LPI - Frequently-Asked Questions

About LPI:
Frequently asked questions

1. General
2. Exams
3. Publicity
4. Training/Courseware
5. Organization

1. General

1.1. What is the purpose of the Linux Professional Institute: As stated in our mission statement, this group perceived the need for an accepted certification process which will recognize and certify the talent and hard work of Linux users everywhere in the world. Once begun, the effort has taken on a life of it's own and has now involved some of the Linux movement's best and brightest in a fully open process aimed at providing certification to all.
1.2. Why is a certification program needed for Linux?: There are a number of very good reasons for doing so, most of which have been listed by Dan York in the inaugural article for his certification series he's been doing for the Linux Gazette. For brevity's sake here's a list of his bullet points (but please consult his article for a more thorough discussion):
1.3. What can I do to help?: There are many ways in which you can help with the activitities of LPI. Here's a short list:
1.4. When do you expect to complete your work?: Developing a certification program will be a continual process and so in some ways our work will never be done. It's our intention to maintain the certification process in keeping with the needs and traditions of the Linux community, as well as any changes in the technologies we will be testing. Our first exam (101/T1a) was deployed in January 2000 and 102/T1b will be deployed in the first quarter of 2000. Development of the Level 2 and Level 3 exams will occur over the first half of the year 2000.
1.5. I've worked with a lot of "certified" people and haven't been impressed with their competence. What do you say to this type of criticism?: First of all LPI does not believe that certification is a blanket solution for Linux (or any other operating system for that matter). In our considered opinion there is no substitute for experience! That said, people do have to start somewhere and that is the biggest fallacy in the overall perception of certificate programs... because there is a general, industry wide shortfall of qualified people working in the IT field it's possible for a fresh faced certificate holder too be put at the head of the line too early (there's nothing wrong with hiring them... in fact employers are going to hire LPI cert holders in droves... but employers have to be aware of the difference between a cert holder or non-cert holder with 5 years of experience with Linux and a cert holder with 6 months of experience with Linux). Depending on the talents of the individuals that difference could be huge but that is not generally a shortfall of the certificate program itself, in our opinion it is more correctly a failed hiring practice and does not reflect accurately on the certificate program.
1.6. How will the LPI program meet the requirements of existing hiring practices and local regulations (such as U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity laws)?: LPI intends to provide hiring managers and contractors a gauge to help assess Linux related skill levels of individuals. To that end, LPI has attracted and assembled a diverse and talented group of people from the world-wide Linux community to help create the program. Very few of these people have ever met face to face, as the entire effort is being conducted in a virtual setting on the Internet. The diversity of this group will help us ensure that our program is free of gender, racial, or cultural bias. In fact, since most, if not all, of the individuals working on LPI's programs have never met in person they'd be hard pressed to identify much more than the gender of a co-worker and in many cases not that either. Additionally, LPI will work to validate our program against the psychometric standards required by regulations in the US and other countries as applicable. Furthermore we will publish results of our validation studies on the LPI site.
1.7. These exams seem geared toward system administrators. Will you also be providing certification for developers?: The LPI program is currently targeted at system and network administrators, as our research found that this was the area that needed the most growth of support professionals. We have no current plan to provide developer certification, however we could consider such a program if it is something the Linux community and the larger market deem necessary at some future point.
1.8. I am confused about Red Hat's connection to LPI. Don't they have a competing certification?: Yes, they do have their own certification program. When Red Hat started to develop their Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) program, there were no other existing Linux certification programs and LPI did not yet exist. Now with LPI's emergence, Red Hat is participating in LPI's Advisory Council and staying in touch with what is happening. They are continuing development of their own program and are watching the evolution of LPI to see if or how the programs may or may not complement each other.
1.9. How does LPI compare to other Linux certification programs?: Since there is no central authority for the Linux operating system, anyone can, in fact, start up a Linux certification program and several companies have. As mentioned previously, Red Hat has their program which focuses exclusively on their distribution. A small company called SAIR has also created a program based on their own criteria they developed. A company called Tekmetrics offers a web-based certification. Two other companies DigitalMetrics and ProsoftTraining.com developed their own programs as well but have either now merged their efforts into LPI or are in the process of doing so. The major difference of LPI from all of these programs is that we are a completely vendor-neutral, distribution-neutral, non-profit organization that evolved out of the Linux community and focuses solely on setting certification standards. There are other differences in approach, support and research - if you are interested in more information, feel free to send questions to dan@lpi.org. In truth, we welcome all of these programs because in the end they will all help grow the pool of Linux support professionals and help with the corporate adoption of Linux!
1.10. How does LPI's certification relate to the general UNIX system administration certification being developed by SAGE?: For some time now, the System Administrators Guilde (SAGE), a special technical group of USENIX has been working on a more general certification program for UNIX system administrators. That program is still under development and we are continuing to stay in touch with SAGE so that hopefully the two programs can complement each other as they move forward. Dan York was added to the SAGE certification committee specifically to act as a liaison between the two organizations.
1.11. How do LPI levels correlate to the SAGE job descriptions for UNIX sys admins?: The System Administrator's Guild(SAGE) has developed a series of job descriptions that outline the skills a person should have to work at different levels of system administration within an organization. While there is no direct correlation to the SAGE job descriptions, they were one of the many sources consulted while we were in the early design stages of the LPI program.
1.12. I am actually interested in hardware certification - is there another project addressing that?: Yes. You are looking for the Open Hardware Certifiation Program. Their web site is www.open-hardware.org. Henry Hall is the coordinator of that project.
1.13. I was previously certified with DigitalMetrics. What do I do to become LPI certified?: After our merger with DigitalMetrics, we agreed that candidates who had successfully attained the DigitalMetrics Certified Linux Administrator (dmCLA) credential would not have to take all three exams for LPI Level One. Instead, the following will occur:

