Sair Linux and GNU Certification Level 1, System Administration

Rating:
Summary: Dry, Dry, Dry
Review: Dry as a bone, but jam packed with enough info to be an expert on the subject.

Bought it and kept falling asleep after many attempts at the first few pages. The many typos can keep your mind from focusing on the material and after submitting a list of errata, I've all but given up on the book except to use it as a reference. I'm waiting for the ExamCram series instead or alternatives.

If you love in-depth info, it is detailed enough and covers little known commands, the history and the possible combinations that you might want to use. The labs are great, and you can't expect less from the author who is also a university professor.

Rating:
Summary: I bet that last review was paid for
Review: I am a Linux trainer in Atlanta, pursuing both the LCP and the LPI certifications. I found this book to have quite a lot of good information in it, but unfortunately, there were some glaring inaccuracies and gaping holes in the text. I'm in a hurry now so I can't list them all, but for a start, where the book talks about integrating Linux with Windows, why is there no mention of Samba? What system administrator in his/her right mind uses VNC when Samba is available? And why does the book drone on about the low-level details of the extended second file system? Not only are these details not used in day-to-day system administration (and easily looked up for those rare occasions when someone DOES need to optimize their number of inodes), but the extended second file system is rapidly becoming obsolete with the arrival of journaling file systems (ext3, reiserfs, xfs, et al)...and yet again, the book makes NO MENTION of those important pieces of information. And if this is a book on system administration, why is there no mention of system-level services like MySQL, etc.

I'm not even going to START on how vague, misleading, and downright inaccurate the review and self-testing questions are.

In a nutshell, this book is inferior to, say, General Linux I by DeeAnn Leblanc. After reviewing the sources online and talking to persons who have also read this book, taken the online practice exams, taken the LCP exams, felt they did strongly, failed, repeated the process, failed again... I have come to the conclusion that something fishy is going on with the LCP certification, and I would advise all interested persons to be cautious if they decide to go through with the certification. The learning material is sub-standard and the tests are largely flawed.

Note: I'm not an LPI advocate either, they've got their own problems, but at least what material I've seen from them is accurate and well-written.

Rating:
Summary: I bet that last review was paid for
Review: I am a Linux trainer in Atlanta, pursuing both the LCP and the LPI certifications. I found this book to have quite a lot of good information in it, but unfortunately, there were some glaring inaccuracies and gaping holes in the text. I'm in a hurry now so I can't list them all, but for a start, where the book talks about integrating Linux with Windows, why is there no mention of Samba? What system administrator in his/her right mind uses VNC when Samba is available? And why does the book drone on about the low-level details of the extended second file system? Not only are these details not used in day-to-day system administration (and easily looked up for those rare occasions when someone DOES need to optimize their number of inodes), but the extended second file system is rapidly becoming obsolete with the arrival of journaling file systems (ext3, reiserfs, xfs, et al)...and yet again, the book makes NO MENTION of those important pieces of information. And if this is a book on system administration, why is there no mention of system-level services like MySQL, etc.

I'm not even going to START on how vague, misleading, and downright inaccurate the review and self-testing questions are.

In a nutshell, this book is inferior to, say, General Linux I by DeeAnn Leblanc. After reviewing the sources online and talking to persons who have also read this book, taken the online practice exams, taken the LCP exams, felt they did strongly, failed, repeated the process, failed again... I have come to the conclusion that something fishy is going on with the LCP certification, and I would advise all interested persons to be cautious if they decide to go through with the certification. The learning material is sub-standard and the tests are largely flawed.

Note: I'm not an LPI advocate either, they've got their own problems, but at least what material I've seen from them is accurate and well-written.

Rating:
Summary: Prepares you for the test, but very dry
Review: I want to start off by saying that I did not pass the test on the first try. It was more difficult than I expected and the book definately led me in the right direction. But it was hard to read the book. No graphics, no real font change and sometimes far too technical for someone who does not know Linux itself all that well.

In conclusion, it will help out if you have a firm grasp of how Linux works 'under the hood' already, because the book does not do such a good job there, but the details on what to expect in the exam, it does a better job. Give this book a shot if you study alongside Steve Shah's Linux Administration. Both together do more justice.

With this book alone, I failed the exam of with 58 points.

Rating:
Summary: Needs lots of work
Review: My company has been working in groups to pass the SAIR Linux Certification exams. We have been purchasing copies of Maginnis's books, working through them as a group, and taking the exams.

I just took and passed the second exam, the one based on this book. I scored a 74% -- the minimum passing score. Like the first book, this book does teach to the test. In this sense, the book does what it was designed to do.

The sections of the book vary in quality (I do not believe that Maginnis wrote this book, but that it is the work of a number of his students and employees at SAIR.) Some are good, but many are poor. The sections of the book do not seem to follow any logical order, but are organized by the SAIR knowledge matrix, with vague titles like "theroy of operation", "base systems" and "System Utilities" The section on "Troubleshooting" is filled with topics as broad as finding new linux software to finding the lib.so library.

