RHEL 9

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 […]

Read more
How to Configure Nginx Rate Limiting and Connection Throttling on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Nginx Rate Limiting and Connection Throttling on RHEL 9

Rate limiting is a server-side defence that restricts how many requests a client can make within a time window. Without rate limiting, a single IP address or bot can flood your server with thousands of requests per second — crashing your application, exhausting your database connection pool, or triggering denial-of-service conditions. Nginx provides two rate […]

Read more
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, […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
How to Install and Configure Caddy Web Server on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Install and Configure Caddy Web Server on RHEL 9

Caddy is a modern, open-source web server written in Go that stands out for one defining feature: automatic HTTPS. Caddy obtains and renews TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt or ZeroSSL automatically, with zero configuration required beyond specifying a domain name. It also supports HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 (QUIC) out of the box, and its declarative Caddyfile […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
How to Enable HTTP/2 with Nginx on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Enable HTTP/2 with Nginx on RHEL 9

HTTP/2 is the second major version of the HTTP protocol, standardised in 2015, and offers significant performance improvements over HTTP/1.1: header compression (HPACK), multiplexing (multiple requests over a single connection), server push, and binary framing. On a typical webpage with dozens of assets (CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts), HTTP/2 multiplexing eliminates the head-of-line blocking that forces […]

Read more
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 […]

Read more
How to Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy on RHEL 9

A reverse proxy sits in front of one or more backend application servers, forwarding client requests to them and returning their responses to the client. From the client’s perspective, the reverse proxy is the web server. This architecture provides centralized SSL termination, load balancing, caching, rate limiting, and DDoS mitigation without exposing backend application ports […]

Read more
How to Secure Apache with Let's Encrypt and Certbot on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt and Certbot on RHEL 9

Like Nginx, Apache can be secured with free SSL/TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt using Certbot. The python3-certbot-apache plugin performs domain validation, obtains the certificate, and automatically updates your Apache virtual host configuration with the SSL directives, HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect, and modern cipher settings. This guide covers installing Certbot on RHEL 9, obtaining a certificate for your […]

Read more
CHAT