Course Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) Preparation Course. I'm Aaron Lockhart, your instructor for this lesson.

According to insights from Stack Overflow, Linux is not only the most common but also the most loved platform for development work. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recognized as the world's leading enterprise Linux distribution. It is certified with products from thousands of hardware and software vendors and is backed by Red Hat’s industry-leading support services.

The RHCSA certification was created by Red Hat to help IT professionals demonstrate practical system administration skills in Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments. Being one of the most respected Linux certifications globally, RHCSA validates your abilities and sets you apart in a competitive job market. This course emphasizes hands-on learning through videos, labs, and mock exams to prepare you for the practical, real-world challenges of the certification exam.

Course Breakdown

The course content is structured as follows:

• 30% Videos
• 60% Labs
• 10% Mock Exams

This structure provides over 28 hours of lab practice. You can repeat the labs as many times as needed to master the underlying concepts. Our concise lectures simplify complex topics with clear illustrations and animations, while live demonstration videos provide step-by-step guidance. Every lab includes a series of exercises with an interactive terminal, and hints along with solutions are available if required.

Live Demonstration Example

During one demonstration session, the SSH configuration is updated on the fly. The following image shows a live session with a split screen where the terminal displays the SSH configuration text alongside the instructor in a video call:

Below is an example snippet from the SSH configuration file:

#MaxSessions 10
#PubkeyAuthentication yes

# The default is to check both .ssh/authorized_keys2
# but this is overridden so installations will only
AuthorizedKeysFile       .ssh/authorized_keys
#AuthorizedPrincipalsFile none
#AuthorizedKeysCommand none
#AuthorizedKeysCommandUser nobody

# For this to work you will also need host keys
#HostbasedAuthentication no
# Change to yes if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts
#HostbasedAuthentication
#IgnoreUserKnownHosts no
# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts 
#IgnoreRhosts yes

# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
#PasswordAuthentication no

While the RHCSA exam itself does not provide hints, the labs offer instant feedback as you check your answers. You can repeat lab exercises until you feel confident about the tasks before moving forward.

For example, after completing a task, you might see prompts like these:

[root@student-node bob]#
[root@student-node bob]#

Hands-On Practice

Throughout the course, you will gain more than 100 hours of hands-on experience with Linux systems, enhancing your understanding of crucial configuration files such as:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

As you progress, more exam-specific details will be provided. If you ever encounter any difficulties, our community channel is available for support—your questions will be answered quickly. For instance, a command prompt demonstration is shown below:

[bob@centos-host ~]$ sudo vi

Core Topics Covered

In this lesson, we will address the essential topics required for the RHCSA exam, which include:

• System documentation and file operations
• Basic shell scripting
• Process management and log file analysis
• System tuning
• Local and logical storage configuration
• File system management and advanced storage technologies
• Task scheduling and software package management
• Networking configuration
• User and group management
• Security with SELinux
• Container management using tools like Podman and Skopeo

Let's begin our journey together. I'll see you in the first lecture!