Linux skills assessment: intermediate
You measure your intermediate skills with packages, storage, scripts, logs and services through timed, real server tasks.
Level 201 · 15 lessons · 12 practice labs
Lessons
Preparation
- Exam strategy: easy ones first, then verify
- Verifying your work: does it survive a reboot
- Short task: a fifteen-minute warm-up
Section tests
- Assessment: package management
- Assessment: disks, partitions and LVM
- Assessment: systemd services and timers
- Assessment: Bash scripts
- Assessment: logs and scheduled jobs
- Assessment: text processing with sed and awk
- Assessment: ACLs and sudo
- Short task: make a study plan for your two weakest areas and retest
Final
- Mixed practice 1 (60 minutes)
- Mixed practice 2 (60 minutes)
- Mixed practice 3 (60 minutes)
- Capstone: a two-hour intermediate hands-on exam
Practice labs
- Timed check: package management: Install one package, hold another at its version and find which package owns a file.
- Timed check: partitions and LVM: On the spare disk create a partition, volume group and logical volume, format it and mount it persistently.
- Timed check: growing and proving it survives reboot: Grow a logical volume and its file system online, add swap and verify everything holds after a reboot.
- Timed check: service and timer: Write and enable a service unit for a given script and a timer running it every ten minutes.
- Timed check: Bash script: In twenty minutes write a user report script that takes arguments, validates input and returns the right exit code.
- Timed check: turn a script into a robust service: Turn a script into a service running as its own user that restarts on crash and logs, and verify after a reboot.
- Timed check: logs and scheduled jobs: Export a service's errors from today to a file and add a cron job that runs every night.
- Timed check: text processing with sed and awk: Change a value in a config file with sed and produce a column total and conditional line report with awk.
- Timed check: a summary report from logs: Produce a report of requests and errors per hour from an access log, write a rotation rule and schedule it.
- Timed check: ACLs and sudo: Give a user read access to a directory with an ACL and write a passwordless sudo rule for one command.
- Mixed practice: intermediate tasks: Complete six tasks across packages, disks, services, scripts and permissions in twenty minutes and identify your two weakest areas.
- Final practice: a short intermediate exam: Complete eight tasks across all topics in twenty-five minutes and verify with the checker that each survives a reboot.
About this course
You measure your intermediate skills with packages, storage, scripts, logs and services through timed, real server tasks.
What you will learn
- Preparation
- Section tests
- Final
Prerequisites
Finishing the level 101 courses of the same path, or knowing those topics, is enough.
Lab environment
Lessons run in your own Kali Linux terminal that opens in the browser. Nothing to install; the lab starts clean in every lesson.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this course right for my level?
- The course is at level 201; it assumes you know the topics of the lower-level courses.
- Is there anything to install?
- No. Every lesson runs in your own lab environment that opens in the browser.
- How do lessons work?
- Each lesson has 8 to 10 steps and a short quiz. Early steps show the command to type, later steps give less help; if two attempts fail, the solution opens.
- Can I try it for free?
- Yes. The first three lessons of every course are free.