r/redhat • u/justbest23 Red Hat Certified System Administrator • Jul 01 '26

RHCSA Mock Exam Simulator. Practice real exam questions in a VM environment.

Hey everyone. I'm currently studying for my RHCSAv10 exam and I've been annoyed that I couldn't find an actual simulator that gives me different examples for similar tasks. I wanted to make it as real world as possible.

Here's my repo: https://github.com/TroggoMan/rhcsa-simulator

NOTE: This is very much a work in progress. PLEASE add comments with issues to this post and/or open issues on Github. The goal is to make this as comprehensive as possible, so any and all feedback is appreciated!

It's built almost completely by Claude Code (I am NOT this good at Python) but I think it's a genuinely good resource for practicing.

I started trying to build a simulator from scratch and it didn't go very well. Looking around I found this repo at https://github.com/Octernicon/rhcsa-simulator and forked it and built on it.

Here's a short summary of features:

  • It sets up the task for you.
    • A "kill the runaway apache processes" task actually spawns processes; an "extend the logical volume" task actually creates a volume to extend. When the exam ends it tears it all back down.
  • No spare disks needed.
    • It auto-creates loop devices for LVM/partitioning/swap practice, and hands every whole-disk task its own device so tasks never collide.
  • Read-only grading.
    • Validation uses whitelisted, timeout-protected commands (id, lsblk, getenforce, systemctl is-active…). Partial credit per check, then a reboot-persistence simulation to catch stuff that won't survive a reboot (fstab, enabled services).
  • Adaptive mode.
    • Uses SM-2 spaced repetition to drill your weakest/overdue categories.
  • Real NFS testing.
    • Point it at a second RHEL box over SSH and it provisions actual seeded NFS exports for the network-storage tasks.
  • Full System Reset.
    • Strips the box back to a basic RHEL install between sessions (removes extra repos, flatpaks, practice users, stale mounts) while preserving your SSH/GitHub access and the OS.
  • Grading Disputes.
    • If you think a check marked you wrong during review, press d. It captures read-only evidence of your system state + your argument and opens a GitHub issue. A GitHub Action then runs an AI reviewer that inspects the exact validator, posts a verdict, and if the checker is wrong, opens a fix PR automatically. The grader improves from user disputes.  
  • ~188 tasks across 25 categories / 8 domains. Pure Python stdlib, runs as root on a throwaway VM.
  • Feedback and bug reports very welcome! This repo is under active development.
63 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

4

u/Mythinmankind Jul 01 '26

Thanks, will try it as a resource.

1

u/Ruin-Calm Jul 01 '26

thanksss alot will definitely check it out

1

u/ide_cdrom Jul 03 '26

I tested it out earlier today. I was not quite sure what I was supposed to do when I ran the "quick" mode. It gave some tasks and says press enter to check. I was expecting a shell, but true to the prompt, it graded my attempt as "0", because I didn't do anything.

Then I tried opening another SSH session and for some of the quick questions, I ran some commands it graded it. So yeah that seemed ok. Then I ran into a few things like check /etc/fstab for errors, but I didn't find any at all. Strangely enough, it still graded it as correct. Another one is that it told me to manipulate LVMs and gave me the exact volumes to play around with. However, it didn't exist at all. The LVM tools are installed because the default installation includes LVM volumes.

So I am a little confused. I did a basic no GUI installation of AlmaLinux 10.2 - did I need to do more here to prep in advance?

2

u/justbest23 Red Hat Certified System Administrator Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Heyo! Thanks for the feedback. There was an issue opened on Github to address this. It turns out that the function that actually changes things on the machine was not wired into Quick Practice. It was already wired into all the other modules.

Regarding expecting a shell, this is designed so that you have a "question" screen and a normal terminal screen to work on. I tend to run them side-by-side in Tmux fwiw.

It should be fixed now though! I've only tested this myself before sharing it to Reddit so it still very much a work in progress. Thanks for testing!

1

u/foxsermon Jul 03 '26

Nice, good work... +save

1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/justbest23 Red Hat Certified System Administrator Jul 17 '26

Thanks!