Experienced sys admin with over 20 years experience of Solaris and HP-UX, but limited Red Hat knowledge.

I dont want to do the basic linux courses and spend days learning how to use vi etc.

I was thinking of jumping straight in and doign the RHCSA Rapid track course or even the RHCE Rapid Track course.

Of course, if I ask Red Hat they'd tell me I had to do the courses before this.

Unfortunately, funds are limited (personal training grant) so its one course only.

Any comments?

Books, Online Tutorials, Local Groups, or probably a personal trainer to help you get up to speed with Red Hat Linux.

I sold my car once to be able to take a training course I needed. Can you think of anything to sell?

That is interesting! Did you really do that? I mean, you really mean you did? If you node then I can think that we always have some alternative if we can think of. Right?

I sold so much stuff so fast that the kids thought they were next!

Paul, that is great that you have so much experience of Solaris and HP-UX. I am a SCSA for Solaris OS 10. Well, I am also planning to do the Red Hat certification. I am already good at it. So, I do not need any training. Only some practice will help me as I am not working on Red Hat frequently.

Well, have you already installed Red Hat Linux on your system or VM? You will find that you already know most of the stuffs because of your extensive knowledge of Unix. But several commands have extra features on RHEL. So, you should use the same commands that you know on Unix and see their manuals / info pages to see the "extras".

You really do not need to spend much time on learning the same things in a class that you know and can even teach those newbie-sort-of-trainers that do not have any real-time or practical experience.

I tell you a small story about me, myself:

I enrolled with a institute for RHEL 5 training for the certification purpose 2 years. back. I was working in night shift and then in the morning I would go to attend the training. But the trainer would waste my time because she would not be able to answer my basic questions such as:

How to set the system date permanently?
How to change the current directory of my local system when I am downloading files from FTP?

At the moment, I can remember only those questions and the answer I got was: "You check on the internet and let me know the answers".

Well, after some months (the training was of only 2 months but as the institute showed its inability to provide adequate training) I had to lodge a court case with Consumer Court. I have now finally won it. But, well, the law is too lazy to get me the money back so I am still waiting for the recovery of my hard-earned money.

I really had to cut my expenditure a lot to save the money for the fees which I gave in lumpsum so that I could get the certification.

Well, I did not give up. I installed RHEL on my system / VM and studied books and online tutorials and joined this linuxquestions.org and other forums to ask questions.

That is it.

What I mean to say is even joining an institute may not meet your expectations sometimes or often. So, it is better that you purchase the official books of Red Hat or borrow from your friend or colleague and go accordingly. The official books are well-ordered and well-organized.

Things you should try on a RHEL Box:

YUM Server (and configuring server/client Repository for downloading and installing packages), FTP, NIS, DHCP, Configuring NIC / IP Addresses, RPM (installing packages, it does not resolve dependencies problem so we use YUM), NFS, RAID, LVM, and how the File System is organized (for example, root has its home directory as- /root whereas others users in /home), etc.

I have installed VirtualBox on my Windows XP system and configured two Virtual Machines (RHEL) so that I can do networking stuffs and check Apache and access websites on all the three OSes. That is interesting, I think.

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Hahah!!! Great! You are really an excellent example of enthusiasm for learning!

Enthusiasm of learn eh? I just like the fact that with 20 years of experience means there is still more to learn. Collaboration is key to learning topcis faster instead of trying to learn it on your own. From devUnix and paulfoel example, they've got the the experience and are willing to share it, if the right questions are asked.

Thanks for sharing!

Oh, I have to sell this linux box to make my final payment for a training class I am taking.

Scroll down to the RHEL/Centos section on this page http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...ion_index.html. All the Admin docs are there.
Check with RH, but I'm pretty sure you don't HAVE to do any pre-req courses; they're just recommended as in "it's your fault if you failed, you should have done the pre-reqs".
Definitely get a copy of Centos (free rebuild of RHEL) at home and work your way through any hints you can get from eg course/exam content on the RH site.
NB: RHEL is now on v6.0, Centos re-build is due out soon. You could prob start with RHEL 5.5 as a warm up.

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He has the experience with Solaris and HP Linux, he just has to relate it with the RHEL environment.

Hi,

Thanks for all the advice. Yeh, thats it I dont want to spend too long learning stuff I already know....

Just wondering whether I can read the books, play around with the system, and then go straight to a 5 day course with RHSA and RHCE exams at the end? Like I said I dont want to go on a course and its too easy but dont want to be lost either. To be honest, I'm more inclined to go for it because I'm confident my prior knowledge and work beforehand will see me through....

I will come up with something for you. Right now am in a conference. I am also planning for the exam this month, most likely.

Thanks. Right so Centos is the free version of RHEL?

I assume I can use some sort of Virtual machine? Whats best one to use for Linux? VMWARE/Virtual Box/Virtual PC?

Think I've decided to go straight for either the rapid track course including RHCSA exam or the one doing both RHCSA and RHCE exams. Obviouslt the second one would be harder but I dont want to do the first one and then find out I could have managed the second one.....

Are the exams generally pretty hard?

Heres the course content for both courses:-

http://www.europe.redhat.com/trainin.../details/RH200

http://www.europe.redhat.com/trainin.../details/RH300

My wife!!!! LOL

Which ones are the official books? I see quite a few on amazon.

BTW. How much changes between releases of RHEL. Books a few years old are a lot cheaper on amazon !!!!

With regards to the training, I'm lucky because since I'm just about to lose my job, the government will give me £2500 grant to pay for a training course. (Those in the UK, specifically Wales, its called ReACT).