★★★★★ 4
Good book that will help with your RHCSA, But...
Format: Kindle
...watch out for typos and problems with some of the explanations in some parts of the book.
I bought this book (kindle version) and used it to pass the RHCSA. The book is clearly tailored for the RHCSA and to be fair does live up to that reputation. There are a lot of exercises and examples that clearly outline what the author is trying to convey. Examples are clear to understand and if you do the exercises yourself, then you are well on your way to passing the RHCSA.
However, there are a lot of typos big and small and I did send them to the author with the assumption that it would benefit others with the corrections (especially the kindle version). The author was responsive at the beginning acknowledging the errors. I did not check whether they have been fixed or not. I just went through the content after making note of the typos and with the understanding that he would fix it.
The topics are well covered and explained. Three topics that could have been better covered are SELinux, AutoFS and Containers. The explanation uses excessive word-o-logy that leaves somebody new to SELinux with tons of confusion and more questions. I used youtube resources to prep myself on the how and why (Ed Walsh on a youtube channel clearly explains the need for SELinux - I have not seen a better explanation than Ed's anywhere else). The author's coverage of AutoFS is again excessive word-o-logy that is a confusing mess. The examples are fine, but the explanation uses confusing rhetoric that can leave you messed up with NFS and AutoFS setup. I read explanations on direct and indirect mappings and watched a couple of youtube videos before I understood what the author was trying to convey. I pointed out both of these to the author.
The container chapter is missing explanations or examples that the reader is well advised to take note. DIY labs 22-3 and 22-4 relate to rootless containers and therefore has to be launched as a regular user. Both labs require that you launch rootless, persistent data containers with folders under /. However, the author does not mention in any of his examples that this type of container requires you to "chown" the folders under root to belong to the user. If you launch a rootless container with this setup as a regular user without "chown"ing, (even with full DAC permissions for everybody) then SELinux does not want to apply the correct context type (container_t to the shared folder). For both these DIYs, if you make a folder anywhere other than areas that a regular user can write or has access, then you will need to "chown" it to the user before launching the rootless container, otherwise this has to be launched as a root container not rootless. I pointed this out to the author. I did not hear from him. Further, container questions (20,21,22) in mock exam #3 has user60 with a NFS mounted home folder. The questions relate to launching rootless containers as user60 with a NFS mounted home folder. SELinux barfs when it encounters the home folder with a type context as "nfs_t" for user60. It suggests workarounds that did not work for me. I googled it and the latest versions of podman seem to have some fix for the errors associated with a home folder on a NFS server. I tried to research this issue further but had an exam scheduled within days. Therefore, I requested the author for clarification/help. Here again, I did not hear from him. Luckily, I did not have to work on any such scenarios on the real test.
Still, the book is a good reference to the topics on the test and is pretty useful. Although I had to refer to other resources for some chapters, the examples and mock exams are very good.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2023
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