A GitLab pipeline is a sequence of isolated jobs. Each job runs in a fresh environment, often on a different runner, with a clean checkout of the repository. Files created in one job are not visible to another job unless they are explicitly passed. GitLab provides two mechanisms for this: cache and artifacts. They look…
A shell script is a text file containing a sequence of commands that the shell executes as if they had been typed at the prompt. It is not a compiled program, it does not require a build step, and it runs on any system with the shell that interprets it. The LFCS exam tests the…
The basic rsync command handles the common case: copy a directory, mirror a destination, transfer over SSH. The advanced features handle the cases that the basic command cannot express: excluding files by pattern, limiting bandwidth, synchronizing over a non-standard port, preserving hard links and extended attributes, and resuming interrupted transfers without retransmitting the entire file….
The rsync command is the standard tool for synchronizing files between two locations, local or remote. It is not a simple copy tool. It compares the source and destination, transfers only the differences, and can preserve permissions, timestamps, and symbolic links. The LFCS exam tests the basic syntax, the archive flag, the trailing slash rule,…
The sftp command is the interactive file transfer client in the OpenSSH suite. It establishes an encrypted connection to a remote host and provides a command interface similar to the legacy ftp client. The LFCS exam tests the distinction between local and remote commands, the syntax for uploading and downloading files, and the batch mode…
The scp command copies files between hosts over an SSH connection. It is one of the oldest tools in the OpenSSH suite, and its implementation has changed significantly in recent years. Since OpenSSH 9.0, scp uses the SFTP protocol by default, not the legacy SCP protocol that shared its name. This means the transfer is…
The previous chapter covered the syntax of the .gitlab-ci.yml file. This chapter focuses on the execution model: how GitLab translates the YAML into a pipeline, how the runner picks up jobs, and how the stages, jobs, and needs relationships produce the final execution graph. The exam tests the difference between a stage-bound pipeline and a…
The previous chapter explained the architecture: stages, jobs, runners, and the needs keyword. This chapter builds the actual .gitlab-ci.yml file, line by line. The file is the single source of truth for the pipeline. It lives at the repository root, it is YAML, and it is parsed before any job runs. A syntax error prevents…
A pipeline is the engine of GitLab’s DevSecOps platform. It is not a single script; it is a directed acyclic graph of jobs, organized into stages, executed by runners, and triggered by events. The .gitlab-ci.yml file is the definition, but the architecture—the relationship between stages, jobs, and dependencies—determines whether the pipeline is a linear sequence…
GitLab’s planning tools are hierarchical. An epic groups related issues across projects and time. A milestone groups issues by a deadline or release. An issue is the unit of work. A board is a view of the issues, organized by their status in a workflow. The exam tests this hierarchy and the specific mechanics that…