Red Hat Certified Specialist in Linux Diagnostics and Troubleshooting («EX342»)

By passing this exam you become a Red Hat Certified Specialist in Linux Diagnostics and Troubleshooting, which also counts toward becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect.

To help you prepare, the exam objectives highlight the task areas you can expect to see covered in the exam. Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove exam objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance.

Candidates for the this exam should be able to:

• Understanding and employing general methods for troubleshooting
  • Collecting system information to aid in troubleshooting
  • Consulting documentation resources to aid in troubleshooting
  • Monitoring systems for vital characteristics
  • Configuring systems to send log messages to a centralized host
• Diagnosing and troubleshooting system start up issues
  • Identifying and resolving service failures affecting boot
  • Regaining root control of a system
  • Troubleshooting boot issues
  • Identifying hardware and hardware problems
  • Managing kernel modules and their parameters
• Diagnosing and troubleshooting file system issues
  • Recovering corrupted file systems
  • Recovering mis-configured or broken LVM configurations
  • Recovering data from encrypted file systems
  • Identifying and fixing iSCSI issues
• Resolving package management issues
  • Resolving package management dependency issues
  • Recovering a corrupted RPM database
  • Identifying and restoring changed files
• Troubleshooting and fixing network connectivity issues
  • Using standard tools to verify network connectivity
  • Identifying and fixing network connectivity issues
  • Inspecting network traffic to aid troubleshooting
• Diagnosing application issues
  • Identifying library dependencies for third-party software
  • Identifying if an application suffers from memory leaks
  • Using standard tools to debug an application
  • Identifying and fixing issues related to SELinux
• Identifying and fixing authentication issues
  • Identifying and fixing pluggable authentication module (PAM) issues
  • Identifying and fixing LDAP and Kerberos identity management issues
• Gathering information to aid third party investigation of issues
  • Creating kernel crashdumps
  • Compiling and executing SystemTap modules

Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance through revisions to this document.

As with all Red Hat performance-based exams, configurations must persist after restart without intervention.

This exam is a performance-based evaluation of candidates ability to diagnose and fix or otherwise troubleshoot common problems and issues encountered when working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Candidates will be required to analyze and in some cases resolve issues with one or more systems and the applications running on them.

Performance-based testing means that candidates must perform tasks similar to what they perform on the job.

This exam consists of one section lasting 4 hours.

• System administrators who manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems
• System administrators who wish to demonstrate problem solving and analysis skills
• «Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCE)» interested in becoming «Red Hat Certified Specialists in Linux Diagnostics and Troubleshooting» or «Red Hat Certified Architects»

• Having taken the following course or have similar experience troubleshooting Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments
• Being a Red Hat Certified Engineer or have equivalent systems administration experience

Official scores for exams come exclusively from Red Hat Certification Central. Red Hat does not authorize examiners or training partners to report results to candidates directly. Scores on the exam are usually reported within 3 U.S. business days.

Exam results are reported as total scores. Red Hat does not report performance on individual items, nor will it provide additional information upon request.

Red Hat encourages all candidates for the Red Hat Certified Specialist in Linux Diagnostics and Troubleshooting exam to consider taking the «Red Hat Enterprise Linux Diagnostics and Troubleshooting (RH342)» course. Although, attendance in this class is not required to take the exam.

While attending Red Hat classes can be an important part of one's preparation to take this exam, attending class does not guarantee success on the exam. Previous experience, practice, and native aptitude are also important determinants of success.

Many books and other resources on system administration for Red Hat's products are available. Red Hat does not officially endorse any as preparation guides for its exams. Nevertheless, you may find additional reading deepens understanding and can prove helpful.