# Your Disposable Lab

Every hands-on Lab in ROOT_ gives you a real, isolated environment — a real Linux shell from
ROOT 01 onward, real Git and Docker from ROOT 03-04, and a real Kubernetes cluster from ROOT 05
onward. It's yours alone while you're working in it. Here's what you need to know before your
first one.

## Disposable means disposable

Your Lab environment can be recreated at any time — when you start a new Lab, when an
instructor resets a classroom session, or if the environment needs to be refreshed. When that
happens, **anything that only exists inside the Lab disappears**: files you created in the
terminal, a local Git repository you initialized, a Docker container or image you built, a
Kubernetes object you deployed. None of that is backed up, and none of it needs to be — it was
never the point.

## Your academic progress is not disposable

What IS permanent, stored on RootNode's servers the moment you earn it: which lessons you've
read, which Labs you've completed, your assessment results, and your position in the course
sequence. Recreating your Lab never erases any of that. You can lose a Lab entirely and pick up
exactly where you left off in the course.

## How you know you actually solved it

Every Lab task validates itself — when you think you're done, you run the check and get a real
pass/fail answer immediately, based on the real state of your environment, not on your own
guess. If it fails, that's useful information, not a penalty: it's telling you specifically what
isn't right yet.

## If you get stuck

Most Labs have hints available, revealed one at a time so you can try the next step yourself
before seeing more. Using a hint doesn't cost you anything or affect your result — it's there to
keep you moving, not to be avoided on principle. A formal, timed assessment may disable hints;
if so, the assessment will tell you plainly before you start.

If a Lab's environment itself seems broken rather than the task being hard (a command that
should work doesn't, the environment won't start), use **Reset Scenario & Environment** to tear
down and rebuild it cleanly rather than fighting a broken environment.

## If you're in an instructor-led session

Your instructor can see your progress in real time and gets notified the moment you use **Need
Help** — no need to wait to be noticed. Use it for anything: a Lab that seems broken, a concept
that didn't click, or just wanting a second pair of eyes before you second-guess a working
solution.

## Returning to the course

When you're done with a Lab — pass or still stuck — you can always return to the course view and
come back to it later. Nothing about leaving a Lab mid-task loses your place.

You're ready. Let's start with how a computer actually runs the software you're about to spend
this program controlling.