2. Exams

2.1. How much will LPI exams cost?: Our intention is to provide testing at the lowest possible costs. Most of our exams will cost $100 US, and some may cost less.
2.2. How many tests will it take to be certified?: The answer depends on how many levels of LPI certification you wish to pursue. There are currently 2 exams for the first level, 2 exams for the second, and 2 for the third. Visit our program description for more information.
2.3. Where can I take the exams?: Our exams will be offered through the test centers of Virtual University Enterprises(VUE). Visit their web page to find a test center near you.
2.4. How can I offer the exams to my students/clients?: You will need to become a VUE testing center - or work with a VUE testing center near you. Local testing centers can offer tests at your facility.
2.5. There is no VUE testing centers near me. What can I do?: Our best suggestion is to contact your nearest VUE testing center. Testing centers can administer exams onsite, so if a testing center is able to bring their equipment to you, you might be able to work something out. If there is a group of people in your area interested in getting certified, you might be able to get the testing center to schedule a day of exams for you. You can also approach local companies - typically computer training or services companies - and encourage them to become a VUE test center.
2.6. Why aren't you offering exams across the web?: We would have liked to offer exams through the web, but until you can get around the fact that someone else could take the exam for you - or be right with you as you take the exam - there's really no way to securely offer the test online.
2.7. Do all LPI exams use computer-based testing?: In order to be global and to be able to include the largest number of people, LPI is deploying Levels 1-3 using computer-based testing through VUE. We have not ruled out someday having a Level 4 that might include some different type of examination method, but that is something that will have to be evaluated at some later date.
2.8. Why are you not using Sylvan Prometric testing centers?: Within the world of computer-based testing, there are really two major test delivery vendors, Sylvan Prometric and VUE. They both deliver the same exams for other cert programs (such as Microsoft) with a difference being that Sylvan has something like 2,100 test sites and VUE has 2,200 test sites. For a number of competitive reasons, we chose to deploy first with VUE. We have not ruled out eventually deploying with both Sylvan and VUE, but are going with VUE first.
2.9. How is your certification process going to include the version specific aspects of Linux, like the different "stock" scripts used with Red Hat as opposed to Debian?: Distribution differences has been a hot topic of discussion for us. For quite some time, we maintained a series of distribution-specific exams (what we called our "T2" exams). However, we have now changed this requirement and are no longer requiring the T2 exams. Much of the differences that we were planning to test on are no longer either valid or able to be tested on.
2.10. What about the testing obstacles presented to individuals for whom English is not their native tongue?: LPI feels that we have to walk before we can run so this issue will be deferred until we have the English versions released. After that, we will explore translation of exams into other languages, providing that for a given language we can determine that there definitely is a need and also providing that we can obtain financial backing for the translation. We have already seen interest in both a German and Japanese version and will begin working on those once the English exams are underway.
2.11. (Feb 2000) I took the test during the "beta" period and did not receive my score. When I check on the VUE web site, it says I failed. What is going on?: Due to an unforeseen problem with the data feed from one of our vendors, the VUE exam results web page is incorrectly reporting that everyone who's completed the T1a exam has failed. This is NOT correct. We're working with VUE and our other partners to remedy this situation for future releases of the test, and the problem should go away once T1a is out of it's "beta" period. Rest assured, the initial exams for T1a are being evaluated at LPI by hand to assure their psychometric validity and when the results are in you'll receive notification via good old- fashioned snail mail. Until T1a goes out of it's "beta" period you can safely ignore this message. VUE has modified the web page to notify customers of the problem until LPI can find a solution with our supplier.
