Companies ranging from IBM to Novell are dramatically expanding Linux training and development. Certification will be a key part of this trend, and support is growing for an industry-wide Linux certification program. Most companies want a vendor-neutral certification initiative, and the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is the leading effort in this direction. As more corporations adopt Linux as the networking backbone for their IT systems, the demand for certified technicians will become even greater. LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell prepares system administrators for the basic LPI General Linux 101 exam and the more advanced 102 exam, and includes information on objectives and test suggestions. It also provides readers who aren't planning to take the exam with an excellent understanding of the targeted Linux concepts and functions. The book is divided into two parts, one for each of the LPI exams. Each part features a summary of the exam, a Highlighter's Index, labs, suggested exercises, and practice exams to help you pass the LPI exams with flying colors. Part I covers the General Linux 101 Exam:

• GNU and Unix commands
• Devices, Linux filesystems, and the filesystem hierarchy standard
• Boot, initialization, shutdown and run levels
• Documentation
• Administrative tasks

Part II covers the General Linux 102 Exam:

• Linux installation and package management
• The Linux kernel
• Text editing, processing, and printing
• Shells, scripting, programming, and compiling
• X-Windows
• Networking fundamentals
• Network services
• Security

For those preparing to take the LPI Linux Certification Exams, this book will prove to be invaluable in its scope and breadth. Linux newbies will also find this book useful for learning more about how to use their Linux system. Jeffrey Dean is a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) with professional experience in IT management and training delivery.

Rating:

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good book, but ....,  April 13 2004
Submitted by Anonymous Reader   [Respond | View]

This book has some very good qualities, it is informative and I have learned a lot from it. However, if you don't have good eye sight and have a hard time reading italics it is not so good. It needs to be double spaced and raise the font size for easier readability. It also needs to be updated, to reflect linux in it's present state as well as staying within the context of the exam. I am glad it is more RedHat based, and errors or not it is worth reading. But please, make it easier for people who wear glasses to read.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  September 13 2003
Submitted by Bilal Hmouda   [Respond | View]

Good book ,though it is a hard content so newbies will be having difficulties but in general it is a good reference to pass both exam and finish daily tasks ,but updates are required to pass the new version of the LPI

in brief this is the best book you can read to pass the LPI


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 30 2003
Submitted by Joe Li   [Respond | View]

One more comment that I find that there are some differences between the English version and the Chinese version (URL: http://www.oreilly.com.tw/chinese/linux/lpi_linux.html). Although the Chinese one does not contain the new Level-1 objectives, it looks a little bit better than an outdated English version. I highly recommend O'reilly to take some actions about that.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 06 2003
Submitted by Joe Li   [Respond | View]

It's a good reference book for all candidates for LPIC Level 1. Although the objectives of LPIC is redefined that the structure of content becomes unuseful, the content is full of information for the examination. Also, it's a good guide for preparing LPIC examination.

I also promote the style of this examination guide that including highlights, mock exam and exercises. I'm seldom got similar books at bookshops.

I suggest O'reilly may publish an updated version. Or post a new reading guide for new objectives on web. Also, errata list may keep update as possible that too many unconfirmed erratas (either it's a real errate or not) may lead some candidates to be failed in LPIC exam.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  March 08 2003
Submitted by paul   [Respond | View]

On the whole it's a good book but lpi certs are very much a moving target - the current publication does not include topics which are now current in the Level 1 exams such as 'notifying system users' and 'setting the hardware clock'.

The long list of 'unconfirmed' errors are well and truly confirmed by readers - the fact that the publisher has not acknowledged them seems a little churlish. Why aren't these mistakes acknowledged? Does the publisher think they are anomalies ???!

I would recommend this book though, as there really is little else to go on for these exams. It is a good book but READ THE ERRATA BEFORE PURCHASING!


