Manage Logs and Archives

Introduction

In this challenge, you will practice essential system administration skills related to log analysis and file archiving. You'll search for specific entries in a simulated log file, export them, and then create an archive of a directory. These tasks simulate common system administration activities for troubleshooting and backup purposes.

Environment

LabEx uses Red Hat Universal Base Image 9 (UBI9) to simulate the exam environment. It may not be identical to the actual RHCSA exam environment, but it provides a good representation of the tasks you'll encounter.

There are two users in the environment:

• labex: A standard user with sudo privileges, password: labex.
• root: The system administrator, password: redhat.

The challenge features real exam questions, along with explanations, requirements, and automated verification scripts to help you confirm task completion. It effectively simulates the knowledge areas covered in the RHCSA exam.

Skills Graph

Log Analysis and Archiving

This step involves searching for specific log entries, exporting them, and creating an archive of simulated log files.

Tasks

• Find all log messages in ~/logs/messages that contain "ACPI"
• Export the found messages to a file called ~/acpi_logs
• Archive all of ~/logs and save it to ~/log_archive.tgz

Requirements

• All operations must be performed as the labex user
• The log search must be case-sensitive
• The exported log file must be named acpi_logs and located in your home directory (~)
• The archive must be a gzipped tar file named log_archive.tgz and located in your home directory (~)
• The archive must include all files and subdirectories in ~/logs/

Example

After completing the task, the content of ~/acpi_logs might look like this:

May 15 10:23:45 localhost kernel: ACPI: Power Button [PWRB]
May 15 11:34:56 localhost kernel: ACPI: Sleep Button [SLPB]
May 15 12:45:67 localhost kernel: ACPI: AC Adapter [AC] (on-line)

The archive file ~/log_archive.tgz should exist and contain all files from ~/logs/.

Summary

In this challenge, you practiced important file management and text processing tasks that simulate log analysis and archiving. You learned how to search for specific entries in files, export the results, and create a compressed archive of a directory. These skills are valuable for various tasks in system administration and data analysis, even when working with limited privileges. The challenge reinforced your understanding of file operations and command-line tools in a Linux environment.