2.12. Why does this beta phase take so long?: Validating the tests is part of our quality assurance procedure: we test the exams in practice. Several steps need to be made, which take time:
2.13. There are many questions about obscure options for commands. Why are we supposed to know them? I am an experienced sysadmin, and I still consult the man pages!: Although we try to avoid test items like that, they are useful. First, nobody is expected to answer all test items correctly (in fact, in the beta period, nobody did).; The goal of the test is to identify competent, experienced people from among unqualified people. Experienced people tend to know more of these options than inexperienced people: for example, experienced might answer 50% correctly, versus versus 10% by novices. So even these items help identifying the right people.; Moreover, in the beta phase of our test we investigate the quality of our test items. If nobody answers the item correctly (or if everybody does), the item is useless and is removed. All test items in our exams have proven to be useful in making the distinction between novices and experts.
2.14. Questions about test scores:: We do not just count the items the candidate answers correctly. Instead, based on the results of the beta phase, we assign a weight to each item, and sum those which were answered correctly: this yields the score of the candidate. These scores are scaled such that on average people score 500 points, within a range of 200 to 800 (technically, the results from the sample of people who took the beta tests are normalized such that their scores have a mean of 500, and a standard deviation of 100 points). We then determine a cut score to make a fair and optimal separation between competent people who should pass, and novices who should fail. The cut scores are:
2.15. So how good are your tests?: These are the statistics:; These statistics are not usually published for certification tests, so we can not compare our results with other existing programs, but from case studies in psychometrics we know that results like these are common and quite acceptable.
2.16. Aren't hands-on certification tests (like Red Hat's) better than paper multiple choice tests like LPI is using?: The short answer is: No. For a detailed answer, check this page.

3. Publicity

3.1. Who is the point of contact for publicity?: Inquiries should be directed either to Dan York (dan@lpi.org or mobile phone +1-603-264-0129) or Evan Leibovitch (evan@lpi.org).
3.2. I'd like to do a presentation about LPI. Do you have any sample presentations that I can use?: Yes, we have several presentations that we have created for various trade shows. Those presentations will soon be available through our web site. In the meantime, please contact Dan York to obtain a copy.
3.3. Do you have a fact sheet about LPI that I can include in a press kit?: Yes, we have a one-page fact sheet that is on our Press. Please contact Dan York in the meantime. Also, we would appreciate it if you would also just drop a note to Evan Leibovitch letting him know in what publicity you will be including our material.
3.4. Can I use the LPI logo on a brochure/flyer/document?: Not without prior explicit permission to do so. The LPI logo is in the process of being trademarked and we cannot allow its use without our permission for a number of reasons including the fact that we do not want it to be seen as endorsing a product or service without our knowledge. Vendor-neutrality is critical for us! Please contact Evan Leibovitch (evan@lpi.org) if you are interested in using the logo.
3.5. Can I put the logo - or a version of the logo - on my web site to show our support for LPI?: We will soon be providing a logo that can be used for this purpose. If you'd like to help with the design of this logo, please send a note to Evan.
3.6. Can I help with the web site?: Yes, we have a team of people working on new versions of the web site and on keeping the web site up to date. Please contact Chuck Mead or Evan Leibovitch for more information.

