Well I just got confirmation from RedHat that my stab at an RHCE today ended with 95% pass, so i am now certified!

But would anyone else agree with me that it is just far far too easy? Despite my post count I still very very often feel out of my depth in some posts at LQ, yet I totally whopped RedHat's primary certification, without breaking a sweat.

I did the whole fast track course, and I really expected to be about average at best on this course, but it soon emerged that i was one of the best by far, something that just plain annoyed me. The exam should have been much much harder, with more intricate problems to solve etc...

Like, so many "steps" in the problems were default settings! Start a problem and install the package, start the service, open it up the the LAN, and then look at the next step... and there isn't one!

I suppose it's worthwhile having a cert like this but it shouldn't be held in such esteem, maybe an advance RHCE that genuinely IS tough.

Sure there's RHCA but that's largely just enterprise scale implementations, which leads to things getting vaguer in places, not more detailed... Sure it is very hard (i assume) to pass the enterprise data storage exam, but i'd be prety sure that's not going to see you having to manually recover spare superblocks from heavily corrupted filesystems etc...

I have heard about this - although I've yet to take it.
I didn't show up to any of the classes for the CT - I just went and took it, and aced it. I have "seen" some of the materials for the CE, and I wasn't impressed at all by it, so, I totally see your point.

I'd like to see something both more challenging - and bit less distro specific.
Hoping for something from IBM, since their support of open source continues to grow.

Learning about RPM is great, and all, but, I prefer more ubiquitous knowledge

Congrats, though. You're 31337 now

Cheers, probably doing a CCNA next.

Actually, I feel hugely let down by this announcement. I thought the RHCE was touted as being extremely hard and that you needed to be using the whole thing in a network environment to even get close to passing it.

The MCSE was hard, surely the RHCE should be harder?

But congrats mate

Well I guess it's more that when the chips are down you see who can cut it. I really thought a lot of the other people in my class were easily capable of passing easily, yet quite a few of them chucked in the towel early on, failing even to get the most basic compulsory problems done within the first hour, which is a requirement to pass anything. Personally I had these basic ones done within 10 minutes, and was out of the first 2.5 hour example in 70 minutes.

The instructor did say that the pass rate is about 50% on average and occasionally no one passes his courses, also saying that this time he was really impressed by how many were looking like they'd pass. I *think* 4 of us got RHCE, 4 got RHCT and 3 failed totally.

The guy i was sitting next to failed, despite me thinking he'd ace it all week. during the basic stuff like installing rpm's and stuff, all of a sudden he's dropped down to a sulogin with disk corruptions! no idea how that happened...

Congrats on the exam pass - maybe you just know more than you think mate ;-) Never looked at RHCE exams, but if you're looking at CCNA next you should definately find that tougher. They include at least 2 simulations within them that can be right buggers. My trainer failed the first time as they completely caught him out, and I just scraped through mine just over 2 years ago. You'll also find the first semester (as they break it down) pretty boring - all OSI stuff that should be fairly straightforward, then you get onto the good stuff later on!

a case in point: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=388021

i also thought that it was hard , i am thinking of taking it so could you please tell me some examples of the kind of questions or tasks

and congratulations

well I have signed non-disclosure agreements so I can't say much, but I'd say it was based around nominal account management and configuring network services in ways that only marginally deviate from the default settings.

I passed my RHCE a couple of weeks back. I thought it was OK challenge wise. I guess the thing is that you need to be prepared to set up pretty much any service that RH ship with EL. In my job I don't see much of some of those things, although I do play with them at home.

One guy walked out after the first hour and there were plenty of candidates working right up to the end. I finished with a little under and hour to go and spent the rest of the time checking stuff.

I know a very experienced SysAdmin from our office (10 years plus Solaris experience) who failed it even after doing the fast track course.

Congratulations Chris. I am planning on taking the exam in March or April next year and some of your comments give me hope because a lot of books and other sources make it seem as if the exam is soooooo difficult.