RHCSA study guide
RHCSA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) is a credential awarded after passing the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam, EX200, a hands-on, practical exam in which candidates perform real-world system administration tasks rather than answer multiple-choice items. Red Hat states that this exam is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, and that the skills tested are the foundation for system administration across all Red Hat products; configurations must persist after reboot without intervention, and no internet access or hard copy or electronic documentation is permitted during the exam. The RHCSA study guide has 9 sections and about 2,642 words.
01Understand and use essential tools
You must be fluent with paths before anything else. Know that truncates while appends, that 2 captures stderr, that & or file 2 &1 captures both, and that connects stdout only.
312 words, about 2 min02Manage software
There are two layers: rpm works on individual packages with no dependency resolution, while dnf solves dependencies against repositories. Expect rpm -qa , -qi , -ql (files owned), -qf (which package owns a file), -qp --scripts for a downloaded file, and rpm -ivh / -Uvh .
310 words, about 2 min03Create simple shell scripts
Start every script with #!/bin/bash . Assign variables with no spaces around = , expand with " var" (quoted), and capture command output with (command) .
327 words, about 2 min04Operate running systems
systemctl get-default and systemctl set-default multi-user.target (or graphical.target ) control the default target; systemctl isolate rescue.target switches immediately without changing the default. systemctl --failed lists broken units.
284 words, about 1 min05Configure local storage
Know lsblk , blkid , df -h , fdisk -l , parted , and partprobe . MBR allows four primary partitions and stops at 2 TB; GPT has neither limit.
275 words, about 1 min06Create and configure file systems
mkfs.xfs /dev/vg/lv , mkfs.ext4 , mkfs.vfat , and mkswap create filesystems; XFS and ext4 are the workhorses. Mount with mount /dev/vg/lv /mnt/data , then inspect with findmnt , df -hT , xfs info , and tune2fs -l .
302 words, about 2 min07Deploy, configure, and maintain systems (includes basic networking)
hostnamectl set-hostname host.example.com writes /etc/hostname permanently. On RHEL 8+ NetworkManager profiles are keyfiles in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ ; on RHEL 7 they are ifcfg files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ .
244 words, about 1 min08Manage users and groups
useradd -m -u 1500 -g devs -G wheel -s /bin/bash -c 'Comment' alice creates the account, populates the home directory from /etc/skel , and sets group membership. Defaults come from /etc/default/useradd and /etc/login.defs (UID ranges, password aging).
305 words, about 2 min09Manage security
There are three modes: enforcing, permissive, and disabled. At runtime use getenforce and setenforce 0 1 .
283 words, about 1 min