I’m far less confident than I was back in August, when I took (and eventually aced) the Red Hat Certified Technician exam. I know I got at least the first half OK, although I would have preferred a greater safety margin for one portion. It’s the second half that has me concerned, though, as I’m not entirely confident that I got everything configured just so. I did manage to at least answer every question and verify my answers, so hopefully it’ll be enough.

I still don’t have anywhere to really use these skills, at least not in my current day-to-day work. I do plan to put Fedora on at least two machines at home (one laptop and one desktop) and see how much I can accomplish, but until I make a move away from desktop support it’s still going to be just a sidebar at WPNI. At least, for the time being.

Last time, my results arrived within 24 hours. I hope it’s the same this time around, as I’ve already had enough trouble sleeping this week.

—

I wrote the above at around 5 PM but didn’t post it. About half an hour later, I got an email from Red Hat:

SECTION I: TROUBLESHOOTING AND SYSTEM MAINTENANCE
RHCE requirements: completion of compulsory items (50 points)
overall section score of 80 or higher
RHCT requirements: completion of compulsory items (50 points)

Compulsory Section I score: 50.0
Non-compulsory Section I score: 30.0
Overall Section I score: 80

SECTION II: INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
RHCE requirements: score of 70 or higher on RHCT components (100 points)
score of 70 or higher on RHCE components (100 points)

RHCT requirement: score of 70 or higher on RHCT components (100 points)

RHCT components score: 100.0%
RHCE components score: 51.8%

RHCT Certification: PASS
RHCE Certification: NO PASS

RHCT Certification: PASS
RHCE Certification: NO PASS

You did not pass the RHCE portion of exam on this attempt, so you
have not earned the designation RHCE yet.

Damnit. I guess I didn’t do as well as I thought. In fact, I’m stunned by the result; I had no idea it went that badly. I only have the vaguest idea of what might have happened, although I don’t want to get too into it here (I’m still under their NDA for the exam, after all).

Still, this means I basically wasted an entire week of my time, my employer’s time, and my entire training budget for the year and have nothing to show for it now. [expletive].

Well, I guess there’s always next year.

I sincerely hope Apple decides to eventually throw some official support behind projects like this. It’d be terrific if they would open-source the platform, but patents or legal issues may not allow that. Then again, there’s always the speculation that the platform could reemerge as a new product…

SECTION I:    TROUBLESHOOTING
RHCT requirements:  completion of compulsory items (50 points)

Compulsory troubleshooting score:                        50.0

SECTION II:  INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
RHCT minimum requirements:  70 percent on RHCT components

Installation and Configuration score:                    100.0%

RHCT Certification:                                      PASS

Boo-yah. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m instantly qualified to engineer an entire data center around Linux, but it does show others that I know something about setting it up and using it. I’m undecided as to whether I want to continue down the track to the RHCE cert, which is (from what I understand) a lot more difficult, but a lot more beneficial as well.

It also doesn’t answer the larger, more personal question of whether I even want to do such a thing; the whole career-changing thing is still a big unknown for me at this point. Still, like I said before it never hurts to have another skill set in one’s toolbox, at least for the time being. (How I’ll get to apply it at work is a topic I will eventually need to discuss with my boss, I suppose.)

Annoyingly, unlike the Apple certification exam I took earlier in the year, the results won’t be ready for up to three business days, so I won’t have an answer until late Wednesday at the latest.

I suppose the next step is to decide if it’s a path I wish to continue following. I’m still not entirely convinced that I want to remain in the technology field forever, but I suppose that in the meantime I should build up as many useful skills as I can, especially given my (current) lack of a college degree. Perhaps if I get an opportunity to start using Linux more at work, I can move to a system administration position. I’ll probably take the ACTC exam from Apple next, since I still have a voucher for a discount on the exam and I feel pretty confident in my ability to pass, but I’ve no illusions about that being anywhere near as valuable to others, or useful in obtaining such a position, as, say, taking the RHCE exam from RedHat.

Anyway, I’ll post the results as soon as they arrive. Next week, it’s back to work.

One quick bit of advice, which I believe does not violate the confidentiality agreement regarding course content: don’t run pvcreate on the filesystem containing the root partition, unless you plan to spend some time in rescue mode.

(Naturally, I end up taking the exam just as Erorus finally gets his troublesome install working.)