Chapter 1. Exam 101 Overview

LPI Exam 101 is one of two exams required for the LPIC Level 1 certification. In total, 14 major Topic areas are specified for Level 1; this exam tests your knowledge on 5 of them.

Exam Topics are numbered using a level.topic notation (e.g., 1.2, 2.5). In the LPI's early stages of development, Topics were assigned to exams based on a different scheme than we see today. When the scheme changed, the Topics were redistributed to Exams 101 and 102, but the pairing of Topic numbers to exams was dropped. As a result, we have 1.x and 2.x Topics in both Level 1 exams.

The Level 1 Topics are distributed between the two exams to create tests of similar length and difficulty without subject matter overlap. As a result, there's no requirement for or advantage to taking them in sequence.

Each Topic contains a series of Objectives covering specific areas of expertise. Each of these Objectives is assigned a numeric weight, which acts as an indicator of the importance of the Objective. Weights run between 1 and 10, with higher numbers indicating more importance. An Objective carrying a weight of 1 can be considered relatively unimportant and isn't likely to be covered in much depth on the exam. Objectives with larger weights are sure to be covered on the exam, so you should study these Topics closely. The weights of the Objectives are provided at the beginning of each Topic section.

The Topics for Exam 101 are listed in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1. LPI Topics for Exam 101

Name	Number of Objectives	Description
Chapter 3	7	This Topic covers many GNU and Unix commands used during day-to-day system administration activity. Objectives include command syntax, text filters, file management, pipes, redirects, process management, process execution priorities, and basic regular expressions.
Chapter 4	8	Objectives for this Topic include the creation of partitions and filesystems, filesystem integrity, mounting, quotas, permissions, ownership, links, and file location tasks.
Chapter 5	2	This short Topic covers system boot, lilo, syslog, runlevels, shutdown, and reboot.
Chapter 6	4	This is an overview of Linux documentation sources, such as manpages, info pages, /usr/doc, Linux-related web sites, and the generation of local documentation. It also includes some discussion of user support.
Chapter 7	5	This core system administration Topic includes user and group accounts, user environment issues, syslog, cron, at, and backup.

As you can see from Table 1-1 the Topic numbers assigned by the LPI are not sequential. This is due to various modifications made by the LPI to its exam program as it developed. The Topic numbers serve only as reference and are not used on the exam.

Exam 101 lasts a maximum of 90 minutes and contains approximately 60 questions. The exam is administered using a custom application on a PC in a private room with no notes or other reference material. About 75 percent of the exam is made up of multiple-choice single-answer questions. These questions have only one correct answer and are answered using radio buttons. Some of them present a scenario needing administrative action. Others seek appropriate commands for a particular task or for proof of understanding of a particular concept.

About 10 percent of the exam questions are multiple-choice multiple-answer questions, which are answered using checkboxes. These questions can have multiple correct responses, each of which must be checked. This is probably the most difficult question style because the multiple answers increase the likelihood of mistakes. But they also are a good test of your knowledge of Unix commands, since an incorrect response on any one of the possible answers causes you to miss the entire question. The exam also has some fill-in-the-blank questions. These questions provide a one-line text area input box for you to fill in your answer. These questions check your knowledge of concepts such as important files and commands, plus common facts that you are expected to be aware of.