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/justbest23/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/AustinNicely 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.