CKS CKA CKAD changed Terminal to Remote Desktop
The exams moved 06/2022 to PSI Bridge which now provides a VNC connection to a remote desktop
TL;DR
- Remote Terminal replaced with Remote Desktop
- Test the new interface in a Killercoda Scenario
- Copy&Paste will be different for non Linux users
- Speed is expected for VNC, slower as before
What was changed?
No content was changed, the exams still follow the current curriculum. But the in-browser interface where you will need to work with Kubernetes has changed BIG TIME.
Before -> After
Before you only had access to one large browser terminal. You could open the K8s Docs in another tab or window in your local browser:
Now you have access to a full remote XFCE desktop, in which you will run the terminal application and Firefox. You will open the K8s Docs in the remote browser. You can arrange the windows however you like:
What is not possible any longer?
- Using any personal bookmarks created beforehand
- Using multiple monitors
Try it out yourself
We created a scenario on Killercoda which has a remote-desktop environment similar to the exam one.
But only use this to get an idea and feeling for what to expect. The real exam interface might be different.
Why was it changed?
(all speculation and not official reasons)
Probably mostly to keep the exams secure and in good reputation by increasing fairness and preventing cheating.
- Provide the very same environment for every attendee. There shouldn’t be any advantages by creating many browser bookmarks or installing some local browser plugins.
- By using a remote VM it’s harder to cheat using locally installed applications. Better prevention of copying content etc. source
- It’s no longer necessary to share your local screen and give access to your data to a proctor. Hence better data privacy. source
- The Firefox inside the remote VM automatically prevents accessing forbidden urls which makes it easier for the proctor.
- Possibility to move exams to a more GUI approach in future updates. Like being able to open Ingress/K8s-Dashboard services visually in a browser instead of curl.
Speed
Coming from your local desktop you’ll notice lagging in the remote desktop. Like when moving windows or scrolling through the K8s Docs. It’s what you would expect from a VNC connection and you should adopt to it after a few minutes. But many users reported huge lagging that made working not possible. According to the Linux Foundation this should be fixed.
Terminal Application
You’ll be using the XFCE Terminal Emulator. You can have multiple terminals open and arrange them next to or on top of each other. Before this was only possible with something like tmux. You can also change the font size and color etc which is great for accessibility.
Visual Text Editor
Mousepad is available as a visual editor for editing YAML for example. But you can’t access the same filesystem as the terminal (see next step).
Filesystem / Hosts
The Terminal Emulator accesses a different host (and through that filesystem) than XFCE and for example the Mousepad Editor or File Manager.
This means you can’t easily edit files in Mousepad and then kubectl apply these in the terminal. You could write/edit YAML in Mousepad, then copy&paste it into vim and then kubectl apply it.
Notepad gone (from Exam Interface)
The Notepad from the exam interface is gone, in there you could store for example notes about questions to solve later. Now you can simply use the Mousepad app. The PSI Secure Browser itself also has a Notepad in top right corner, but you can’t copy&paste between the notepad and remote desktop.
Copy & Paste
Many users had issues with this, also read the Linux Foundation article about it.
What always works: copy+paste using right mouse context menu
What works in Terminal: Ctrl+Shift+c and Ctrl+Shift+v
What works in other apps like Firefox: Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v
If the questions on the left have copyable words, then you can click on them for copy, and use the context menu or Ctrl+Shift+v to paste into the Terminal.
Inside the Terminal it’s also possible to mark text with the mouse and then press the mouse-middle key to insert. This only works while staying inside the Terminal.
Make sure to set these in your .vimrc or otherwise indents will be very messy during pasting (the exams have these config settings now also by default, but can’t hurt to be able to type them down):
:set expandtab
:set tabstop=2
:set shiftwidth=2Every time you want to copy something from Firefox into Terminal it shows a warning “Unsafe Paste”. You can just confirm this. You can also disable this in the Terminal Preferences->General->Show unsafe paste dialog.
Firefox & Allowed Sites
The browser inside the remote desktop is Firefox and it automatically restricts access to any other than the allowed sites. It will show you the list of allowed sites too, but to be on the safe side remember https://kubernetes.io/docs.
You can open multiple tabs and windows, which is fine now because there is the automatic url-check implemented.
Multiple Virtual Desktops
XFCE allows you to use multiple virtual desktops and switch between them by mouse click. You could have a large terminal on one and a large bowser on another. Or you could just use one virtual desktop at all.
There might be key-combinations that switch between virtual desktops. Hypothetically if you hit this by accident it could seem that all your windows are gone. Just click on the correct one on top in that case.
Interface Technology
- XFCE 4.14
- Guacamole 1.4.0
- XFCE Terminal Emulator (black background, white font)
- Ubuntu 20.04
- Firefox Browser
My Opinion
Originally the article also contained my opinion about this new change which I removed completely. I will concentrate my energy only on providing attendees with all facts+information they need to master the exams in the new UI.
