Examining LPI Certification

Emmett Dulaney

Certification has become a hot commodity in the administrative world, thanks in large part to the MCSE program from Microsoft and the CNE program from Novell. In the Linux world, most vendors have joined to endorse the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification.

A fairly new program, LPI certification is planned to comprise three levels of expertise (I through III), but only Level I is currently available, with the other two coming shortly. Although all the questions are multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank, Level I expects you to be comfortable at the command line, know the key commands and tasks for basic administration, and be able to install the operating system on a single machine.

The Level II plateau will expect you to have knowledge pertinent to administering a medium-sized network and managing others. You will be expected to know how to interact with Samba, Web servers, firewalls, and mail/news/proxy servers.

The Level III plateau will expect you to know how to design solutions for multiple sites, supervise, consult, and work within given constraints. The areas of specialization at Level III include interaction with other operating systems, databases, scripting, and so on.

The Components of Level I

Two exams comprise the Level I certification:

• 101: General Linux I
• 102: General Linux II

Neither of the Level I exams are overly specific to an operating system; therefore, you are not put at a tremendous disadvantage for knowing Caldera over Debian, for example. A few cases expect you to have knowledge of one vendor's offerings, but they are the exception to the rule. Indeed, the primary goal of the Linux Professional Institute -- and their certification program in particular -- is to stress the core skills and knowledge that carry across all vendor platforms.<>