Introduction to the Unix workstation system administration Education Certification

Welcome to the Unix workstation system administration Education Certification, quite a mouthful, so from now on we'll refer to it as the Unix EdCert. The Unix EdCert is a predominately online course designed by Indiana University's Unix Workstation Support Group to teach new or beginning Unix system administrators the ropes. After successfully completing this course, you will have the tools to effectively administer a Unix workstation or small cluster of workstations. With those tools, you will be able to continue your education to the advanced system administration level. The Unix System Administration Independent Learning project provides an excellent resource for your further education. However, if you are registered to take the Unix Workstation System Administration EdCert, concentrate on that material for now. You will have plenty of time for USAIL later. The final Unix EdCert test will cover only the materials in the Unix EdCert.

As you may have noticed the word "Unix", sometimes written "UNIX", is used to refer to a variety of operating systems. There is a trademarked Unix operating system. But for this course we use "Unix" to refer to the trademarked Unix and/or unix-like operating systems such as HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, and Linux.

How do I participate?

There are really two ways to take this course, as a registered or an unregistered student. The difference is really how much guidance you want to have towards certification.

Registered students must pass a pretest before they become officially enrolled in the course. They will go through the online materials just as unregistered students do, but registered students have access to additional resources: a class mailing list on which to ask questions, discussion and lab sessions offered periodically throughout the course, and more direct help from the instructors. For registered students, the course will be more structured and will have a time-line; for unregistered students, the course will be more like independent study.

However, all the online materials, quizzes, and in-person sessions are optional. Ultimately, the only thing that matters for certification is the qualification for and the passing of the final exam. So, you certainly can go through these materials at your own pace, without being a registered student. When you feel prepared, you can take the pretest. If you get a high enough score you will be able to skip directly to the final certification test.

When you've completed the material and feel comfortable with it, it's up to you to contact the UWSG to schedule a time to take the certification test. The certification test combines written and hands-on work. It is not available online. The USAIL project includes three comprehensive self-evaluation tests that may be helpful when preparing to take the ceritfication test.

For more information about scheduling a pretest or a final test, and also to find out the kinds of things you can do to prepare for the class, please see the UCS Education Program's EdCert page.

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How does it work?

The Unix EdCert consists of a set of topics about general areas of Unix system administration. You can think of these topics as chapters in a book. In each topic are a number of modules containing information about that topic. You can think of the modules as different sections of chapters. At the end of each topic, and particularly important or complicated modules, are online quizzes that you can take to gauge your understanding of the material. Your grade on these quizzes is purely for your own benefit. They do not directly effect whether you will be certified. They are however a good barometer of your understanding of the material. If you do not pass a quiz, you should go back and review the materials that the quiz covers, or you're likely to have a problem in those areas on the final certification test.

A special note on the quizzes

Because of the way the engine behind the online quizzes works, they need a little explanation here. When you arrive at a quiz it will be clearly marked as such. The title of the topic which the quiz covers will appear at the top, followed, possibly, by some notes on taking that quiz. Answer all of the questions and at the bottom, submit the quiz. Your quiz will be graded for you and the results will be displayed. Please pay attention to your grade. The quiz engine will let you know whether or not you have passed the quiz. If not, go back and study further in that topic, or else move on to the next topic.

On the results page you will also see a record of all the questions you missed. You may want to save or print out this page to have a record of these questions. Each question is identified by a code in square brackets ([]). That code uniquely identifies that question for that quiz. With a record of the questions that you missed and their codes, you can ask about that question at a lab session or on the mailing list to learn the correct answer, if you were confused by the topic's material.

Also note that the quiz questions are randomly selected from a database. So each time you take a quiz, at least some of the questions will be different.
This is very, very, important; please note this! When you open the page to take the quiz, it is automatically generated for you, and so is the grading key. So that quiz must be taken and submitted for grading before you move to any other pages or the grading key will no longer be valid. In other words, don't use your browser's forward or back buttons, or history while taking a quiz, or to go to a quiz. Each time you open a quiz page you must get a fresh, re-generated quiz. This means you either follow a hyperlink to the page, or else use your browser's reload option to re-generate the contents of the quiz. This is very important to remember, if you don't, you may spend a lot of time taking a quiz only to submit it and find that the grading key is no longer valid.

Lynx users please pay particular attention. Because of the way lynx works, you are not guaranteed a fresh, re-generated quiz if you follow a hyperlink. Please get into the habit of always reloading the quiz page before taking it, even if you've gotten to the quiz through a hyperlink. If you are using lynx consider using a graphical browser, like Netscape instead. You will likely get much more out of this course.

For registered students, we've scheduled lab sessions throughout the course where we think they are appropriate. As the need arises we may schedule more. We have the the current schedule online, which you should check periodically. Lab sessions are not required. They are a good opportunity to get some hands-on experience with the course material and to pick the instructors brains.

The Unix EdCert is designed to be used two different ways, either as a course which you proceed through from first to last topic, or as a reference which you check based on the subject you are interested in. We've tried to keep the modules as independent as possible, so they can serve as stand alone references. If you are interested in other Unix system administration references, take a look at the USAIL project. It includes the material of the Unix EdCert as well as lots of other online information.

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Navigating the EdCert

As we've discussed, the course is divided up into several topics, which are further divided into modules. The main EdCert table of contents lists all of the topics in chronological order. When you follow a topic link you go the the table of contents for that topic, which lists all its modules. You'll then want to proceed through each of those modules in order. At the end of each topic, you will come to a page which lets you know you have finished the material for that topic. At this point, you may follow links which allow you to take the quiz for that topic, look over the lab instructions if there is a lab, study further in that topic, or move on to the next one.

At the top and bottom of each page are sets of buttons designed to help you navigate your way through the course. The navigation buttons at the top and the bottom are the same, duplicated for convenience. These buttons are divided up into two sets, the course navigation buttons and the topic navigation buttons.

The course navigation buttons

The contents button takes you to the Unix EdCert table of contents.

The glossary button takes you to a glossary that we've compiled of the computing terms used in the Unix EdCert.

The schedule button takes you to the current schedule of Unix EdCert discussion and lab sessions for registered students.

The help button takes you to a page that provides some help for using the Unix EdCert.

The topic navigation buttons

The previous button takes you to whatever page is just before your current page in the course. This may be a module, or a topic table of contents.

The next button takes you to whatever page is just after your current page in the course. This may be a module, or a table of contents. (Shocker, huh?)

The top button takes you to the top page of the topic you're in. For instance, if you are deep in the heart of a module of the Understanding Unix concepts topic, the top button would take you to that topic's table of contents.

We've laid out the course so that you can proceed through it in its entirety with the topic navigation buttons. You need only to continue hitting the next button and you will go through all the modules and quizzes in each topic, in order.

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Miscellaneous good stuff to know

We've provided a ``Unix EdCert at a glance'' type reference sheet online that you'll probably want to take a look at. It contains some book recomendations, the course mailing lists, and Web browsers.

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