LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (2 page)

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usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example:
“
LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell
, Third
Edition, by Adam Haeder et al. Copyright 2010 Adam Haeder, Stephen Addison
Schneiter, Bruno Gomes Pessanha, and James Stanger. ISBN:
9780596804879.”

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For the third edition, we thank reviewers Don Corbet, Jon Larsen,
Gregor Purdy, Rick Rezinas, G. Matt Rice, and Craig Wolf.

Adam Haeder dedicates his work to Tina, Erin, Ethan, Stanley, and
Stefon: the reason I work so late into the night.

Bruno dedicates his work to his grandfather, Oswaldo Cabral
Pessanha, in
memoriam
.

LPI Exam 101 is one of two exams required for the LPIC Level 1
(officially referred to as LPIC 1) certification. In total, ten major Topic
areas are specified for Level 1; this exam tests your knowledge on four of
them.

Exam Topics are numbered using the
topic.objective
notation (e.g., 101.1, 101.2, 102.1).
The 100 series topics represent LPI Level 1 certification topics, which are
unique to all levels of LPI exams (e.g., 101, 102, 201, 202, etc.). The
objective number represents the Objectives that are associated with the
Topic area (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on).

The Level 1 Topics are distributed between the two exams to create
tests of similar length and difficulty without subject matter overlap. As a
result, there’s no requirement for or advantage to taking them in sequence,
the only caveat being that you cannot be awarded an LPIC 2 or higher
certifications until you pass the requirements for the lower-level
certification.

Each Topic contains a series of Objectives covering specific areas of
expertise. Each of these Objectives is assigned a numeric weight, which acts
as an indicator of the importance of the Objective. Weights typically run
between 1 and 8, with higher numbers indicating more importance. An
Objective carrying a weight of 1 can be considered relatively unimportant
and isn’t likely to be covered in much depth on the exam. Objectives with
larger weights are sure to be covered more heavily on the exam, so you
should study these Topics closely. The weights of the Objectives are
provided at the beginning of each Topic section. In the current version of
LPI exams, all of the weighting totals for each exam add up to 60. With 60
questions per exam, this means that the weighting is exactly equivalent to
how many questions the Objective will have in the exam.

The Topics for Exam 101 are listed in
Table 1-1
.

As you can see from
Table 1-1
, the
Topic numbers assigned by the LPI are not necessarily sequential. This is
due to various modifications made by the LPI to its exam program as it
developed. The Topic numbers serve only as reference and are not used on the
exam.

Exam 101 lasts a maximum of 90 minutes and contains exactly 60
questions. The exam is administered using a custom application on a PC in a
private room with no notes or other reference material. The majority of the
exam is made up of multiple-choice single-answer questions. These questions
have only one correct answer and are answered using radio buttons. Some of
them present a scenario needing administrative action. Others seek
appropriate commands for a particular task or proof of understanding of a
particular concept. Some people may get an exam with an additional 20 items.
These items are used to test new questions and don’t count as part of the
score. An additional 30 minutes is provided in this case, and there is no
indication which items are unscored.

About 10 percent of the exam questions are multiple-choice
multiple-answer questions, which are answered using checkboxes. These
questions specify that they have multiple correct responses, each of which
must be checked to get the item correct. There is no partial credit for
partially answered items. This is probably the most difficult question style
because the possibility of multiple answers increases the likelihood of
forgetting to include an answer, even though the candidate is told in the
question exactly how many answers to select. But they also are a good test
of your knowledge of Unix commands, since an incorrect response on any one
of the possible answers causes you to miss the entire question.

The exam also has fill-in-the-blank questions. These questions provide
a one-line text area input box for you to fill in your answer. These
questions check your knowledge of concepts such as important files and
commands, plus common facts that you are expected to be aware of. Don’t let
this scare you, however, since most of these items accept a variety of
answers. Unless specified otherwise, they are not case-sensitive and do not
require full paths in your answers.

The first part of this book contains a section for each of the four
Topics found on LPI Exam 101. Each section details certain Objectives, which
are described here and on the
LPI
website
.