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  December 13 2002
Submitted by Michael M.   [Respond | View]

---PLEASE ANSWER THE OPEN QUESTIONS

ON http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpicertnut/errata/lpicertnut.unconfirmed

AND TRANSMIT

TO http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpicertnut/errata/lpicertnut.confirmed

---Positive:

I am glad that I bought the book (44 € in Germany).

And I have found this to be a remarkable book.

I am german and reading english is usually not always a pleasure !

The author has found a good balance for explaining in easy words the complex content

of linux knowledge.

The fact of the existence of an .../errata/... webpage on www.OREILLY.com.

---Negative:

The huge amount of unanswered

>Unconfirmed error reports are from readers. They have not yet been

>approved or disproved by the author or editor

why not yet ???

>and represent solely

>the opinion of the reader.

"opinion" or facts would be nice to know in the near future !

>This page was updated October 24, 2002"

Today@lp300:~> date

Fre Dez 13 22:46:45 CET 2002

I pasted the important lines of

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpicertnut/errata/lpicertnut.unconfirmed

in unconfirmed-errors.txt and found that

maldener@lp300:~/ddoc/buecher/lpi-certification-nutshell> nl unconfirmed-errors.txt

brought the unbelievable number of 232 unconfirmed lines of errata.

In comparison with 2 items "answered" by the author.

Really funny for linux-people: The "joke" about a little point.

>Please add a period "." at the end of the sentence.

rm -rf ./ or rm -rf / would have been worth with the period difference !

________________

I am disapointed that the author or another qualified person of Oreilly has not found the time to work it

through and to answer this amount of "open questions".

So now I am not really sure wether to use the book seriously ???

________________

I will come back in 2003 and make a more recent nl command on

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpicertnut/errata/lpicertnut.unconfirmed

nl lpicertnut.unconfirmed

250 #Please change "180's" to "1800s"

to see if the 250 lines has become more or less. (((;-)(

Solong, Happy new year 2002 without wars in our world. (:-)

MICHAEL M.




LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  August 23 2002
Submitted by Robert Nagle   [Respond | View]

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 reader's 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 won't 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 didn't 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 rpm's. I found his discussion of Debian package management to be hard to follow, although that may be because I've never used it before in real life (but watch out! The test covers this in depth!). The book's 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 Hat's 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 didn't really add much to the book, but I frequently referred to the review questions. (Remember, the LPI exam has fill-in-the-blanks questions). Don't overlook the excellent "highlighter's 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 didn't address the LPI objectives explicitly, the exercises and presentation of material are every bit as good as Dean's 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 Welsh's Running Linux, Olaf Kirch's Linux Network Administrator's Guide or the unbelievably good Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition .

Robert Nagle, Texas writer, Trainer and Linux Aficionado

from Idiotprogrammer Book Reviews:

More book reviews at:

http://www2.idiotprogrammer.com:81/publishing/technicalbooks.php




LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 17 2002
Submitted by Jan Hrabe   [Respond | View]

This book is certainly a useful summary of the topics required for the LPI 101 and 102 exams. The material corresponds reasonably well with the actual tests (at least the ones I took). That said, there are quite a few shortcomings.

First, there are too many errors and typos. Just as an example, on page 348: script sourcing is described as execution in one script comment, example 2-6 claims to show a system-wide .bashrc file (with the leading dot), and example 2-7 claims to source the /etc/bashrc, although it does not. Not every page has 3 errors on it, of course, but generally the book does not make an impression of being proofread too carefully.

Second problem is that the author does not seem to have much experience with any other ditribution than RedHat. Almost all examples are RH-specific, and sometimes the description is valid only for the RH system. E.g., the pump command, whois being a link to fwhois, the Xsetup_0 configuration file, or usage of the RH-modified font server ("unix:/-1") in XF86Config. The exams are truly distribution-neutral, the book is not.

