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Concepts·Red Hat Certified System Administrator

RHCSA Exam Format and Objectives

EX200 is 180 minutes of real work on a real machine: no multiple choice, no internet, and a grader that reads the state of the system rather than the commands you typed. This is the objective list as Red Hat publishes it, what each domain is worth in practice, and why the exam is lost more often to things that did not survive a reboot than to things nobody knew.

Start Here Guide 1 of 67 Beginner

Written against the versions above. The current EX200 is based on **Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10**. This matters more than usual: the RHEL 10 revision dropped the entire container domain and added Flatpak, so a study plan built from RHEL 8 or 9 material contains a chapter you will not be examined on and misses one you will.

The machine below is the one every command in this path runs on, and it is the same release the exam uses.
Server NameIP AddressOSRolesCPURAMHDD
RHCSA-A01192.168.0.31RHEL 10.0 (Coughlan)Practice node (graded) - spare /dev/sda2 Core4 GB50 GB + 15 GB

Before you start

  1. The format, in four numbers

    | | | |---|---| | 180 minutes | one section, no break | | 210 of 300 | the passing score | | 0 | multiple-choice questions | | 0 | pages of internet you may consult |

    Every task is performed on a live system. There is nothing to describe, nothing to select, and no partial credit for knowing the answer without applying it.

    The machine you are given is a plain RHEL 10 install, which is exactly what the box below is:

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 10.0 (Coughlan)
6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0.x86_64

    No internet does not mean no documentation. man, info and /usr/share/doc are installed and permitted, and being fast in them is a scored skill rather than a fallback - guide 4 is the next guide for that reason.

    bash Example session 
    cat /etc/redhat-release; uname -rRed Hat Enterprise Linux release 10.0 (Coughlan)6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0.x86_64

    Expected resultRHEL 10.0 - the release the current exam is based on.

    Success conditionYou know the shape of the exam and the release it targets.

  2. The ten domains

    Red Hat publishes 62 objectives in ten sections. This path is ordered to that list:

    | Domain | Objectives | Track here | |---|---|---| | Understand and use essential tools | 11 | Essential Tools | | Manage software | 4 | Managing Software | | Create simple shell scripts | 4 | Shell Scripts | | Operate running systems | 10 | Operating Running Systems | | Configure local storage | 6 | Local Storage | | Create and configure file systems | 5 | File Systems | | Deploy, configure and maintain systems | 6 | Deploy and Maintain | | Manage basic networking | 4 | Basic Networking | | Manage users and groups | 4 | Users and Groups | | Manage security | 8 | Security and SELinux |

    Essential tools is the largest domain and the least studied, because it looks like material you already know. It is not weighted lightly, and losing marks there is losing them on redirection and links rather than on LVM.

    Security is the second largest, and six of its eight objectives are SELinux. More candidates fail on SELinux contexts than on anything else in the blueprint, which is why this path gives it six guides rather than one.

    bash Example session 
    getenforce; sestatus | grep -E "SELinux status|Current mode|Loaded policy"EnforcingSELinux status:                 enabledLoaded policy name:             targetedCurrent mode:                   enforcing

    Expected resultSELinux enforcing - the state the exam machine is in and expects to stay in.

    Success conditionYou know where the marks are, and where they are lost.

  3. How it is graded, and the three consequences

    The exam is graded by a script that inspects the final state of the machine after it reboots. Nothing watches you work. Three consequences follow, and they matter more than any single command in this path.

    Anything that did not persist did not happen. A service started but not enabled, a firewall rule added without --permanent, a filesystem mounted but absent from /etc/fstab - each of those scores zero despite being correct at the moment you typed it. guide 70 is the checklist.

    A machine that does not boot scores zero overall. A malformed /etc/fstab line will stop the boot, taking every other task with it. This is the single most expensive mistake available, and it is why the storage track here always verifies with mount -a before rebooting.

    Method is not marked, only outcome. nmcli or editing a keyfile, vim or sed - if the end state is right, it is right. Use whichever you are faster with.

    The grader can only see configuration, so the habit worth building from guide one is to finish every task by *verifying it the way the grader will*: not by remembering that you did it, but by reading it back off the system.

    bash Example session 
    sudo systemctl is-active firewalld; sudo firewall-cmd --get-default-zoneactivepublicid; sudo -n true && echo "sudo: works without a password prompt"uid=1000(sysadmin) gid=1000(sysadmin) groups=1000(sysadmin),10(wheel) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023sudo: works without a password prompt

    Expected resultA running firewall and a sudo-capable account - the state to preserve.

    Success conditionYou understand that the exam scores the machine, not your keystrokes.

Troubleshooting

Official sources

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