I am interested in attaining RHCT certification and
I recently purchased the Red Hat Certified Technician Linux study guide and it suggests that I install Red Hat Enterprise 3 on my machine.

I looked at a few web sites concerning acquiring a free build of RHLE 3 and it seems quite complicated in that they ask me to install Fedora Core 1 and then build a chroot for the RHEL 3 system.

I have perused the study guide and I am wondering if it is worth my time to download and install RHLE 3 when alot of the subject matter in the study guide looks like it can be run from a basic desktop OS.

If I am wrong about this and do need a RHEL 3 system running, does anyone know a good tutorial on how to install and run it?

I can't answer your question directly, but I'm intensely curious how old the book you're looking at is. Fedora Core just released version 6 and even with a six month release cycle, FC1 is 3 years old. I'm not even sure how you would go about finding FC1.

I haven't taken my RH cert, but while studying for my Linux+ I found that just installing and using SuSE was enough even though the manual said to use FC2 (yes, almost as old). They're probably recommending a chroot install so that you can't mess up your system too much. However, if you don't need the box or care if you mess it up then you can probably do away with that aspect.

Yes installation guides available from a number of places including;

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/

And it is an excellent idea to install and use RHEL 3/4 for hands on learning and many other reasons. Freely available (legal hassle free) clones can be found at;

https://www.scientificlinux.org/
http://www.centos.org/

Both also have installation guides and other guides available. I do **strongly** suggest you install the latest version (4.X) from either site.

If you are going for RHCT or RHCE, install RHEL 4.x or CentOS 4.x and not 3.x because I've heard that the exams are based on RHEL 4. I think when RHEL 5 is released, the exams will be switched from RHEL 4.x to RHEL 5.x.

The book I am using was published in 2004. It is the "Red Hat Certified Technician Linux Study Guide" ISBN 0-07-225539-0.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Certifications> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

You might use RHEL4, as RHCT is now based on that version. CentOS-4 works well as a freely available alternative.

Well, I guess that's not bad in itself as long as there isn't a more up to date version. Just seems a little behind the times...

The book is a good study guide still, but it is a very good idea to install a version of RHEL (any of the free versions are OK). To give yourself an idea of why (the two tests are mostly hands on) see;

https://www.redhat.com/training/rhce/examprep.html

Even though scientificlinux and centos do not bear the RedHat name, can I assume that their features and functionality are similar enough to RedHat to be an effective study aid for the RHCT exam?

CentOS is very close to the real RHEL (I think Scientific adds some stuff thats not in RHEL). You can even use Fedora Core to study for the RHEL since RHEL is based on Fedora Core.

Hi tekmann33,

If you are looking for a certification oriented approach then working on the particular OS on which you will be appearing for the exam certainly helps.

Of course CentOS, and WhiteBox Linux are good alternatives for the Enterprise Linux but if you wish to work on RHEL you can download the same via a 30day evaluation program run by red hat.

But you have to be very careful about the exam preparation and what you are studying is latest or not, as because the current version of the tests for RHCE are conducted on RHEL 4.0 but soon going to be updated to 5.0.

I guess, above info might provide some idea to you if wana more you may check my home page else mail me back.