clp
I sat my CLP (Novell Certified Linux Professional) exam yesterday and I failed(?!wtf?!). I scored a 632/800 which was a really disappointing result.
The exam itself was a real shambles to say the least. Firstly I sat there for 40 minutes waiting and watching the “authorized” testing center trying to get my ‘Windows XP’ testing pc connected to the internet, then had them not know how to charge a corporate amex via their eftpos machine, and have the novell website time out after the initial test login screen… *sighs*
The whole exam was really *really* dissapointing… Here’s a link to show you how the practicum exam is actually done. Its done over the internet which means you experience a *huge* amount of latency to the testing machines which I suspected to be the USA. Yes, I’m in Australia… There were a multitude of issues including repeating keystrokes, ie: hit the ‘i’ key and get ‘iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ sorta deal. Correcting typo’s then become a really time consuming process. Other issues included poorly translated/broken english and extremely imprecise objectives. There was a section in particular where I was given a certain scenario setup, a series of explicit objectives however there were certain things missing, which of course I didn’t actually do.. Given that I have a heavy change control orientated background I naturally didn’t do the things that it didn’t specifically asked for.. I subsequently apparently lost points for it.
The worst part of the exam was a particular section where it asked to do a series of configuration tasks to a daemon that I am quite fluent in. I however scored *very* little in this section..(wtf?). In this particular section I had identified several bugs that yast introduces to config files and was forced to make modifications by hand. I also made some changes to a very specific file that the objectives required, but I presume they were not identical to that what the exam grading system was coded to expect and as a result gained very few points for this section. I however tested my configurations extensively based on the criteria defined by the exam objectives and was almost certain come end of exam that I should had received 100%. Alas, I scored a 632 and subsequently failed. There was a particular section of which an objective was vaguely implied but I chose not to proceed with it as it wasn’t explicitly defined…. I accept the fact that this was something I may have incorrectly overlooked, but the other section?.. no way in hell.. There *has* to be a flaw in the automated exam grading system to give me such a *low* mark in the other section.
Needless to say, I intend to contest my results, and have 30 days to do so…. We’ll see what happens… Given that my current position is ‘Linux Technical Leader’, that I scored 100% in my RHCE (verify my cert here, and my results here), that this CLP is the utmost low end of the Novell Linux range of certification… I find this score extremely insulting!
Edit: fixed the typo’s that Darren was whinging about 
Filed under: m.o