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I wrote that I failed NCLP 10 exam at the first try several days back. I took again yesterday to revenge, and passed. I really admit this exam because it’s a real lab exam with 2 Suse Linux machines sat on top of VMware. It’s not as difficult as RHCE, but at least comparable to RHCT. This testing measures candidate skill accurately instead of written exam.

I scored 764/800, it means around 95% was answered correctly. Here are some tips and guidance to prepare and take this exam:

Look the exam objectives. Novell published the exam objectives here, and make sure you can do basic configuration on every objectives. To summarize the objectives, at least you should able to do the following tasks:

1. Storage and file system management (create/delete partition, edit partition, etc)
2. User and group management (create/delete/edit user/group, configure home directory, etc)
3. Manage user permission on file and directory: understand the ACL and file/directory ownership.
4. Quota management for user and group
5. Configure web server with Apache: create virtual directory, manage redirection, protect a web site with user and password.
6. Configure Samba as a file and print server and mount Samba share on client.
7. Configure network services: NFS, NIS.
8. Create a cron job, either on user level or system wide cron
9. Shell scripting . Using bash to automate monitoring and management such as backup/ restore, monitoring log or daemon. Make sure you know how to create and assign variable, looping, and IF-ELSE control structure.
10. Know how to retain and apply the configurations after reboot. Use insserv servicename.

Test taking tips:

• We have 3 hours to do the practicum, it’s long enough to complete all tasks assignment. You can access Yast during the lab, but using console is better due to connection latency. I used Yast only for double check my configurations.
• Basically it’s an open book exam. You can read the online manual that already installed in Linux by default. It doesn’t mean that it will be easy. If you don’t know the stuff, you won’t know which manual you need to read . So does the real job isn’t it? When I had any doubts with Samba, just type man samba. Not sure with the command arguments of useradd, just type useradd –help .
• Remain calm, don’t panic
• NEVER use kill or restart. If you need to apply the configuration, do it without reboot. Restart the services instead.
• Practice, practice, practice. Do everything in console and make yourself confortable with it. Remember the most common used command, and know how to locate and search the information from the manual.

DO you need the training for this exam? It’s not mandatory but recommended. Novell has several official course that address the exam objectives. Choose any course that matched your existing skill level. If you are a good self learner, do the preparation with this book.

Good luck, do your way to NCLP.

I sat NCLP exam last week, and failed . This exam was definitely hard, specially for seasoned Linux hobbyist like me. Anybody who’s lives and breath with Linux admin everyday should be able to passed with a good mark. In term of question difficulties, I think most of them (70%) are considered as intermediate. It means if I can do the practicum for intermediate level, I should passed.

I failed in shell/bash scripting practicum. I know C#, VB, and .Net by hart, but not the bash scripting. I need more exercise and reading material on this topic. Another labs such as user administration, secure remote access config, and apache was cleared in a good mark.

I felt thrilled during the studying process in the last 7 days. I never touched Linux extensively in the last 3 years. Everything is .Net and SQL server in my world now. That’s way I was challenged when my supervisor approached me and asked to clear the NCLP exam. I’ve been there before, played with Squid, IPtable, smoothwals, Samba, etc. So, why not?

But It needs time to bring my brain warm up again, tune with the Linux style. Cramming 15 days courseware in just 7 days was very hard.

Another reason why I buy his challenge is because this is the lab exam. It’s not the written exam in multiple choice format . This is not simulation based, it uses the real machine, It gave me 2 servers to be accessed remotely. This delivery format really measures candidate’s skill. I think Microsoft should follow this way to deliver their certification exams. They can start in networking exam, it’s easier to setup lab exam in that topics than the developer tracks.

I’m doing the preparation again now, spend my weekend with Suse Linux stuff. I plan to fight back next week, hopefully I can pass at he 2nd try .

Some of my friends ask me several times about how to reset admin password of Mambo CMS. They forgot the admin password, and want to reset it . The trick is very simple, but it needs proper access to PHPMyAdmin of the Mambo database. Fire up PHPMyAdmin and navigate to mos_users table.

The next step is deleting the user with SuperUser role in mos_users table. Then you need to insert new Admin user with SuperUser permission. But it can not do to the table directly, because Mambo stores the password in encrypted field .

Don’t worry, open the mambo.sql file that contains Mambo database script. Search for the script that doing INSERT the Admin account, copy this line of INSERT statement and run it to your Mambo database. It inserts new Admin user name with default password: Admin.

If you’re to lazy for opening and observe mambo.sql file, just run this script in your PHPMyAdmin:

INSERT INTO `mos_users` VALUES (62, 'Administrator', 'admin', 'admin@wherever', '21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3', 'superadministrator', 0, 1, 25, '2004-06-06 00:00:00', '0000-00-00 00:00:00', '', '');

Finally I have finished the migration of this site. I move from Mambo to Wordpress, thanks to table structure between this both CMS that pretty similar. I only need to query and insert 2 tables from Mambo to Wordpress. The rest of the configurations is made it manually.

Wordpress make it simple to posting and blogging, something I really need for personal site. It does not mean that Mambo is bad. Mambo is very good CMS, but it is overkill for personal publishing like this one. I use Blix theme and doing some modifications in it. I like it’s simple style, and I make it more simple. My concern is keep this site simple, fast, and clearly straight forward.

I just play around with PHP in last couple days. It’s rather dificult for me, because I never use this tool before. Usually I rely on ASP, and VB for my Job.

The mission is how to connect PHP under Linux with SQL Server under Windows machine, because my book is about Linux-Windows integration. There are alot of alternatives that can be used for this purpose, both commercially or free. Some tools are FreeDTS, Sybase interface, PHPLib, or commercial ODBC interface. I must carefully research to choose the easiest thecnique.
ah,… Why I’m so sleepy at night.