I'm already an experienced admin and I picked up the book for review before I took my exam.

The book is misleading in a few areas and contains several pages of command output or config files per chapter that are completely un-necessary. They should've been truncated or the reader should've been encouraged to investigate the commands themselves.

This book is also out of date as the current exam is for SLES 10, rather than 9.

As a former Novell MCNE I was expecting the same excellent coverage Novell provided in their CNE and MCNE certification books, but I was shockingly disappointed. For example - look up the route command - configuring routes on page 372 - there are two short paragraphs of introduction on the first page and two screen shots on the second page, one of the output from typing route and one of the man page for route - I turned the page and... what a shock!... we're onto the next objective. Nothing about relating entries in a route table to the route commands required to get them into the table. No explanation of what a route means, just the man page, which is the motivation for most people to buy a Linux book - but not this one. The rest of the book offers scant coverage of topics that cry out for attention. Of all the Linux books on the market, this is one of the last ones I would turn to for help. This book has served to deter me from buying other Novell books, although the course 307 and course 308 books for SLES9 appear to be much more what I was expecting - in depth coverage, and cheaper too if you get them used.

While lots of topics are included that could be on the CLP practicum, they are by no means covered in the depth that is required to pass this difficult test.

The practicum is not a written test; it is a simulation.
You can't cram for it; you won't pass by simply knowing general facts. You must know how to perform several tasks quickly.

If this book presented the topics in a format that said 'here is what you must know', and then presented a recommended series of steps to use on the simulation, then I might be able to recommend this book.

Instead, it says here are lots of things you should know about.
That's not enough.
If you buy this book you will generally know what you will be tested on, but you will definitely not know enough about those things to pass the practicum. You will certainly need to go out and buy several books to learn the subjects in-depth.
Therefore, I cannot recommend this book.

The book is not badly written and the content is fine as a reference material to many Linux systems for a beginner. Where this book flops is in supplying the information required to pass the CLP exam.

I read this book, with a fair few years of networking experience, and even some Unix experience way back. I found it to be informative on the main but it did waffle on about things that were not important. Much of the first third of the book seemed to be padding, having said this, with strange sections being passed over as if not important.

Bottom line. This will not prepare you for the CLP exam. At best after reading it and studying hard you will be setup for a good chance of failure. The problems:

1. Concentrates too much on command line activity. Not saying you don't need to know Shell `stuff', but not to the level this book puts forward.

2. Not enough about YaST. That's where you'll do 60 - 80 percent of the exam.

3. Way to much on the Theory. Theory is fine. We all need to know the `back end' but the book goes to far for this level.

4. And last. But most important. This book does not cover what you are asked in the exam. And at a considerable cost per a pop at the exam this is the point to know.....

On taking the CLP I was presented with a section of the Practicum that failed me. There were five `sections' to the Practicum and I went `OK' on first two, took a bit of thinking on the next two (even here there were bits that weren't in the book but I was able to find my way). Then... Section five. I've reviewed the book since. Nothing. Nothing even close. The book mentioned the subject matter in the briefest fashion and actually state that "you only need to know names of a few utilities: `x' `y' `z'"

Now, I can't say what the Practicum asked as I'd be breaking the paperwork signed with Novell! But suffice to say the Practicum not only expected you to know the "names" of a few things but... Also wanted you to configure client software, server based configuration files, and I'm still not sure what else!

It wasn't in the book and as far as I can see from the structure of the Practicum you will always get one of these questions.

Anyway. Good Luck ?

(Note this, I'm under NDA, so I can't go into details about what the CLP practicum exam exercises are like in more depth and detail.)

Hi! Today I did the CLP practicum. I had used this book for preparation. Not long ago I passed RHCE, Red Hat Certified Engineer exam, so following this book was a breeze. All the Lab Exercises felt easy, aswell as doing the two included practicums. I felt practicum exam 050-069 would be no problem. WRONG! Where should I start, exam 050-069 doesn't exist. CLP certification is gained throug something called Practicum v.2 exam# 050-689. This is an all different beast than anything this book prepares you for. For most of the exercises you only get maybe 10% coverage in the book. The book covers something with one page, but the dept of knowledge to solve the real problem might need 10 pages. In the information here at Amazon, they say this book covers exam 050-069, that doesn't exist. On the back of my book it says it covers exam 050-689. I would say that the only thing this book covers exam 050-689 is the cover. I get the feeling that they made the first practicum exam, and wrote the book at the same time. Scraped the first exam, but launched the book anyway. Smart thing to do Novell... NOT!

Also the plattform they are using for this test is in lack of other words.. plain stupid. You are working with servers throug java and macromedia flash. The latency is atleast 1-2 seconds. Imaging typing something, and everything is lagging 1-2 seconds. You se you misspelled something, and press the arrow a few times, just to discover that you pressed a few to many. Tab doesn't work to "shortcut" commands and links. The resolution is 640x480, so I hope the shell is a good friend to you! Trust me, you will get super frustrated of the poor performance of the test system! One more problem for me was that I'm from sweden, used too swedish keyboard layout, but the test stipulates that you have an english layout. So I'm typing something, just to discover 1-2 seconds lather that I typed something different... oh.. that's right, | and ~ is not where they used to be. You get anoyed having to look at the keyboard all the time to find the right symbols.

So how should you prepare for the practicum. Have this page as your guideline. http://www.novell.com/training/testinfo/objectives/clpobj.html
Anything from this page can come as exercises.. in great detail!! Sure, you can use the book, but just as part of your preparation. Do your homework, since Novells book tutering failes. One more thing, the say the test is 2 hours on novell.com. When you login to do the test it says 2,5 hours, and when you start the actual practicum test you get 3 hours. You will need those 3 hours!!

Remember that you need 85% score to pass. (I got 77%, but not thanks to this book.)

One final note is, that I think the RHCE exam is much much more mature as an hands on exam. I get the feeling Novell have rushed something to the market that is far from mature. Sure, you are skilled if you pass the CLP, but if you do the RHCE exam, you'll know what I mean.

Good Luck!