The syslog functionality is one of the main tools for a sysadmin. While writing logfiles with events of interest is a common feature of any application, having a system-wide logging functionality means all logs can be handled as one on the system. But syslog does not stop there. With these tool, a sysadmin can centralize log processing in the datacenter by forwarding the incoming events from applications to central logservers, where they can be processed at a large scale.

Centralized logging is an overkill on a home system with a few computers, but already have it's benefits around a dozen machine. For example, a dozen desktops sending all their logfiles to a central logserver mean they don't need to store them on the long run, the logs will occupy disk space in the logserver. The admin can check for problems in only one place (possibly by means of automated reports), the logs can be preserved in a safe way by the means of backups, stored more effective by means of heavy compressing, and will not be lost on a client's failure or user error.

• How to install rsyslog package on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8.
• How to verify successful install.
• How to start, stop and autostart rsyslog service.
• How to test syslog functionality with logger.

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Postfix is a common mail server, many large distributions are shipped with Postfix installed by default. The default configuration allows local mailing only, but that in itself is very useful on a machine used by many users, and even if there is no such traffic, many services dump their reports and messages into e-mails, which is delivered to the root user locally, so the sysadmin will be noticed on any events of interest when he/she logs in and switches to root user.

A simple example would be scheduled cron jobs: any output not redirected from the output of a script running from cron will be wrapped to an e-mail and will be delivered to root's mailbox, so the administrator does not even have to make any effort to have the reports of the nightly backup jobs at hand.

While this standalone mode is certainly a nice service as it is, postfix is a full-fledged mail server, capable of receiving, forwarding, relaying, filtering of e-mails, it basically have every feature we need for a mail server.

• How to install postfix on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8
• How to verify the working service with standalone functionality.

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As interconnected computer networks enter more and more fields of everyday life, cybersecurity is getting louder and louder. We protect our websites, the traffic on our websites, the computers we initiate the traffic from, maybe (part of) the disks our operating system run from, our connection to work, the computers we attach to at work, and so on.

openssl is an essential tool on any recent GNU/Linux distribution if one have to work with various certificates.

In this tutorial we will install (and reinstall) the openssl package, and test it's functionality by checking a website's certificate chain with it's help.

• How to install openssl
• How to reinstall openssl
• How to check a website's SSL certificate chain with openssl

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• How to install MariaDB/MySQL server
• How to start and enable MariaDB to start automatically after reboot
• How to secure MariaDB database and set root password
• How to create database for a remote access
• How to open MySQL/MariaDB firewall ports for incoming traffic
• How to login to MySQL/MariaDB from a remote host

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There are a few different ways that you can install an RPM package on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 as oppose to package installation from a systems repository. They each have their own merits, but DNF should probably be your first choice in most situations. It's also good to remember that, for stability's sake, it's a good idea to limit your external RPM installs as much as possible.

• How to Install an RPM with DNF
• How to Install an RPM with Yum
• How to Install an RPM with RPM

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