Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers (EX188) Practice Lab

A comprehensive, unofficial practice lab designed to simulate the Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers (EX188) exam environment.

🎯 Exam Overview

The EX188 exam tests your ability to manage containers using Podman and OpenShift Container Platform (local context).

Key Objectives:

• Managing containers and images with Podman
• Creating custom images using Containerfiles
• Managing persistent storage (volumes, bind mounts)
• Managing networking (port mapping, container communication)
• Working with Podman pods
• Configuring container systemd services

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• A Linux system (RHEL/Fedora/CentOS Stream preferred)
• Podman installed (v4.0+)
• Internet access (for initial setup)

Installation

1. Clone this repository (or copy the ex188-lab folder).
2. Run the setup script to prepare the environment:

   cd ex188-lab
   ./lab-setup.sh

   This pulls necessary base images and configures a local registry.

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📚 Exercises

Go through the exercises in order to build your skills.

#	Topic	File
01	Container Basics	01-containers.md
02	Image Management	02-images.md
03	Persistent Storage	03-storage.md
04	Networking	04-networking.md
05	Pods	05-pods.md
06	Systemd	06-systemd.md
07	Advanced (Secrets, Skopeo, ARG)	07-advanced.md

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🏆 Mock Exam

Once prepared, attempt the full mock exam.

• File: mock-exam.md
• Format: Interconnected "Snowball" Scenario.
• Time Limit: 2.5 Hours.
• Constraint: Tasks must be performed in order.

✅ Verification & Grading

We provide an automated grading tool to score your exercises and mock exam attempts.

1. Perform an exercise or the mock exam.
2. Run the centralized grader:

   ./grade-lab.sh

3. Select the corresponding module from the menu and check for [PASS].

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🧹 Cleanup

To reset the lab (remove all containers, pods, volumes, networks, secrets, and built images):

./lab-clean.sh

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💡 Real Exam Pro Tips

• SELinux: 90% of failures in storage questions are due to missing :Z (private) or :z (shared) labels.
• Rootless Podman: Remember that port numbers < 1024 cannot be used by non-root users.
• Systemd: Always use the --new flag with podman generate systemd.
• User Mode: Enable lingering for user services: loginctl enable-linger <user>.

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Disclaimer: This project is not affiliated with Red Hat. "Red Hat" and "EX188" are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc.