LCA ICT Specialism study plan

Install a Linux distribution in a virtual machine and complete first boot, user creation, and package updates without notes

Navigate the filesystem using cd, ls, pwd, and find to locate at least ten specific files by name and by permission pattern

Demonstrate text-processing pipelines combining grep, sed, awk, sort, uniq, and cut on a log file to extract counts per source IP

Explain the difference between absolute and relative paths and correctly redirect stdout and stderr to separate files

Use man, --help, and apropos to answer five command-syntax questions you could not answer from memory

Manage files and directories with cp, mv, rm, mkdir, ln, and tar, including creating and restoring a compressed archive

Search and filter file content with grep using basic and extended regular expressions, including anchors and character classes

Edit files non-interactively with sed substitutions and confirm the change with diff

Set and interpret file permissions using chmod symbolic and octal modes and chown, then verify with ls -l

Schedule a recurring job with cron and confirm it executed by inspecting logs or output files

Inspect running processes with ps, top, and pgrep and map parent-child relationships using pstree

Send signals with kill and pkill to terminate, pause, and resume a process, and explain SIGTERM versus SIGKILL

Start, stop, enable, and check a systemd service, then read its status and journal output

Adjust process priority with nice and renice and observe the effect on scheduling priority values

Identify which process is listening on a given port using ss or lsof and terminate it safely

Create, format, mount, and unmount a new virtual disk and persist the mount in /etc/fstab

Check and repair filesystem consistency with fsck on an unmounted volume and interpret the exit codes

Monitor disk usage with df and du and locate the largest consumers in a directory tree

Explain inode exhaustion versus block exhaustion and demonstrate each condition

Apply special permission bits (setuid, setgid, sticky) and describe the security implication of each

Configure a static IPv4 address, gateway, and DNS resolver on a Linux host and verify with ip addr and ip route

Test connectivity and name resolution with ping, traceroute, dig, and curl and interpret each output

Explain the TCP three-way handshake and identify which ports and protocols common services use

Use ss to list listening sockets and explain the difference between a listening and an established connection

Diagnose a name-resolution failure by distinguishing a DNS problem from a routing or firewall problem

Harden SSH by disabling root login and password authentication, then verify key-based access still works

Configure a host firewall to allow only required ports and prove blocked traffic is rejected

Create users and groups, apply least-privilege sudo rules via a drop-in file, and test the boundary

Audit file ownership and world-writable files and remediate the findings

Review authentication logs to identify failed login attempts and explain what each entry indicates

Write a Bash script that accepts arguments, validates input, uses conditionals and loops, and exits with meaningful status codes

Add error handling with set -euo pipefail and trap so the script cleans up on failure

Provision a cloud or local virtual machine from a script or CLI and capture the instance metadata

Explain the shared-responsibility boundary for a virtual machine and identify which layers you still secure

Take a snapshot or image of a virtual machine and restore it to a working state

Diagnose a multi-fault scenario combining a service failure, a permission error, and a network misconfiguration using a structured method

Document the resolution in a ticket format with symptom, impact, investigation, root cause, fix, and prevention

Build a runbook for one recurring task so another technician could execute it unaided

Review your earlier deliverables against the exam objectives and list remaining weak areas with a remediation action for each

Complete a timed practice set covering all eight domains and record your score per domain