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LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))
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by Steven Pritchard, Bruno Pessanha, Nicolai Langfeldt, and James Stanger
Sales Rank: 13241
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List Price: $59.99
$37.79
At Amazon
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Paperback: 980 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 2 edition July 26, 2006
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596005288
ISBN-13: 978-0596005283
Product Dimensions:
8.4 x 6.1 x 2.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
Product Review
You may not have heard of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) or its professional certifications, but they're becoming an important part of proving professional competence in the Linux operating system. That aside, LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell is a fantastic introductory Linux book, well suited to introducing a curious newcomer to the environment and bringing an intermediate user up to expert status.
The book is organized around the LPI's published standards for two Level 1 exams (exams 101, which deals with key commands and file-system concepts, and 102, which places more emphasis on hardware, networking, and shell scripting). The organization works well even if you're not specifically preparing for either exam.
LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell assumes nothing in early chapters, going so far--to cite one example--as to walk readers through the concept of commands with parameters separately from the concept of commands alone. Later, the pace picks up, and strategic advice is substituted (such as how to partition a disk for maximum speed and reliability) for "type-this" instructions.
Throughout, the book makes effective use of O'Reilly's time-tested and remarkably clear format for presenting Unix commands and configuration files. Each chapter concludes with a series of exercises designed to help you discover behaviors on your own, and includes the practice questions you expect in a test-prep aid. --David Wall
Topics covered: The knowledge that's tested on the Linux Professional Institute's exams 101 and 102, which includes everything from basic Linux commands and concepts to installation of the operating system, essential network configuration, and kernel recompilation.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Review
"is characteristically O'Reilly through and through - vastly detailed, confidently written and not dressed up with too many screenshots or wild page designs. Although Linux Certifcationis structured as a front-to-back read, mirroring the order of the LPIC topics, it also features page markings to help you use it as a quick reference guide when you've worked through it. The book shows you how to prepare for the LPIC exams, with exercises and examples galore, plus a host of massively useful practice exams to give you a taste of the real thing O'Reilly's book is a monster, covering everything in great depth, and even though it's a bit costly it's worth the price given the exhaustive coverage therein. Just don't expect any kind of entertainment along the way - it's all very serious stuff." Verdict: A bulging, desk-warping behemoth of a book, tackling LPIC topics with clarity and excellent details. Rating: 9/10 - Mike Saunders, Linux Format, May 2007
Customer Reviews & Comments
This review is from: LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (Paperback)
The first thing I want to say about reading this book is : I passed! Certification books serve four purposes: first, they serve as a way to prepare for computerized certification exams. Second, they provide a training plan for learning the objectives in the certification. Third, can a book explain system administration concepts while limiting a readers exposure to difficult, elusive topics until later? Fourth, can a book like this still be useful post-certification? Part One (covering the 101 test) contained generous amounts of examples for text-processing commands and a really top notch discussion of permissions, ownership, booting and documentation. Helpfully, need to know boxes are scattered throughout the book to indicate how important a topic is on the test. Frequently, the author will point out that although he explained a certain topic in depth, it wont be covered in depth on the test. I really appreciated that, although I found that the actual test covered certain topics (such as X Windows) in much more depth than Dean leads us to believe. One thing, by the way, to remember, is that often the book gives only the 5 or 6 most popular switches for each command. If you learned about these commands only from this book, you might be overlooking some important switches. I found this especially to be true when Dean discussed user management. I consider usermod g and usermod G to be really important commands, but this book didnt even mention them. On the other hand, Dean gave an explanation of regular expressions which was quite adequate for the purposes of this book. Although omitting some switches proved exasperating at times, the simplified view of the commands can be helpful for linux newbies. Part Two (covering 102 test) covered a lot more ground: Apache, sendmail, nfs, dns, tcp-ip; heck, books have been written on each of those topics. The book covered well these topics in particular: compiling a kernel, troubleshooting tcp-ip and using rpms. I found his discussion of Debian package management to be hard to follow, although that may be because Ive never used it before in real life (but watch out! The test covers this in depth!). The books discussion of network services (nfs, sendmail, apache, samba) was shallow at best, but I doubt anyone would rely on such a book for maintaining a web server, for example. But it provided some of the basics at least. The section on X Window was succinct and helpful. Also, some of the information presented is outdated, at least on Red Hats latest distribution. Red Hat, for example, no longer uses inetd for startup, and some of the directory paths have since changed. These are minor quibbles, and one of the challenge of passing a certification like this is asking yourself: should I be learning things for the exam that are no longer accurate or relevant in current distributions? Certifications test the knowledge available at the time of test creation, when in reality new applications are being added and processes streamlined every day. The book contains lots of sample multiple choice items, review questions and exercises. The multiple choice items didnt really add much to the book, but I frequently referred to the review questions. (Remember, the LPI exam has fill-in-the-blanks questions). Dont overlook the excellent highlighters index at the back of the book. Two minor quibbles. First, the cover is not very strong and is bent, torn and curled over. The other is that the LPI exam objectives are not located at the front or back of the book. Rather, the table of objectives for 101 are in the front, and objectives for 102 are in the middle. I referred to this table constantly to see the amount of weight LPI was giving to a particular topic. Also, because the table of contents follow the LPI learning objectives (probably a smart thing), it is often difficult to find documentation about a certain command. For that I might recommend Linux in a Nutshell , 3rd Edition, which serves as a comprehensive index of commands and system utilities. It is excellent. Also, General Linux I Exam Prep (Exam: 101) by Dee Ann LeBlanc (published in 2000), is an extremely helpful book (and available for significantly reduced price used). Although it was one of the first to market and didnt address the LPI objectives explicitly, the exercises and presentation of material are every bit as good as Deans book. Keep in mind also that LPI Linux Certification is not sufficient in and of itself. You will probably end up referring to other books such as Matt Welshs Running Linux, Olaf Kirchs Linux Network Administrator's Guide or the unbelievably good Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition .
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LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))
List Price: $59.99
Available from Amazon
Price: $37.79
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