LPI changed the objectives of LPIC-2, with the new ones available from November 1st, 2013, see: LPI revises objectives for LPIC-2 and LPIC-3 Linux certification programs.

Links

• LPIC-2 202 Objectives
• Changes from v3 to v4 of the exam
• New objectives of the v4 exam

My list of topics to revise, before taking the LPIC-2 exam. Note that this list was compiled before the exam objectives' revision in October 2013.

DHCP

• Example Servers: bigpie1, sds1, nicds1, officesrv
• CentOS Install DHCP
• dhcpd.conf

LDAP

• Example Servers: ldap-master, ldap-slave
• Locate and examine LDIF files
• ldapadd, slappasswd, ldappasswd, ldapdelete, getent, ldapsearch

Routing

• /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward and sysctl.conf equivalent
• RIP with routed

iptables

• iptables chains, default policies
• flush tables, add rules
• configure NAT

SSH * Support programs: rpc.idmapd, rpc.mount.d, rpc.nfsd, rpc.statd, portmap * Setting up exports with NFS in /etc/exports, and on the fly with exportfs * showmount, nfsstat, rpcinfo * Mount over NFS

FTP * PAM Basics, PAM Stacks, Examples of PAM Modules * PAM Configuration, NSS Configuration

TCP Wrappers

• /etc/hosts.allow, /etc/hosts.deny
• Calling TCP Wrappers from /etc/inetd
• /etc/xinetd

Snort

• Network Design for SNORT

Fail2Ban

• Fail2Ban configuration

Bootloaders

• Identifying active bootloader on a system (based on files on disk or with bootinfoscript)
• LILO Error Messages
• GRUB Legacy Error Messages
• GRUB2 Error Messages and Rescue Console

Boot Time Troubleshooting

• initrd
• dmesg
• /etc/inittab, runlevel, SysV and Upstart

Hardware Troubleshooting

• Hardware detection (/proc/cpuinfo, lspci, lsusb, lsdev, lsmod)

Log files Troubleshooting

• Helpful files: syslog, messages, dmesg or boot.log, secure, cron, lastlog
• Scanning Log Files with head, tail, less, grep, logcheck
• syslogd configuration
• Logrotate configuration

Software Troubleshooting

• strace and ltrace, ldd, lsof, strings
• Library Dependencies
• Kernel options in /proc/, sysctl, /etc/sysctl.conf
• init and the process tree
• top

Troubleshooting Login and Accounts

• Logins with login, XDM, KDM, GDM, getty
• Network Logins with Telnet, SSH, X, XDMCP, VNC
• Users management with usermod
• Login variables in /etc/login.defs, /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc

Cron

• Schedule Jobs with Cron

• Install Request Tracker 4

• How to manage your IT inventory with OCS Inventory NG on Linux

• Toulouse saves 1 million euro with LibreOffice

• How to use awk command in Linux

• How to simulate key press and mouse movement in Linux

Copying from the man page:

dracut creates an initial image used by the kernel for preloading the block device modules (such as IDE, SCSI or RAID) which are needed to access the root filesystem.

dracut reads configuration files in /usr/lib/modprobe.d/ and in /etc/modprobe.d/ by default, unless run in generic mode, in which case it ignores host-specific configuration in /etc/modprobe.d/.

Again, copying from the man page:

    -H, --hostonly
        Host-Only mode: Install only what is needed for booting the local 
        host instead of a generic host.

The default configuration is host-only. This is defined in /etc/dracut.conf, in the line:

    hostonly="yes"

• TimeShift: Restore Your Linux Desktop To Previous State

On CentOS and probably other RedHat-based distributions, /etc/modprobe.d/ is the directory which contains configurations for loading kernel modules, module aliases and module blacklists, that are specific to the host, and not shipped by packages (those should go in /usr/lib/modprobe.d/.

Module configurations from both directories are read by default, unless dracut is run in generic mode.

See also

• dracut
• /usr/lib/modprobe.d/