Customer Reviews

LPI General Linux II Exam Cram (Exam: 102)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The book--General Linux II--only covers half of what the Exam will cover. Fraught with typos and errors, I can hardly believe that this title was even brought to market....

As early as on page 15, "MM" is defined as "two-digit year" instead of a "two-digit month". On page 17 lists "ea_h" instead of "each", "usad" instead of "used". Even crucial Linux commands were not spared. A hundred pages later, Question 4, "dpkg" is spelt as "dpklg"! Again, if you flip to page 322, Question 33 and elsewhere, there is no distinction between an "I" and "l", and since you can't tell the distinction between the letters, you cannot at all answer the question. There are more errors but I can overlook them if not for the fact that the material was so meekly presented that one wonders how claims can be made by the publisher as "The Smartest Way to Get Certified".

Typos aside, the section on Hardware and Architecture does not elaborate sufficiently on LPT1 and LPT2 for the IRQs. Nor did the section on Package Management touch on non-abbreviated commands or alternate commands (L can also mean --listfiles, etc, etc).

I've highlighted only a few of the many deficiencies in the book since the errors are too many to list. The fact that the main author Chris Hare is not even LPIC qualified left me a nagging feeling that there is no quality control in place.

To sum it all, the book covers about half the objectives adequately of the LPIC exam. The rest is really a hit and miss affair by the authors (actually more misses than hits), who clearly reveal a lack of understanding of the material needed on the LPIC exam. (I personally believe that Dulaney's name is merely to grace the book, since most screen shots clearly shows Hare's user name).

The only saving grace is that there are more than 200 questions and answers that can help in some preparation. Use this book only in conjuction with another book, and only if you got money to spare.

This exam prep is very much like the rest of this Exam Cram series... a noble attempt at helping people pass an exam; unfortunately it turns out to be an exercise in how NOT to write a book.

Typos are rampant, errors in syntax and command lines abound, and large sections of the LPI objectives for 102 are missing.

This book will NOT aid you in your LPI testing, but it should be owned by anyone planning to write a technical exam prep, as a great example on how NOT to do it....

At page # 231, a 2 page printout appears out of nowhere. This is the printout of the Xaccess file from red-hat distribution. What is fully is that there is no explanation at all about the meaning of various terms used. Choser, indirect query etc.

So I went elsewhere to understand what these words mean. Then it turns out that the authors themselves have no clue what they are. They say..

"The Choser broadcasts that it is available and X terminals or X servers can connect to it for an X Session"

Actually choser is a program that relays the indirect XDMCP query to a bunch of hosts ( as XDMCP direct queries ) ( normally broadcast address of the network ) on the behalf of the requesting display, and sends the responses back to the display as a list of hosts providing XDMCP display management.

Later the authors treat "choser queries" and "XDMCP queries" as if they are different.

Page 235 : "you must comment out this line to have xdm actually listen for chooser and XDMCP requests".

Also later while talking about kdm, he says..

"if you are using KDE interface for X" ( KDE is a window manager and not an "interface" ( You will see these kind of vague usages throughout the book )

Same sentence states that "if you are using the KDE interface for X, making the changes to xdm-config or to Xresources will not have the desired effect".

But the very next paragraph says : "The kdm application uses the same files as xdm and works in the same manner".

Sad that this book has been printed at all...

Here's a good example of how bad this book is because of all the errors. Chapter 8 is a review of the basics of the bash shell. It says on page 173 "Processes are covered in great detail in Chapter 6...". Chapter 6 in this book is about the vi editor, not processes, but Chapter 6 in the Exam Cram LPI 101 book is all about processes. They are just copying and pasting out of another book at this point, and they obviously aren't proof reading it. There are TONS of errors in this book. This is the worst Exam Cram book of all time!

1. Chapter on vi - page 122

"who wants to work with such an application ( vi ) when word processors such as Miscosoft Word exist". This not only shows his ignorance about Linux, but also about Programming and System Administration. Author doesn t know that even Visual Basic Programmers do not use MS word to type in their program. Only clerks and non technical managers use MS word.

2. The chapter on printers is too funny - all it is a printout of printcap and lpd.perms files. Even the man pages would have been much more helpful. Even the questions at the end of the chapter cannot be answered from reading the chapter ( lpq is given in some vague one liner in the utility summation. But there is a question appearing on it. )

3. Page 146 "This utility ( lp ) still exists and is included in many versions of Linux, but is generally overlooked in favor of lpr, which is a newer utility with more-logical options." the same chapter page 160 " lpr - An ancestor to lp, it allows you to submit jobs for printing"

4. Only the output of the commands are shown not the commands themselves, that leaves you wonder what command did the Author type.

5. Two and a half pages are dedicated towards graphical configuration of printers - which is not part of the exam.

This is just an example from a 15 page chapter I read today Every chapter is filled with mistakes and useless printouts. I am really surprised that there are people out there who gave this 5 stars ( Unless they are authors themselves with fake ids ).

The book is nothing but a collection of blunders. Here is a sample from Part II On page 22 author gives the complete commands for fdisk in almost one page without any explanation at all. As if that was not enough, the very next chapter repeats the same table - again without any explanations, but with one difference - most of the commands are b

b - Edit the disk label

b - Toggles the DOD compatibility flag

b - adds a new partition

b - Creates a new empty DOS partition table

b - quits without saving the changes

b - Creates a new empty sun disklabel.

This is probably the simpler of the mistakes, as the editor can be blamed for this. Throughout the book you will see mistakes simply because the Author himself has not understood the concept. Like mixing up between Partition table, boot record and superblock. It came as a surprise to me that many people gave good rating for this book. Frankly I suspect foulplay here. It could very well be the authors themselves.

After LPI 101, it seemed like I needed something to help me study for 102. This seemed like my best bet. It certainly did prepare me for passing the test, but not by a huge margin. Don't expect to be seeing a 700+ score if you're depending on this to get you there.

Another problem is that there are a lot of errors within the book itself, especially the review questions. You'll find yourself being told you answered a question wrong, only to flip back a few pages and see the answer you'd given.

Another problem is that the typeface was poorly selected for much of the book. There is no visible difference between a capitol i and a lowercase L, for example. When you're dealing with command switches, that can be a significant issue. There are also a number of typos that nobody caught in editing.

All in all, it was helpful, and I would recommend the book. But pay attention; don't take everything as fact.

This book is full of errors, does not address portions of the test and is waste of money.

Not only does the book contain errors, there is not even an errata site to report errors! I can only think that the publisher/authors realize that if they did create an errata site for this dismal excuse to waste paper it would be just as long as the book! Yes there are other section just as useless, but this is the one section that was totaly useless.

I dare any one to glean any useful information from the book about the debian pack manager. Being a Suse and Redhat user this is the one section that I needed assistance with. This book was of NO USE on this issue.

Do not waste your money on this book!

This book is filled with errors. I was going to be nice and give it 2 stars, until I read this on page 122 about vi --> "Who wants to work with such an application when word processors such as Microsoft Word exist?" Are you kidding me? Has the author ever even worked with Linux before? I've read over 20 Exam Cram/Prep books before and this is easily the worst one. Go buy O'Reilly's LPI in a Nutshell. It covers both exams in one book and is much much better than this.

The title explains it all. Your better off with O'Reilly's LPI in a Nutshell. The O'Reilly book covers both the 101 and 102 exams. The Exam Cram LPI 101 book was okay, but the 102 book is terrible.