The last comment concerns my impression that the author ran out of energy while writing the book. The chapters on 101 exam are much better than those on 102 exam. The last few chapters on networking and security are particularly weak. E.g., the description of non-routable networks (10.* and friends) or the DNS service is not sufficient to answer the test questions. The highlighter's index for 102 exam is also much worse than that for the 101 exam. E.g., the rpm and dpkg summary is only six lines long while these are the most important test topics of the 102 exam (as is also indicated by their high weights).

In summary, I would somewhat reluctantly recommend this book to those taking the LPI test - despite all the problems, it represents a useful and fairly complete overview. However, don't rely on it too much and check the manpages and HOWTOs often.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  May 03 2002
Submitted by kt   [Respond | View]

I used LPI Linux in a nutshell to help me achieve LPI Level 1 Certification in 2 months. The author is quite knowledgeable and his explanations made it a good read. I really enjoyed the format as it covered each objective and the layout was like a tutorial. It will be a good reference book aside my other Oreilly books.

I hope Oreilly will have another LPI certification book for level 2 soon. Oreilly has a good thing going here with their "nutshell books"


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  January 30 2002
Submitted by Diarmuid Ó Briain   [Respond | View]

This is without doubt the very best Linux book I have had the fortune to read. It is clear and concise and made the LPI exams a pleasure.

When is the LPIC Intermediate (Level II) in a Nutshell due ???????


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  October 09 2001
Submitted by Chris Palmer   [Respond | View]

LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell by O'Reilly publishing is an excellent reference book, even if your not interested in certification.

It's like the two books, Linux in a Nutshell and Running Linux, combined into one small version.

It's got lots of good command usage examples, review questions, and sample tests. The emphasis is learning the command line interface (CLI) way of administration.

Thanks O'Reilly!


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  August 06 2001
Submitted by Rob Readman   [Respond | View]

Although supposedly focused on the LPI exams, this book is far, far superior to many other Linux books I've read - including other O'Reilly Linux books.

Jeffery Dean has written an excellent reference that tells you quite simply, what something does and how you can do it; for those learning Linux, it's simply invaluable.

I've learnt more about Linux from this book in a shorter time because it dispenses with the padding you find in other books. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and everyone Linux should have it. Beg, buy or borrow.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 12 2001
Submitted by Sulaiman Alhasawi   [Respond | View]

Today i passed LPI 102 exam so im an LPI certified . I already passed LPI 101

before this book was realeased . I want to say this book is good and will make

you pass . But you wont get a full or a good mark , because it lacks few stuff

that need to be added .


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 08 2001
Submitted by Wallace   [Respond | View]

This book is really good. It starts with the objectives for the test straight from the Linux Professional Institute and then goes through the requirements for each objective in clear concise format. This format really filled in the gaps in my knowledge. I have actually taken the first exam in this series and missed passing my one single question. After reading this book I think I could pass the exam if I took it today. Thanks for helping me out.


LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Review,  July 08 2001
Submitted by Steve   [Respond | View]

I just want to say how much I enjoyed reading this book! It really filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Linux, and makes for an excellent reference book as well. There are many things in this book I picked up that I probably never would have stumbled across anywhere else. The book was worth every penny!

The format of the book and the many examples and illustrations are very helpful for self-teaching. I found the book to be a very easy read, having some prior knowledge about PC hardware and the fundamental commands and functions of Linux.

I would not recommend this book to someone who is installing or using Linux for the first time. It requires some familiarity with topics that are best achieved with hands-on practice. But once this is acheived and it's time to move on, definately consider this book.

I recommend this book highly for anyone who is studying for either LPI or Linux+ certifications. Even if you aren't interested in certification right now, consider this book as a handy reference guide to Linux administration.

It was definately the most helpful resource I have ever come across. Compared to the many other certification books and reference books I have read, this one was a dream come true at half the cost. Anyone who has had some exposure to the installation and use of Linux can benefit from this book. Even experts will enjoy it as a quick read and a good reference and review.

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