4. Training/Courseware

4.1. How do I prepare for LPI exams?: LPI specifies only the standards for certification and does not specify at all how you prepare for certification. You can simply look at the objectives and study on your own, read books or take training classes. Many members of our Advisory Council are producing exam preparation books or training materials and classes (online and instructor-led).
4.2. Where can I find a training center that offers courses for LPI certification?: LPI itself does not provide any form of training, but several members of our Advisory Council do. We also suggest you visit http://www.lintraining.com/ to find other training centers and courseware vendors offering Linux training.
4.3. What will it take for my organization to teach students so that they can become LPI certified?: Basically, you just need to find a source for courseware and start teaching! You do not need the approval of LPI at all. You can either obtain courseware from a vendor, or write your own by looking at the exam objectives posted on the website. LPI does not specify any certain courseware or teaching materials and leaves the creation of those materials entirely to third parties. Several members of our Advisory Council are providing courseware and you can also find courseware providers at www.lintraining.com.
4.4. Will LPI be "approving" courseware?: This has been a common question for LPI as our work has progressed. The short answer is yes, we are willing to provide this service. The long answer is that we are very busy right now turning out our first exams so it may be a little while before we're ready to offer this service. We also recognize that there must be a program in place, quite soon, which spells out how this will be accomplished. This is being worked on right now but it's no where near ready for public scrutiny yet. Suggestions and questions about this issue may be directed to Chuck Mead, LPI Director of Corporate Relations.
4.5. Will LPI be certifying instructors?: Again, LPI is setting standards only for certification, not for the education that prepares someone for certification exams. As part of that, LPI leaves it entirely to other entities to develop courseware and instruct classes. Those organizations may want to "certify" or "authorize" instructors to teach that organization's courseware, but if they do, that is something LPI leaves entirely up to the vendor to determine. As a result, some courseware vendors may "certify" instructors and others may not. That is their decision to make.

5. Organization

5.1. How long has LPI been organized?: LPI began through a series of discussion lists in the fall of 1998. The organizational structure was proposed and established in January 1999 with a Steering Committee overseeing operations from that time on. After much legal work, LPI received its formal incorporation papers as a nonprofit corporation on October 25, 1999.
5.2. Why is LPI incorporated in New Brunswick, Canada?: Legal research found that there were only a few places in North America where an organization could be incorporated and would not be required to hold a face-to-face annual meeting of the Board of Directors. This was an option we wanted because as the organization grows, we expect that Directors may be located throughout the world, and, while face-to-face meetings are desirable, we did not want to require future Boards to face this expense. This factor, plus some Canadian laws making it difficult to file trivial lawsuits, prompted our decision to incorporate in New Brunswick.
5.3. Can I see LPI's by-laws and other legal documents?: Yes, our corporate By-Laws are now online on our web site.
5.4. How is LPI governed?: If you consult our by-laws you will see that LPI is governed by a Board of Directors, consisting of volunteers who have been very active in LPI since its earliest stages. That Board is assisted by our Advisory Council which recommends actions to the Board.
5.5. How is LPI funded?: In its initial stages, LPI has been funded through the generous contributions of corporate and individual sponsors. Ongoing funding of LPI will occur through sponsorships as well as a small portion of the fee paid by exam candidates. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please read our sponsorship program overview and contact either Dan York (dan@lpi.org) or Chuck Mead (chuck@lpi.org).
5.6. Is my sponsorship of LPI tax-deductible in the United States?: No, not as a tax-exempt "charity" donation. LPI is incorporated as a nonprofit organization, but has not yet undertaken the very involved and lengthy process to qualify as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization within the U.S.(often referred to using the IRS name of a "501(c)(3)"). Due to the length of this process and our need to focus on delivering our exams, we do not anticipate pursuing this status anytime soon. Your sponsorship may, however, be deductible as some form of a business expense. Please check with an accountant for more information.
5.7. I live outside of the United States. How can I help LPI grow within my country?: We are evaluating different possible methods of helping LPI organize within other countries. If you are interested in helping LPI grow within your country, please contact Dan York for more information.

Table of Contents

1. General

2. Exams

3. Publicity

4. Training/Courseware

5. Organization