On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, happytoday wrote:

> I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
> I found too expensive to me.
> Price of cdrom 960 $ . Can any body guide me to an alternatives for
> those courses to enter the exam directly after the study.
> I need a path that totally cheap .

The cheapest way is to learn on the job, and then take the exams
when you're actually ready.

--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA

CEO,
My Online Home Inventory

URLs: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
http://www.linkedin.com/in/richteer
http://www.myonlinehomeinventory.com

On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 14:03:47 -0700 (PDT), happytoday
wrote:

>I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
>I found too expensive to me.
>Price of cdrom 960 $ .

Jesus, what a ****ing ripoff.

jmichaels4848@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 14:03:47 -0700 (PDT), happytoday
> wrote:
>
>> I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
>> I found too expensive to me.
>> Price of cdrom 960 $ .
>
> Jesus, what a ****ing ripoff.

When YOU produce and distribute a "Unix Essentials" training course on
CDROM, you'll be entitled to criticize. The last I heard, it cost about
$1000 US to "master" a CDROM, and about $1 US to make each copy. This
does not include the cost silk screening a label or the cost of
obtaining rights to reproduce any content that you did not create
personally or the cost to create your own content.

The number of copies you can expect to sell makes a very significant
difference in the pricing; if you can spread the cost of production over
50,000 copies, you can sell for a lot less per copy. If your audience
is small, the price goes up very quickly.

My "Intro" CD cost my then employer about $500 US six or seven years
ago. It was a good deal cheaper than sending me off for classroom
instruction; that was about $2000 US for a five day course.

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> happytoday wrote:
>> I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
>> I found too expensive to me.
>> Price of cdrom 960 $ . Can any body guide me to an alternatives for
>> those courses to enter the exam directly after the study.
>> I need a path that totally cheap .
>> Even where can I find the CD-ROMs of course sold as used ones ?
>
> I doubt very much that you are going to be able to prepare yourself for
> that test, or any other, simply by reading a book!
>
From his or her past postings here, that's very true.

> Learn to install and configure Solaris; it's not rocket science!

It is for some posters!

--
Ian Collins.

Ian Collins wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>> happytoday wrote:
>>> I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
>>> I found too expensive to me.
>>> Price of cdrom 960 $ . Can any body guide me to an alternatives for
>>> those courses to enter the exam directly after the study.
>>> I need a path that totally cheap .
>>> Even where can I find the CD-ROMs of course sold as used ones ?
>> I doubt very much that you are going to be able to prepare yourself for
>> that test, or any other, simply by reading a book!
>>
> From his or her past postings here, that's very true.
>
>> Learn to install and configure Solaris; it's not rocket science!
>
> It is for some posters!
>

Posters who find installing and configuring Solaris to be beyond their
abilities should probably seek professional help!

I am available, for my customary outrageous fee, to anyone in the
Philadelphia/Camden area. I'm sure that I have competition!

"happytoday" wrote in message
news:368f0c4e-0ef4-4651-838b-5fb7d5b05434@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...

>I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
> I found too expensive to me.
> Price of cdrom 960 $ . Can any body guide me to an alternatives for
> those courses to enter the exam directly after the study.
> I need a path that totally cheap .
> Even where can I find the CD-ROMs of course sold as used ones ?

There is not a quick fix to do the exam. Mistake #1 about any UNIX/Linux,
it is a 3 day job to become guru. Been doing this for over 25 years and I
still learn stuff and have been and have mentored many. But you didn't say
if this is your first UNIX or if you knew some of Linux, so I will guess a
little.

You might take a course of one type or another, but experience also helps a
lot. First step if possible is to get a job doing it, and have someone
mentor you. Pick up a bunch of books, no one book has it all.

If you can't get a job doing it, spend time and load up a Intel system with
Solaris 10 x86. Practice. Simply ls /usr/bin /usr/sbin /bin /sbin and then
with each command read the man pages. "man ". At first, just
memorize command-function. After all that is what man pages are for. Get
to know your scripting, start with the Bourne shell (sh). Ya, I know, I
prefer others shells to sh but you need to know it. And do it with vi, vi
is everywhere.

Get a book like "Solaris 10 - Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris
10 Study Guide" or similar. Use it as your template. I say template as if
you are new to UNIX, you could memorize the book word for word, but you will
likely fail the exam. That being said, if you have a grasp of UNIX
fundamentals and understand the sections in this book you will certainly
pass.

Then you are off to a good start. Good UNIX admins usually excel at
learning on their own with books, man pages, how-to, online docs
(http://docs.sun.com) and of course books.

Dave

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:41:34 GMT, Canuck57 wrote:
>
> "happytoday" wrote in message
> news:368f0c4e-0ef4-4651-838b-5fb7d5b05434@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>I searched the prices of unix essentials course SA-100-S10 at sun and
>> I found too expensive to me.
>> Price of cdrom 960 $ . Can any body guide me to an alternatives for
>> those courses to enter the exam directly after the study.
>> I need a path that totally cheap .
>> Even where can I find the CD-ROMs of course sold as used ones ?
>
> There is not a quick fix to do the exam. Mistake #1 about any UNIX/Linux,
> it is a 3 day job to become guru. Been doing this for over 25 years and I
> still learn stuff and have been and have mentored many.

*Huge* +1

I don't understand the "I'll cram for a test so I can pass it"
mentality. Passing the test is supposed to be an indication of your
level of expertise in the field, not the fact that you were able to cram
for a few days and pass. What good does it do you to say "I passed the
test" when you don't *know* the material it covers?

