Kernel Drivers

How to Install PostgreSQL 16 on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Install PostgreSQL 16 on RHEL 9

PostgreSQL (often called Postgres) is an advanced open-source relational database with a 35-year development history. Unlike MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL prioritises SQL standards compliance, data integrity, and extensibility over speed-at-any-cost. PostgreSQL excels at complex queries, full-text search, JSONB document storage, geospatial data (PostGIS extension), and write-heavy workloads that require strong ACID compliance. It is the preferred database […]

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How to Harden Nginx: Security Headers, TLS 1.3, OCSP Stapling on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Harden Nginx: Security Headers, TLS 1.3, OCSP Stapling on RHEL 9

A default Nginx installation serves content, but many security hardening steps are not enabled by default. Hardening Nginx means configuring HTTP security headers to prevent XSS, clickjacking, and MIME sniffing attacks; enforcing TLS 1.3 and strong cipher suites to eliminate outdated protocol vulnerabilities; enabling OCSP Stapling so clients can verify certificate validity without a round-trip […]

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How to Set Up a LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Set Up a LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on RHEL 9

A LAMP stack — Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (or MariaDB), and PHP — is the original and most widely deployed open-source web hosting stack. It has powered millions of websites since the early 2000s and remains the default for hosting control panels (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin) and many shared hosting environments. Apache’s .htaccess support, mod_rewrite, […]

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How to Set Up a LEMP Stack (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP) on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Set Up a LEMP Stack (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP) on RHEL 9

A LEMP stack — Linux, Nginx, MySQL (or MariaDB), and PHP — is the standard modern web server stack for hosting PHP applications such as WordPress, Laravel, Drupal, and Magento. Compared to the traditional LAMP stack, Nginx handles concurrent requests more efficiently under high load due to its event-driven non-blocking architecture, making it the preferred […]

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How to Configure Nginx FastCGI Caching on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Nginx FastCGI Caching on RHEL 9

Nginx FastCGI caching stores the output of PHP-FPM (or any FastCGI backend) responses as files on disk and serves them directly without hitting PHP for subsequent requests. For a WordPress site or PHP application serving the same page to many users, this can reduce PHP execution from 200ms to under 1ms and cut server load […]

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How to Enable Brotli and Gzip Compression in Nginx on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Enable Brotli and Gzip Compression in Nginx on RHEL 9

Text-based HTTP responses — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, SVG — compress dramatically with standard compression algorithms, often achieving 60–80% size reduction. Nginx supports two compression algorithms: gzip (built-in, universal browser support) and Brotli (via the ngx_brotli dynamic module, 15–20% better compression than gzip for text, supported by all modern browsers). Enabling compression is one […]

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How to Configure Nginx with ModSecurity WAF on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Nginx with ModSecurity WAF on RHEL 9

ModSecurity as a dynamic Nginx module extends Nginx with WAF capabilities, blocking SQL injection, XSS, command injection, and hundreds of other attack patterns defined by the OWASP Core Rule Set. Unlike the Apache version which uses the stable mod_security2, the Nginx connector uses the newer libmodsecurity3 C++ library with a ngx_http_modsecurity_module connector. On RHEL 9, […]

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How to Set Up ModSecurity WAF with Apache on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Set Up ModSecurity WAF with Apache on RHEL 9

ModSecurity is the leading open-source Web Application Firewall (WAF), capable of inspecting all HTTP requests and responses against a ruleset and blocking malicious traffic including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), remote file inclusion, and OWASP Top 10 attack patterns. Combined with the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS), ModSecurity transforms Apache into a security gateway that […]

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How to Configure Nginx Load Balancing (Round-Robin, Least Conn) on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Nginx Load Balancing (Round-Robin, Least Conn) on RHEL 9

Load balancing distributes incoming requests across multiple backend servers, preventing any single server from becoming a bottleneck and providing horizontal scalability and fault tolerance. Nginx supports four load balancing methods natively: round-robin (the default), least connections, IP hash (session persistence), and weight-based. The upstream block defines the pool of backend servers and their weights, and […]

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How to Configure Apache mod_proxy as a Reverse Proxy on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Apache mod_proxy as a Reverse Proxy on RHEL 9

Apache’s mod_proxy module turns Apache into a powerful reverse proxy and gateway, forwarding requests to backend application servers, other web servers, or balancer clusters. Unlike Nginx’s reverse proxy (which is native), Apache’s proxy functionality is modular: mod_proxy handles the core proxying, mod_proxy_http handles HTTP/1.1, mod_proxy_balancer provides load balancing, and mod_proxy_wstunnel handles WebSocket tunnelling. On RHEL […]

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