Exam strategy and lab habits

Before the clock starts

Read the instructions page carefully: host names, passwords, which machine is which, and any rule such as "do not change the root password of serverb". A surprising number of failures come from doing a perfect task on the wrong machine.

Time and order

• Skim all tasks first (a few minutes). Mark each as quick, medium or hard.
• Do quick tasks first: users, groups, permissions, cron, time zone, tuned. Banking those points early calms nerves.
• Watch for dependencies: if a later task needs a repository or network setting from an earlier one, do that first.
• Never spend more than about 10 to 15 minutes stuck on one task. Write down where you were and come back.
• Keep the last 15 to 20 minutes for a full reboot and verification.

Persistence checklist

Verify like a grader

Graders check from the outside. Do the same: test a web server with curl from another machine, not only from itself; log in with ssh as the new user; read a file as the user who should (and should not) have access with sudo -u user cat file. If a task names a file path, check it with ls -l exactly at that path.

Final 20 minutes:
1. Save and close every editor.
2. Reboot every machine you changed (one at a time if one depends on another).
3. Re-run the verify commands for each task.
4. Fix anything that did not come back, then reboot that machine again.

Common mistakes

• Doing the task on the wrong host. Check the prompt before every command.
• Typos in names: "lv_data" instead of "lvdata", "/date" instead of "/data". Copy names exactly from the task.
• Breaking the boot near the end with an untested fstab edit and no time left to fix it.
• Panicking after one hard task. Move on; the score is the total.