Some of you veteran lpi-examdev people may recall this, but back in Jan
2000 the attached job description was developed in order to begin
collecting tasks for Level 2 for the Job Task Analysis. Now, we need to
develop our final job description for Level 2.
Please note that the special "TOPIC" areas should be removed from our job
description.
I would like you to review the remaining job description and help us
develop our final document for the Level 2 LPIC. I would hope that our
developments have continued along the same line as our original job
description and a lot of changes won't be required. With this in mind, I
would like to review your comments today and tomorrow and attempt to draft
a final version by Thursday.
Thank you for your participation and continued support!
If you haven't already, please sign up and take your Level 2 beta exams!
The beta offers both exams at once for $84, a 58% discount! This offer
will expire in just 3 weeks, so hurry and sign up today!
Also, if you are a member of a large active LUG and might be interested in
participating in a paper proctored exam session, please let me know! There
could possibly be one in your area already scheduled! These paper
proctored exams are offered for just $15 if you pre-register! We are still
looking for a few more proctored site hosts!
--
Kara Pritchard Phone: 618-398-7360
Author, RHCE Exam Cram
Director of Exam Development http://www.lpi.org/
Site Manager http://www.LinuxUsersGroups.org/
--
Disclaimer: The following text is a draft. All grammatical and technical content of
this draft is considered for review, comment, and development only. All content of
this document is subject to change with discussion, survey, and approval of LPI board.
Summary Job Description
A level 2 system administrator should have a wide variety of talents, ranging from
defined technical capability to established communications skills. In the professional
business, the level 2 candidate will be expected to maintain a higher degree of
inter-personal and communication skills as well as provide services beyond his
certifiable technical knowledge such as research, proposal, documentation, training,
and project management. This level of responsibility requires a high level of
technical competance which can be measured by technical performance testing. While the
LPIC-2 goal cannot test social and management skills needed to fill level 2 sysadmin
positions, its goal is to certify the technical skills that are required.
A Level 2 sysadmin should be comfortable with advanced levels of Linux system
administration. A Level 2 candidate should be comfortable with large networks, working
with multiple dedicated servers and workstations dedicated to these tasks, as well as
managing them, securing them, and maintaining all the services required to do so.
In Level 1, LPI covered the essentials to creating and maintaining a Linux
workstation. In Level 2, LPIC should address advanced topics such as installation
engineering and system resource managements of not only individual workstations, but
servers.
SPECIFIC TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
At Level 2, candidates are expected to have proven proficiency in a number of
categories, including topics which are covered to a full extent within Level 1. A
level of high proficiency should be found in: User Administration, Network
Administration, Kernel Maintenance, Network Services, Remote System Administration ,
Security, and more.
TOPIC 1: User Administration
Many topics within User Administration have been covered in the Level 1 exam. In level
2, LPIC needs to cover the engineering, management, and maintenance of the systems
required for network users. Administration of authentication policies, remote user
access to things such as ftp, telnet, and secure connections. The skills used in User
Administration are essential to the foundation of all Linux sysadmins. These mastered
skills will not be tested specifically during advanced levels of certification, but
are required to complete the tasks that will be involved.
TOPIC 2: Network Administration
Network Administration was covered during the Level 1 exam. While network
connectivity was certainly covered, services used to administer, maintain, debug and
create this capability were not addressed. In level 2, candidates should be well
versed in network administration tools such as ifconfig, route, netstat, whois,
nslookup, dig and be capable to use them efficiently when designing, implementing,
investigating and debugging network related issues.
In Level 1, candidates are familiar with interfacing with popular networking services
such has HTTP, FTP, file servers, etc. In level 2, however, candidates must be
proficient in the configuration, troubleshooting, and maintenance of the equipment and
services responsible for hosting these applications. Level 2 candidates should cover
Apache, Samba, sendmail, autofs, and proxy. In addition, candidates should be
introduced to network services such as NFS, NIS, POP3 and IMAP, FTP, DNS, and DHCP.
Completing these topics in the Level 2 Network Administration topic will allow the
advanced certification levels to focus on how these services work together to provide
corporate enterprise solutions, as well as how these services work with other
technologies. At Level 2, candidates will be expected to fully understand, install,
configure, maintain and troubleshoot these services, but at level 3 will be required
to engineer them into large scale network solutions, as well as fully customize,
streamline, and implement them.
Topic 3: Kernel
Kernels were discussed in Level 1 to certify understanding of kernel operations, such
as interfacing kernel options during boot, and more. In Level 2, candidates should be
capable of customizing, compiling, and patching kernels. In addition, candidates
should be familiar with kernel modules and how they interact with the system. For
levels beyond Level 2, LPI will be able to focus on performance tuning, security
tuning, and even kernel development.
Topic 4: Remote System Administration
Not discussed in Level 1 are methods of Remote System Administration. Remote
administration requires extensive knowledge of command administration utilities over
GUI utilities, as well as using X remotely. A Level 2 candidate should be comfortable
doing remote administration tasks without having console access. Completing this level
of certification working with Wide Area Networks, future levels will be able to focus
on engineering WAN solutions, and integrating Linux based WAN solutions into
multi-platform and advanced technology environments.
Topic 5: Security
In Level 1, candidates were expected to view system logs and such to evaluate security
issues such as invalid logins, root hacks, and more. In level 2, candidates should be
familiar with security access prevention using concepts such as tcp_wrappers,
ipchains, and being able to evaluate system risks with unneeded services on a system
with inetd and so forth. Completing this level of certification allows future
certifications to focus on implementing network security devices using Linux, and
engineering Linux based security options with other security technologies.
Topic 6: Other Hardware
Level 2 candidates are expected to be familiar with working with Linux on laptop and
PCMCIA hardware including being able to affectively use APM to manage power
consumption. A Level 2 candidate should be comfortable with non IDE hardware, such as
SCSI interfaces. Candidates should be accustomed to installing and using specialized
peripherals such as cdrom writers, tape backup units, and more. Other topics which may
be addressed include SNMP and RAID concepts. This level of testing will allow advanced
certification levels to incorporate user business strategies into corporate solutions.
[Rev. 3 01-30-00]
