LFCS study plan

Trace the boot sequence from firmware through the bootloader to the systemd default target and write down what hands off to what at each stage

Author a custom systemd service unit with ExecStart, Restart=on-failure, and a dependency ordering, then enable, start, stop, disable and mask it

Change the default target, boot into rescue mode, and restore normal boot on a test VM

Pull failure evidence for a crashed unit out of journald, filter it by time window and priority, and make the journal persistent across reboots

Assign a static IPv4 address, default gateway, and DNS resolver persistently using both nmcli and a distro-native configuration file, then reboot and confirm they survive

Use ip addr, ip route, ss, and getent hosts to isolate a deliberately broken default route on a two-host lab

Add and verify a static host entry in /etc/hosts and explain the resolution order against the configured resolver

Open only the ports you need with the host firewall and confirm the result with a connection test from the second host

Write a firewall rule set that permits SSH and HTTP from defined sources, drops everything else, and reloads automatically after reboot

Harden sshd by disabling password authentication, restricting logins to a named group, and proving both a denied and an allowed login

Create a systemd timer that runs a network health-check script every five minutes and verify three consecutive successful runs in the journal

Install, upgrade, and hold a package at a specific version, and remove it cleanly afterwards

Partition a blank disk with GPT, create both an ext4 and an xfs filesystem, and mount both persistently by UUID through /etc/fstab

Build a volume group with two physical volumes, create a logical volume, extend it online, and grow the filesystem without unmounting

Add a swap file or partition, tune swappiness, and turn on user disk quotas for one account

Break an fstab entry on purpose, recover the system from emergency mode, and repair the file

Locate files with find using name, mtime, size, and permission predicates, and act on the results with -exec

Transform text with grep, sed, awk, cut, sort, and uniq, redirecting stdout and stderr to separate destinations

Create, list, and extract tar archives compressed with gzip and xz, and verify integrity with a checksum

Edit files in vim using normal, insert, and visual modes, including a search-and-replace across a range

Schedule a recurring job with cron and a one-off job with at, then confirm both actually fired

Create users and groups, set password aging and account expiry, and lock then unlock an account while observing the effect on login

Write sudoers rules that let a group run specific commands without a password and confirm both an allowed and a denied invocation

Set standard permissions and umask, create a setgid shared directory, and add a POSIX ACL granting an outside user read access

Audit the system for accounts with empty passwords and duplicate UID 0 entries, then remediate what you find

Complete three timed storage drills from memory: mount by UUID, extend an LV online, and recover from a bad fstab entry

Re-run every week-4 and week-5 exercise without notes and record which commands needed lookup

Rebuild the week-5 report script from scratch in under 20 minutes using only man pages

Revisit the weakest three topics from weeks 1 to 6 and close them with a written summary of the correct procedure

Run two full timed practice exams weighted toward operations, deployment, and networking, and score each against the official domain weightings

Redo every missed or partially completed task until it succeeds twice in a row without reference material

Re-verify the week-1 through week-3 artifacts still pass on a clean VM snapshot

Prepare a one-page command cheat sheet restricted to commands you personally got wrong during the plan