- 00 — RHCSA Objectives: A clear roadmap of the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam requirements covered in this chapter so you know exactly what Skills Red Hat expects you to master.
- 01 & 02 — Common File Types (& Exercises): Understanding how Linux treats everything as a file—differentiating regular files, directories, character/block devices, and symlinks, reinforced with hands-on identification drills.
- 03 — File Editing: The essentials of creating and modifying configuration and plain-text files using standard CLI text editors like vim and nano.
- 04 — Creating Files & Directories: How to quickly generate empty files, populate logs, and structure complex directory hierarchies using commands like touch and mkdir -p.
- 05 — Displaying File Contents: Mastering the tools to inspect text files without opening them in an editor—using cat, less, more, head, and tail for real-time log reading.
- 06 — Counting Words, Lines & Characters: How to pipe and analyze file metrics using wc, an essential skill for scripting and quick data auditing.
- 07 — Copying Files & Directories: Safe and efficient replication of data across paths using cp, including recursive copying and preserving file permissions.
- 08 — Moving & Renaming Files: Using the mv command to reorganize files and directory trees without data loss.
- 09 — Removing Files & Directories: The safe use of rm and rmdir to clean up old files, recursive directory trees, and handling prompt overrides.
- 10 — File Linking: The critical difference between Hard Links (same inode) and Symbolic/Soft Links (shortcuts), and how to create them with ln and ln -s.
- 11 & 12 — Hands-On Labs & Do-It-Yourself Exercises: Guided step-by-step practice scenarios followed by independent, real-world challenge labs to lock in muscle memory.
- 13 — Cheat Sheet: A high-yield reference guide summarizing all the syntax, flags, and shortcuts learned in this module for quick exam review. The Big Picture: By the end of this module, you’ll be comfortable navigating the Linux filesystem, creating and organizing file hierarchies, and managing links and text files purely from the command line.
Common File Types in Linux
RHEL supports seven types of files: Regular Directory Block special device → Used by the OS to communicate with peripheral devices. character special device → Used by the OS to communicate with peripheral devices. symbolic link named pipe → Used in IPC(Inter Process Communication) socket → Used in IPC(Inter Process Communication) Regular Files: Regular files may contain text or binary data. These files may be shell scripts or commands in the binary form. When you list a directory, all line entries for files in the output that begin with the hyphen character (-) represent regular files. Example: The - before the rw permission depicts that it is a regular file. file command: Returns the specific type of data that the file contains, in this case it’s ASCII text. stat command: It simply states that the file is a regular file. Directory Files: Directories are logical containers that hold files and subdirectories. The letter “d” at the beginning of each line entry identifies the file as a directory. file command on /usr directory: stat command on /usr directory: Block and character special device files: What are Device files? Each piece of hardware in the system has an associated file in the /dev directory that is used by the system to communicate with that device. This type of file is called a device file. Types of device files: Block → On the initial with the letter b we can distinguish it’s Block device file. Character/ raw → On the initial with the letter c we can distinguish it’s character device file. file command on both of the directories → /dev/console and /dev/nvme0n* stat command on both of the directories → /dev/console and /dev/nvme0n* Important concepts related to device files(PAY ATTENTION): Concept of major number: Let’s elaborate the picture ...