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Books : Computing & Internet : Web Development : Web Administration : Certification : Exams : Linux Certified Administrator (LCA)
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The Sair Linux and GNU Certification book is too short to cover the installation of all the Linux flavours in any sort of detail, and so this book can serve a dual purpose; it can be a good jumping-off point for the novice as an introductory text, or it can do double duty as a refresher guide for the experienced Linux sys-op. Those who have some hands-on Linux knowledge and are looking for a comprehensive resource to fill in the gaps, however, will be disappointed--because this is by no means a one-stop shop to get certified.The book itself is arranged in an erratic fashion, which might annoy some readers; the first part is a "learning" section that discusses the various issues such as the differences between Linux shells, basic shell commands and so on. When you've finished reading through the informational text, the second half of the book abruptly morphs into a set of lab exercises.
The "learning" chapters are written in a dry but generally readable style, and the book definitely does its best to try to wrangle the seven million variances among Linux flavours into one tome. The strengths of this book lie in commands and troubleshooting; the shell commands are gone over in a fair amount of detail, listing not only what they're used for but when, and showing how the most significant options make your life easier in using, say, grep or cp. The troubleshooting section is something that's sadly lacking from a lot of certification guides--an entire chapter that goes over the most common errors you'll encounter and how to fix them.
The weak spot of the book is pretty much where you'd expect it to be; installing the many flavours of Linux can be a pain in the neck when it comes to getting it to recognise odd hardware or trying to set up a dual-boot system with multiple hard drives and CD-ROMs. The section on PC architecture is weak, and considering that many flavours of Linux ask hardware questions that really need to be answered correctly, a much more expanded section on PC architecture would be nice. The "advanced topics" section is also badly named, because the topics are overviews that are so general that they may actually be dangerous--for example, IP class addressing is covered but not subnetting, which could cause problems further down the line for someone who doesn't know anything about IP addresses at all.
On the bright side, the book does come with a large, 100-question sample test to help you hone your skills, and the questions are fairly tough, if not jaw-droppers.
This book has a lot of ground to cover, and even at 500 pages there just isn't enough space to cover everything that really needs to be hit for this exam. As an introductory guide, it's quirky but usable; as a last-minute refresher, it covers things at a fairly abstract level but should jog your brain cells appropriately. Make this your first book or your last, but don't make it your only study guide for the exam. --William Steinmetz
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Sair Linux and Gnu Certification Level 1 by Tobin Maginnis is one of four study guides, each associated with an exam carried out by Sylvan Prometric. Passing the four tests get you a Linux Certified Administrator certificate.As its name indicates, this book covers Linux installation and configuration. It's designed to be distribution-agnostic. This has the interesting consequence of forcing the author to discuss the decisions andr ationale behind the way Linux works. The first 160 pages cover that subject. The book assumes a fairly good general knowledge of computing and computers, and, oddly, combines the deeply theoretical with extremely basic commands. Appendix A consists of 60 pages of screenshots showing various distribution installations--a somewhat unnecessary exercise, since the distributions cover this thoroughly, there are so many and Linuxi nstallation programs are currently in a state of flux. Appendix B is 80 or so pages of practice exam questions.
The approach is quite different from the general run of Linux guides aimed at end users because it concentrates on achieving understanding rather than facility. It's an excellent exam preparation but if you're new to Linux you'll need a book on Running Linux as an end user as well. Fortunately, there are now a lot of these to choose from.--Steve Patient
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