Failed Red Hat RHCSA? Here's Your Recovery Plan

Pro tip: Contact the exam provider directly for their specific retake policy.

• Starting a service with systemctl start and never enabling it. The grader reboots the system, the service is gone, and the whole task scores nothing.
  Use systemctl enable --now for every service task, then reboot your lab machine and re-check with systemctl is-enabled before you consider the task finished.
• Mounting a new file system by device name such as /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab. Device naming can shift, and the task is graded after a reboot.
  Mount by UUID or label. Read the UUID with blkid, write it into /etc/fstab, run mount -a to catch syntax errors, then reboot to prove the entry survives.
• Treating SELinux as an obstacle and setting it permissive to make a task work. The objectives explicitly require enforcing mode behaviour, and a permissive system fails security tasks.
  Leave SELinux enforcing and fix the context instead. Learn semanage fcontext plus restorecon for paths, semanage port for ports, and setsebool -P for booleans.
• Bringing notes, a printed cheat sheet, or a second screen to a remote exam. Red Hat allows one physical display, one keyboard, and no hard copy or electronic documentation of any kind.
  Clear the desk completely and rely on the product documentation shipped inside the exam environment. Practise finding answers with man and the local docs so you never need external material.
• Using a built-in laptop camera. Red Hat requires an external webcam with roughly a metre of cable so the proctor can be shown under your desk during the workspace scan.
  Buy or borrow an external webcam and run the mandatory compatibility test with it attached, days before the exam, not on the morning of.
• Extending a logical volume but forgetting to grow the file system on top of it, so df still shows the old size.
  Use lvextend -r to resize the file system at the same time, or follow lvextend with xfs_growfs for XFS and resize2fs for ext4, then confirm with df -h.
• Editing /etc/sudoers directly with a plain editor and introducing a syntax error that locks out privileged access on a graded machine.
  Write a drop-in file under /etc/sudoers.d, validate with visudo -c, and test the rule by switching to the target user and running a privileged command before moving on.
• Spending the first hour on the hardest task. The exam is three hours in a single section and there is no partial credit for a half-configured service.
  Read the whole task list first, complete every task you can finish in under five minutes, then return to the expensive ones with the clock and your remaining tasks both visible.
• Skipping the final reboot because the clock is running out. Red Hat grades the final state of the system, and unsaved or unenabled work disappears.
  Reserve the last 20 minutes to reboot both machines and re-verify every task. A working configuration that does not persist is worth exactly the same as no configuration.

• 100% hands-on performance-based exam
• Master systemctl and systemd thoroughly
• Practice user/group management and permissions
• Study LVM and storage configuration
• Practise for speed, the clock is the hard part