Linux Administration Olympiad on November 27th

A week later, on November 27, the first round of the Linux Administration Olympiad will begin.

Students and young professionals can participate. The first round is remote, the second is full-time in the KROK office in Moscow. Prizes - monthly scholarship, payment of official Red Hat courses and subsequent RHCSA / RHCE exams. The first round is open questions and tests, the second round is an attempt to fix your “broken” computer and pick up the necessary services on it.
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I am organizing the Olympics, so below are the details about how it goes, why does KROK do it, a couple of tips and a couple of typical mistakes of the participants.

What is this Olympiad?

CROC's traditional administrative competition, already the fifth in a row. Previously, we offered jobs from different areas - computer hardware, networks, administration of Windows and Linux. Thus, participants who had experience in a heterogeneous environment, “admin-all-in-one” had the maximum advantage. But it did not allow the participants to fully reveal themselves to the participants with deep knowledge in a certain area. Therefore, this year we are focusing on the topic of Linux.

How is the Olympiad?

The first round is designed to select the most successful participants. Some of the questions in the first round are offered in the form of an essay, where there are no answers, and in an empty text box you need to state your thoughts. Such questions allow you to rank participants with similar points for test questions, and the jury answers them the most.

Example of task : we once asked to look at the switch port configuration and the output of ifconfig and determine which VLAN will get the untagged traffic. Or by the processor flags, determine if there is hardware support for virtualization. The participants also compiled SQL queries, analyzed the output of the sniffer, dealt with logs.

Tips for the first round:

• Give the rationale for an open response - it adds chances.
• Use the search. It is impossible to remember everything. The main value of knowledge is a dry residue, often expressed in the fact that a person knows about what happens, how and where to look at it quickly. Answers to most of the questions “make their way in Google,” but with only one caveat - you need to make a request correctly, to know which key points to look for.
• Do not leave unanswered theoretical questions that you do not understand. Time is enough for a few minutes of searching - and, most likely, this will be enough. The answer to each question can google - we checked.
• Theoretical definitions, standards and terminology will not meet in the tasks of the Olympiad. Participants will most likely have to deal with questions when the conclusions of commands or configs are presented and they must be correctly interpreted, conclusions drawn from them.

Second round

The face-to-face tour will resemble RedHat exams (it is not by chance that we offer them as main prizes). RHCSA / RHCE certificates are especially appreciated by employers. Having received such a certificate, you can dramatically increase your value in the labor market. Passing the Olympics will greatly help prepare for these exams - first and foremost morally. In general, RedHat exams are different in that the tasks are relatively simple, but there are many of them, and time is short.

Tips for full-time tour:

• You can and should use the Internet.
• It is better not to spend a lot of time on one task: often participants “fall down” on the fact that they are obsessed with something one and do not go further.
• Some of the tasks of the in-person tour are related to the diagnosis and troubleshooting of the system. For example, your system will not boot, or will spontaneously shut down. Or do not let you perform basic operations. All the problems created by us artificially and sometimes very tricky. By the way, this is a very interesting quest: I have seen time and again what delight captures participants when they manage to determine what we have broken in the system. Serious and focused people suddenly exclaim and joyfully rub their hands. And, by the way, inventing these tasks is no less pleasure, and our team each time with ecstasy comes up with something new.
• The second part of the tasks is usually setting up some services or services. But the routine here also does not smell. This is where participants can realize that they have not yet found and fixed all the problems, because ordinary things that have been set up many times before suddenly refuse to work.

Worth participating?

Yes, and more than. It is at least fun and interesting. The task is not to win, but to run through the quest that will be on a full-time tour in order to understand a lot for yourself. I will cite the words of one of the participants (in the end, he did not win, but nevertheless, it seems he did not regret his participation at all). Having completed the assignments, he thoughtfully said: “For today, I had to do so much for the first time, which I learned more than all of last year”. In general, I invite everyone to participate - this is definitely not worth skipping.

Where is the registration and details?

Details here : crocok.ru/ru/olympiad
The registration form is here: www.crocok.ru/olympiad
Mail for questions : info@crocok.ru
In the comments is ready to answer any questions about the Olympics.