hat® products. Objectives listed for this exam are based on the most recent Red Hat product version available. Click “Get started” to view all versions of this exam available for purchase. Red Hat Preliminary Exams are taken using your own laptop or computer and remote cloud instances.
Audience for this exam
- Experienced or novice Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators seeking validation of their skills
- Students who have attended Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) and are on the path to becoming an RHCSA
- IT professionals who are on the path to becoming a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
Study points for the exam
Red Hat Preliminary Exam in System Administration I (PE124) candidates should be able to accomplish the tasks below without assistance. These have been grouped into several categories.
Understand and use essential tools
- Access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax
- Use input-output redirection (>, >>, |, 2>, etc.)
- Access remote systems using SSH
- Log in and switch users in multi-user targets
- Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2
- Create and edit text files
- Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
- Create hard and soft links
- List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions
- Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc
Operate running systems
- Boot, reboot, and shut down a system normally
- Boot systems into different targets manually
- Identify CPU/memory intensive processes and kill processes
- Locate and interpret system log files and journals
- Preserve system journals
- Start, stop, and check the status of network services
- Securely transfer files between systems
Create and configure file systems
- Create and configure set-GID directories for collaboration
- Diagnose and correct file permission problems
- Manually mount and unmount existing filesystem
Deploy, configure, and maintain systems
- Start and stop services and configure services to start automatically at boot
- Configure systems to boot into a specific target automatically
- Configure time service clients
- Install and update software packages from Red Hat Network, a remote repository, or from the local file system
- Work with package module streams
- Modify the system bootloader
Manage basic networking
- Configure IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
- Configure hostname resolution
- Configure network services to start automatically at boot
Manage users and groups
- Create, delete, and modify local user accounts
- Change passwords and adjust password aging for local user accounts
- Create, delete, and modify local groups and group memberships
- Configure superuser access
As with all Red Hat performance-based exams, configurations must persist after reboot without intervention.
Preparation
Red Hat encourages you to consider taking Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) to help prepare.
Exam Format
The Red Hat Preliminary Exam in System Administration I is a hands-on, practical exam that requires you to undertake real-world tasks. Red Hat Preliminary Exams are taken using your own laptop or computer and remote cloud instances.
