DEV Community: Shreyas Sneh

[AWS Cloud Practitioner | Preparation tips/resources]

Shreyas Sneh — Wed, 21 May 2025 23:05:09 +0000

Shreyas Sneh

May 20 '25

AWS Cloud Practitioner | Everything I Used to Pass (and What I’d Skip)🚀

#aws #cloud #certification

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3 min read

AWS Cloud Practitioner | Everything I Used to Pass (and What I’d Skip)🚀

Shreyas Sneh — Tue, 20 May 2025 12:33:16 +0000

I recently claimed my AWS Cloud Practitioner certification and I'd like to share some tips and resources from my experience that might be helpful if you're targeting the same.

1. Avoid over-estimating/under-estimating the Difficulty Level

Let me clarify that the exam has a bound syllabus, which means 99.99% questions will be from the official topics list and you don't have to keep looking for more resources.
Secondly being a foundational level exam, very few(5-6) questions will require logic and reasoning to get through.

Lastly, this doesn't mean that we can under-estimate the question set. If you skip any topic, there will be high chances that you'll have to pass up on a question, since most of them will be fact based.

2. Watch-out for "KEYWORDS!!"

The best way to remember the services and differentiate between them is recalling the keywords. I'll give you an example:

In AWS, both "Cost Explorer" and "Trust Advisor" help optimize cloud spending and resource utilization. But if we bundle them with keywords like 'Cost explorer offers cost forecasting' whereas 'Trust advisor focuses on recommending best practices to manage resources in AWS environment'

Here we can recall and differentiate these services when question is asked regarding cost/usage etc.

Cost-explorer ----> Fore-casting
Trust Advisor ----> Recommendation

3. Limited Resources

Don't overwhelm yourself with plethora of resources available over the internet. Trust me, you don't need a lot to clear this exam.

All you need is 1 good video course and 5-6 full length practice sets.

I used the below 3 for my preparation and they prove to be sufficient.

Course: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Practice Set: 6 Practice Sets
Mind map to keep track of topics: Mind map

4. Practice Topic-wise (ChatGPT - The saviour)

Now here's a game changer, keep note that this isn't much reliable, but surely helps in gaining grasp over individual topics.

You can generate topic-wise questions of simple and complex problems to practice as you complete a section.

This will ensure that you've additional edge alongside the questions that're given at the end of each section in udemy/any preferred course.

5. NO PANIC MODE

Don't get discouraged and panic if you score low in practice sets. The sole purpose of practice sets is not only getting experience of real-time examination.

The best way to use it is, solving a practice set and then using it as a question dump before moving to the next set. Don't focus on the score in 1st iteration/attempt.
After thoroughly going through the sets 1 by 1 with correct answer, the second attempt is your real test.

Repeat this process till you get to a desired (~80%) score.
This exam will basically test you for the knowledge width, not in-depth understanding, so covering a large volume of questions will be helpful.

Edit: BONUS (Optional)

If you're attempting the exam as a non-native speaker of the preferred language, you can claim 'accommodation' for an additional 30 minutes over the default exam duration.

Feel free to drop comments if you need any suggestions.

Happy Learning !!!

How to Set a Static IP for Your Fedora VM: A Step-by-Step Guide

Shreyas Sneh — Sat, 03 May 2025 20:46:57 +0000

An important and helpful step before diving into any project is to assign a static IP to your VM.

This ensures that you don’t have to repeatedly check the server IP for SSH access or modify your automation scripts and Spring Boot projects every time the IP changes.

1. Log in to Your Fedora VM and Discover Your Current IP Address

Log into the VM using Virtual Machine Manager.

To set up Virtual Machine Manager, follow this guide from my ongoing series: KVM setup on Fedora

Once the setup is complete, search for “Virtual Machine Manager” in your system’s search bar. Open the app, “run” the VM by selecting your server, and click on “Open”. This will launch your Fedora QEMU/KVM console.

To use SSH, go to your host system’s terminal and run the following command (you’ll be prompted for the root user and password):

It’ll look something like this:

After logging in, run the following command inside the VM:

ip a | grep inet

Sample Output:

inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host noprefixroute 
inet 192.168.124.54/24 brd 192.168.124.255 scope global noprefixroute enp1s0
inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fe57:17c5/64 scope link noprefixroute

From the sample output above, you can see the server IP is 192.168.124.54.

2. Determine Your Active Network Interface

Before making any changes, let’s identify the active network interface:

nmcli connection show

Sample Output:

NAME    UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE 
enp1s0  19d67abb-cd75-377e-a963-eb9f13582a50  ethernet  enp1s0

From the output, our device is enp1s0, which we’ll use in the next step.