A CD-ROM or book should be a guide in helping you to focus on what you
need to know for the test in question, and to sharpen your skills in
particular areas. Not so that you can pass a test to get a job, and
then sit there and say, "Now what?"

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:00:51 +0200 (CEST),
John Oliver wrote:
>
> I don't understand the "I'll cram for a test so I can pass it"
> mentality. Passing the test is supposed to be an indication of your
> level of expertise in the field, not the fact that you were able to cram
> for a few days and pass. What good does it do you to say "I passed the
> test" when you don't *know* the material it covers?

Easy. Wave the paper and get more monies or even just any job at all.
Which in turn degrades the perceived worth of the certificate, so there'll
be newer, shinier certificates to get, and so on and so forth.

That degradation also happens in the ``regular'' school systems, going
as far as, in some countries, ``school-goers unions'' complaining that
the exams were Too Hard and getting the courses eased up.

Years of cost cuts has left the universities in no better shape. One
could argue that the very surfacing of those vendor certificates was a
sign on the wall already.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

Begin
On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:41:34 GMT, Canuck57 wrote:
> Ya, I know, I prefer others shells to sh but you need to know it. And
> do it with vi, vi is everywhere.

Yes, vi is pretty much a must-have. Installing another pet editors of
choice on your server just to edit some config files is a bit involved.


This is probably as good a place as any to plug _Unix Text Processing_,
which is an excellent introduction into using unix' killer app, troff(!),
and also introduces shell as a user, sed, awk, vi, and a few odds and
sods more. It's available for free as a scanned pdf from the O'Reilly
site, or as a re-done (they lost the original) source or various formats
generated from that.

No relation, just a happy user and even after I'd used vi for years I
learned a lot from it.

Of course, if you (eg. the OP) haven't done any unix before, starting
as a user is a good idea anyhow. _Learning the unix operating system_
from O'Reilly, I've heard good things about, but there are bound to be
more first introductions to unix.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On 10 Sep 2008 16:12:36 GMT, jpd wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:00:51 +0200 (CEST),
> John Oliver wrote:
>>
>> I don't understand the "I'll cram for a test so I can pass it"
>> mentality. Passing the test is supposed to be an indication of your
>> level of expertise in the field, not the fact that you were able to cram
>> for a few days and pass. What good does it do you to say "I passed the
>> test" when you don't *know* the material it covers?
>
> Easy. Wave the paper and get more monies or even just any job at all.

....and then you get there, and are expected to perfrom. Nothing is
going to soak you in sweat quite as quickly as getting hired to a job
that's beyond you... your short stint there will be very, very
uncomfortable :-)

> Which in turn degrades the perceived worth of the certificate, so there'll
> be newer, shinier certificates to get, and so on and so forth.

So true.

> That degradation also happens in the ``regular'' school systems, going
> as far as, in some countries, ``school-goers unions'' complaining that
> the exams were Too Hard and getting the courses eased up.

I think it was the Los Angeles school district that came up with a test
students had to pass to graduate. The test was at about the eight or
ninth grade level. Lots of kids failed, and then sued when they were
told they couldn't graduate. I'm not certain, but I'll bet they were
all awarded their useless diplomas and sent on their way to a life of
flipping burgers, resenting success, and voting Democrat.

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:51:08 +0200 (CEST),
John Oliver wrote:
> On 10 Sep 2008 16:12:36 GMT, jpd wrote:
>> Easy. Wave the paper and get more monies or even just any job at all.
>
> ...and then you get there, and are expected to perfrom. Nothing is
> going to soak you in sweat quite as quickly as getting hired to a job
> that's beyond you... your short stint there will be very, very
> uncomfortable :-)

I've seen that from... not too far away. It was pretty sad, trying to
get the person to pay attention to the underlying principles instead of
the cookie-cutter answers asked for.

Though I have little pity, seeing how I, in all modesty, *do* know stuff
but fail to convince others of that. Not going to walk others through
their paid jobs when I'm getting naught at all. Same with programming
advice. Pointers, principles, yes. Cookie-cutter answers? *cough* No.


> I think it was the Los Angeles school district that came up with a test
> students had to pass to graduate. The test was at about the eight or
> ninth grade level. Lots of kids failed, and then sued when they were
> told they couldn't graduate. I'm not certain, but I'll bet they were
> all awarded their useless diplomas and sent on their way to a life of
> flipping burgers, resenting success, and voting Democrat.

It isn't limited to sue-happy america. I recall talking to my highschool
physics teachers, and noticing a homebrew book lying around. It was A4
as opposed to the A5-sized books we actually used. It also was about the
thickness of all four books dealing with the entire year, but it only
contained one subject, optics. Yes, they said, that's what we used to use.


The political swipe actually doesn't go over my head, having talked too
much with real life americans[1], but where the democrats currently
seem to strive for the epitome of ineptitude, thanks to how the voting
system is setup you only have one other option. And that other option
is not a sure-fire way to success if your daddy isn't rich, at all.

Worse, while in power it has boldly made the nation hated the world
over, by, oh, starting a couple of wars, plunging entire countries back
to the stone age, that sort of thing. Nevermind the blatant lies used to
fuel it all. What does that say about its voters? Uhm.


Out of all the irksome things, what irks me most about american politics
is that the rest of the world gets to enjoy the fallout (and as a result
has to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject -- what do you know
about, say, european or opec politics?) but doesn't get a vote.


But really, this is entirely off-topic here.


[1] On some chat system, so they might've been AIs, who knows?

--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.