Systemd Services

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

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

HTTPS is no longer optional — browsers mark HTTP sites as “Not Secure”, search engines penalise them in rankings, and many modern browser APIs (service workers, geolocation, camera access) require a secure context. Let’s Encrypt provides free, automated, and trusted SSL/TLS certificates via the ACME protocol, and Certbot is the recommended ACME client that handles […]

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How to Install Apache HTTP Server on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Install Apache HTTP Server on RHEL 9

Apache HTTP Server (httpd) is the most historically significant web server in the history of the internet, powering billions of websites since 1995. On RHEL 9, Apache is available as httpd from the AppStream repository and integrates with SELinux, firewalld, and systemd. Apache’s module architecture makes it highly extensible: mod_rewrite for URL manipulation, mod_ssl for […]

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

How to Install Nginx on RHEL 9

Nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) is the most widely deployed web server in the world, powering everything from small personal websites to the largest content delivery networks. On RHEL 9, Nginx is available from the AppStream repository and integrates natively with SELinux, firewalld, and systemd. Its event-driven, non-blocking architecture means a single Nginx worker process can handle […]

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How to Perform a System Security Audit with auditd on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Perform a System Security Audit with auditd on RHEL 9

Security auditing is the practice of recording and reviewing system calls, file accesses, user actions, and configuration changes to detect policy violations, investigate incidents, and demonstrate compliance with standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2. On RHEL 9, the Linux Audit Framework — provided by the auditd daemon — captures events at the kernel […]

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How to Use journalctl for Systemd Log Analysis on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Use journalctl for Systemd Log Analysis on RHEL 9

The Linux kernel’s systemd journal is a structured binary log that stores the output of every service, kernel message, boot sequence, and user session. Unlike traditional text-based syslog, the journal stores metadata alongside each log entry — the unit name, PID, UID, executable path, systemd unit state, and priority level — enabling far more precise […]

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How to Monitor Disk Usage with df, du, lsblk and ncdu on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Monitor Disk Usage with df, du, lsblk and ncdu on RHEL 9

Running out of disk space is one of the most disruptive failures a server can experience. When a filesystem fills up, applications crash, log files stop writing (losing audit trails), databases corrupt transactions, and web servers return 500 errors. Proactive disk monitoring is essential — and RHEL 9 provides a full set of tools for […]

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How to Schedule Automated Tasks with cron and anacron on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Schedule Automated Tasks with cron and anacron on RHEL 9

Automated task scheduling is the backbone of server maintenance: backups run at 3 AM, log cleanup happens daily, SSL certificates renew before they expire, and databases are vacuumed weekly. On RHEL 9, there are three scheduling mechanisms each suited to different scenarios. cron is the classic daemon that runs jobs on a schedule defined by […]

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How to Use rsync for Efficient File Synchronisation on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Use rsync for Efficient File Synchronisation on RHEL 9

rsync is the Swiss Army knife of file synchronisation for Linux administrators. Unlike scp, which blindly copies every file every time, rsync computes a rolling checksum to identify changed file blocks and transfers only what has changed — making subsequent syncs dramatically faster and less bandwidth-intensive. It preserves file attributes (permissions, ownership, timestamps, ACLs, extended […]

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How to Configure /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf and DNS Resolution on RHEL 9 — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf and DNS Resolution on RHEL 9

DNS resolution on a Linux server is a multi-layered system. When an application calls getaddrinfo(“example.com”), the request passes through the Name Service Switch (NSS) framework, which consults sources in the order defined in /etc/nsswitch.conf — typically /etc/hosts first, then a DNS resolver. The DNS resolver reads its configuration from /etc/resolv.conf, which lists the DNS servers […]

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How to Configure the Firewall on RHEL 9 with firewalld — step-by-step RHEL 9 tutorial on Progressive Robot

How to Configure the Firewall on RHEL 9 with firewalld

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 uses firewalld as its default firewall management daemon, backed by nftables as the kernel netfilter framework (replacing iptables which was the default in RHEL 7 and earlier). firewalld provides a zone-based model where each network interface is assigned to a trust zone — public, internal, dmz, trusted, and more — […]

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