3. Set Up a Static IP Profile for Your Fedora VM

Create or edit the connection file using the command below. Ensure the IPv4 configuration matches your desired static IP setup.

vi /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/enp1s0.nmconnection

Ensure the file contains the following structure:

[connection]
id=enp1s0
uuid=19d67abb-cd75-377e-a963-eb9f13582a50
type=ethernet
autoconnect-priority=-999
interface-name=enp1s0
timestamp=1742568216

[ethernet]

[ipv4]
address1=192.168.124.54/24,192.168.124.1
dns=8.8.8.8;8.8.4.4;
method=manual

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=eui64
method=auto

[proxy]

After verifying or editing the configuration, set appropriate permissions:

chmod 600 /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/enp1s0.nmconnection

4. Save and Apply Your Network Configuration Changes

To apply the new static IP configuration without rebooting:

nmcli connection down enp1s0 && nmcli connection up enp1s0

Alternatively, you can simply reboot the VM.

5. Verify Your Static IP Configuration

Run the following commands to confirm everything is set correctly:

ip a show enp1s0
# You should see your static IP in the output

ping 8.8.8.8      # Check internet connectivity
ping google.com   # Check DNS resolution

✅ You're Done!

Happy Learning!

Feel free to drop a comment if you face any issues — I’ll try to recreate the error and share steps to resolve it.

Fedora 39 Multi-Monitor set-up guide : Split, Stack, or Go HDMI-Only ft. QHD 27QN600

Shreyas Sneh — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:59:04 +0000

Setting up a seamless multi-monitor experience on Fedora 39 can be tricky — especially when you want the login screen (GDM) and user session to behave consistently with your display setup.

I'm going to share 3 basic layouts that will help you get started if you're new to either Fedora or just got a new monitor & want to setup with Fedora 39.

Once logged-in and having your laptop/system connected to let's say HDMI1 port of the monitor, you can run any of the below scripts to adjust the layout.

1. HDMI-Only : Monitor will be entirely used and laptop screen will be non-functional.

xrandr --output eDP-1 --off --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1440 --primary

2. Extended Display : Using a laptop screen and an external monitor side-by-side with the cursor able to move freely between them

xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1440 --right-of eDP-1 --primary

3. Laptop Top-Left, External Monitor Below

xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --pos 0x0 --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1440 --pos 0x900 --primary

But here's the catch. We're only making the changes. We're neither saving them as scripts nor we've scheduled a thread to execute them. This means each time we login, we will be required to run these commands.

So, let's create a permanent fix to this problem.
We'll perform the setup in 2 parts. One for pre-login screen and another for post-login display.
The reason for it is GDM (login screen) and your session run separate X servers with different permissions and display names.
xrandr doesn't work on the GDM session from your user session, and vice versa.
The GDM layout must be set via static XML (monitors.xml), while your session can use scripts or GUI tools.

Even if you match both perfectly, the transition between X servers still causes a delay, hence we'll handle it with a brief sleep period.

Let's jump into the steps right away now.

STEP1: Create a new script

nano ~/.config/fix-resolution.sh

Paste this in the file

#!/bin/bash

# Wait a bit to make sure X session is fully loaded
sleep 2

# Set up your preferred layout
xrandr --output eDP-1 --off --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1440 --primary

STEP 2: Make the script executable

chmod +x ~/.config/fix-resolution.sh

STEP 3: Create autostart .desktop file

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
nano ~/.config/autostart/fix-resolution.desktop

Paste this in the file

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/shrey/.config/fix-resolution.sh
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name=Fix Display Resolution
Comment=Applies correct xrandr layout

STEP 4: Reboot
Either use the CLI and paste below command, or reboot from the GUI.

reboot

Now you'll be able to see that our resolution changes are visible after logging-in, but still the login display has remained unchanged.

Moving ahead with our second part (Pre-login display) we'll be making and saving the changes to the GDM.

STEP 1: Copy saved Layout to GDM

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/gdm/.config
sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml /var/lib/gdm/.config/
sudo chown gdm:gdm /var/lib/gdm/.config/monitors.xml

STEP 2: Disable Wayland (MUST) , in-case it's enabled

sudo nano /etc/gdm/custom.conf

#Make sure this is uncommented
WaylandEnable=false

STEP 3: (Optional) Disable Extra scripts

sudo nano /etc/gdm/Init/Default

STEP 4: Reboot to test

NOTE: Make sure you're using resolution values according to yor monitor specs. Here I've used 2560x1440 since it's the max resolution for my QHD monitor.

Hope this helps & Happy Learning !!!