I'm preparing for my first exam, the Mac OS X Helpdesk one, in an attempt to get my ACDT (Apple Certified Desktop Technician) certification. As some of you may know, there is no Apple supplied text book or class available (there are classes held in NYC and elsewhere, but they're $1500 and I'd rather not spend that kind of money if I could help it) so it's not really easy for me to prepare. According to Apple (I spoke with a Certification rep) they recommend reading the Mac OS X Panther Unleashed book, which I am. However, halfway through the book things seem to diverge a bit.
My question is, what parts/chapters of the Unleashed book should I really not bother with based on how the actual OS X Helpdesk exam is comprised. I'm not asking for a per-question breakdown of the exam, (I know this topic seems to be a hush-hush super secret deal for those in the know) but rather some clarity on my concerns via a simple yes you need to know that or no, don't bother response. Such a simple thing would help me out tremendously as I have registered for this exam and have a fixed amount of time to prepare.
Therefore, coming from what I expect of the exam, should I bother reading the following chapters in the Panther Unleashed book;
Chapter 15: Command-Line Applications and Suites [my thoughts on this are that according to the outline Apple provides there is very little asked of you regarding the CLI and what they do require are basics such as navigation using the CLI and whatnot]
Chapter 16: Command-Line Software Installation [Again, sure I'd love to read this and know it just to know it, but should I spend the time reading it now rather than later when I can be focusing more on what I NEED to know?]
Chapter 17: Troubleshooting Software Installs, and Compiling and Debugging Manually
Chapter 18: Advanced Unix Shell Use
Chapter 19: X Window System Applications
Chapter 20: Command-Line Configuration and Administration
Chapter 21: Scripting Languages
Chapter 22: MySQL and Database Connectivity
Chapter 27: Web Serving
Chapter 28: Web Programming
Chapter 29: Creating a Mail Server
Other than that, for those with the book that have taken the exam, what would you consider the most important sections to concern myself with? Thank you for your time.
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