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Before you start
Learn what these tutorials can teach you and how you can get the most from them.
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certifies Linux system administrators at three levels: junior level (also called "certification level 1"), advanced level (also called "certification level 2"), and senior level (also called "certification level 3"). To attain certification level 1, you must pass exams 101 and 102. To attain certification level 2, you must pass exams 201 and 202. To attain certification level 3, you must have an active advanced-level certification and pass exam 301 ("core"). You may also pass additional specialty exams at the senior level.
developerWorks offers tutorials to help you prepare for the five junior, advanced, and senior certification exams. Each exam covers several topics, and each topic has a corresponding self-study tutorial on developerWorks. Table 1 lists the six topics and corresponding developerWorks tutorials for LPI exam 301.
Table 1. LPI exam 301: Tutorials and topics
| LPI exam 301 topic | developerWorks tutorial | Tutorial summary |
|---|---|---|
| Topic 301 | LPI exam 301 prep: Concepts, architecture, and design | (This tutorial.) Learn about LDAP concepts and architecture, learn how to design and implement an LDAP directory, and learn about schemas. See the detailed objectives below. |
| Topic 302 | LPI exam 301 prep: Installation and development | Coming soon. |
| Topic 303 | LPI exam 301 prep: Configuration | Coming soon. |
| Topic 304 | LPI exam 301 prep: Usage | Coming soon. |
| Topic 305 | LPI exam 301 prep: Integration and migration | Coming soon. |
| Topic 306 | LPI exam 301 prep: Capacity planning | Coming soon. |
To pass exam 301 (and attain certification level 3), you should:
- Have several years experience with installing and maintaining Linux® on a number of computers for various purposes.
- Have integration experience with diverse technologies and operating systems.
- Have professional experience as, or training for, an enterprise-level Linux professional (including having experience as a part of another role).
- Know advanced and enterprise levels of Linux administration including installation, management, security, troubleshooting, and maintenance.
- Be able to use open source tools to measure capacity planning and troubleshoot resource problems.
- Have professional experience using LDAP to integrate with UNIX® and Microsoft® Windows® services, including Samba, Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), e-mail, and Microsoft Active Directory directory service.
- Be able to plan, architect, design, build, and implement a full environment using Samba and LDAP as well as measure the capacity planning and security of the services.
- Be able to create scripts in Bash or Perl or have knowledge of at least one system-programming language (such as C).
The Linux Professional Institute does not endorse any third-party exam preparation material or techniques in particular.
Welcome to "Concepts, architecture, and design," the first of six tutorials designed to prepare you for LPI exam 301. In this tutorial, you learn about LDAP concepts and architecture, how to design and implement an LDAP directory, and about schemas.
This tutorial is organized according to the LPI objectives for this topic. Very roughly, expect more questions on the exam for objectives with higher weights.
Table 2 provides the detailed objectives for this tutorial.
Table 2. Concepts, architecture, and design: Exam objectives covered in this tutorial
| LPI exam objective | Objective weight | Objective summary |
|---|---|---|
| 301.1 Concepts and architecture | 3 | Be familiar with LDAP and X.500 concepts. |
| 301.2 Directory design | 2 | Design and implement an LDAP directory while planning an appropriate Directory Information Tree to avoid redundancy. You should have an understanding of the types of data that are appropriate for storage in an LDAP directory. |
| 301.3 Schemas | 3 | Be familiar with schema concepts and the base schema files included with an OpenLDAP installation. |
To get the most from this tutorial, you should have an advanced knowledge of Linux and a working Linux system on which to practice the commands covered.
If your fundamental Linux skills are a bit rusty, you may want to first review the tutorials for the LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 exams.
Different versions of a program may format output differently, so your results may not look exactly like the listings and figures in this tutorial.
To follow along with the examples in these tutorials, you need a Linux workstation with the OpenLDAP package and support for PAM. Most modern distributions meet these requirements.