The book has a number of Linux Labs which also vary in quality. Some labs, like the one on PGP, are specific and allow the user to perform complete yet simple tasks, wetting the appetite for more. Some, like the PERL and Python scripting labs, do nothing but tell you that these languages exist.

While Maginnis may actually know what topics are important to administrators, this book gives little indication as to what those topics are. Instead, a large number of topics are explored at a surface level, and the reader is left to figure out which topics are to be explored with more depth.

I think that the books and exams will improve over time. Either that, or another Linux Certification will become the del facto standard (I do not mean to imply by this statement that Sair is the current standard. No certification has emerged the clear winner. SAIR does, however, seem to be furthest along)

If you want to know what material is on the exam, the book is worth your time. If you want to get a general book on Linux System Administration, go somewhere else.

Rating:
Summary: Awful, awful, awful.
Review: There, I said it three times.

As an tech intructor I have waded through hundreds of instructional texts. The first 2 books of the Sair Certification path, Installation and Configuration, and System Administration are two of the worst attempts at creating study guides that I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Truly horrific.

Though it has been mentioned before, it bears repeating that the writing style, what there is of it, tends to have a potent narcotic effect of the nervous system: numbing both mind and body.

Many pages are wasted on tedious and over-long explanations of simple topics, while other more important points are completely skipped.

The labs? Oh, where to begin? Wide, wide variation in quality and usefulness. "Start here and if you can finish this on your own, we guess you know what your doing."

Worst of all, the typos and grammar problems in the books are reflected on the actual exams as well. Noun and pronoun gender agreement as well as interchangeable use of verb conjugation leads me to believe both text ans exams are being written by first year ESL ( English as a Second Language ) students.

WOE TO THOSE HAVE TO USE THESE TEXTS. ARRRRRRRRRGH!

Rating:
Summary: Fair, but not great book.
Review: This book covers many of the basics that you need for the test, but far more information is needed to pass the test. This book, like many of the Sair books follows the Test Matrix for chapter layout, Which tend to make the book jump around and repeat itself.

Rating:
Summary: Great Distribution Independent Overview
Review: This book is and will be a great resource for anyone who is interested in understanding the function and purpose of Linux networking. I have become a fan of the Sair books because of their ability to examine a relatively infinite set of criteria and pick out useful items that can help anyone be a successful Linux user. They present the information in a way that is easy to apply to every day Linux use as well as give more experienced users a challenge. I look forward to seeing the next one.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resource for the Exam!
Review: With Sair Linux and GNU Certification Level 1, System Administration, Tobin Maginnis has at last hit his stride. Like the first book in the series, Installation and Configuration, this is essentially a transcription of the Sair Official Course manuals (available to students who pay for the instructor-led sessions at an ACE), with the addition of several dozen test preparation questions.

Maginnis has added a new feature to his System Administration book, however, which I hope he retains in his future volumes -- hands-on lab exercises covering topics discussed in the text.

I think this volume is much better than the first for several reasons. First, the editing is much more thorough -- it seems to read better and there are fewer grammatical and spelling errors (the Install-Config volume was rife with them).

The biggest improvement, however, is in the test preparation section. In the first volume, there is one large practice exam, with the different questions identified using the cryptic Microsoft-like numbering system found in the official Sair materials. Questions from the different knowledge arrays are randomly scattered through the practice test, making it difficult to assess one's strengths and weaknesses in a particular array.

In this book, however, the questions are arranged by knowledge array (e.g., Theory of Operations questions are in one quiz, Base System questions in a separate quiz altogether). While this makes the "test-taking experience" less realistic, I think it is much more useful for self-assessment.

I did not find the hands-on labs as useful as I had hoped, though not through any fault of the text. When I picked up this manual, I was already very close to my test date, so I couldn't devote the time I needed to finish them all. I did manage to do a couple of the labs, however, and generally found them clearly written and helpful.

Like any other exam preparation text, this one should not be used in isolation. Running Linux (Welsh, et al), General Linux I Exam Prep (Dee-Ann LeBlanc) and Guide to Linux Installation and Administration (Nicholas Wells) were extremely helpful to me, as well as books on more specific topics such as Learning the Bash Shell (Newham & Rosenblatt) and Essential System Administration (Frisch). All of these books, I believe, are available on Amazon. Another must have for *any* Linux user or administrator is O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell (Siever, et al). I found this book especially useful during those rare instances where one or more of my references disagreed on the usage or syntax of a specific Linux command. In every case, Linux in a Nutshell proved to be authoritative.

Overall, I was highly satisfied with Sair Linux and GNU Certification Level 1, System Administration. As with Mr. Maginnis' first volume, it was absolutely vital to my subsequent success with this examination. I look forward to the volumes on Networking and Security, Ethics and Privacy!