Any device connected to a network gets assigned an IP address that allows other devices in the network to locate and communicate with it. Typically, an IP address gets assigned by the DHCP server on a router. A DHCP server assigns any available IP address to the connected network. That means the IP address of […]

In Linux, linking is a powerful concept. A symbolic link is a file that refers to a different file or directory. The link itself doesn’t contain any data of the original file. It simply points to the location of the original file, be it in the same filesystem, different filesystem, or a remote filesystem. In […]

Yellowdog Updater Modified or Yum for short is a package management tool for RPM packages. It is popular in the REHL family of Linux distributions, including CentOS and Fedora. Thus, you can think of yum as a bootstrap for RPM package manager. Like popular package managers, Yum works via repositories that contain collections of tools […]

Whether you are a seasoned system administrator or a new Linux user, service management is one of the fundamental operations you will have to carry out. Hence, having a firm grasp of how services work and how to manage them is a great advantage. This tutorial walks you through the basics of service management in […]

I can bet that we are all familiar with sudo. It is a utility available in most Linux distributions and being adopted by those that haven’t implement it yet. Therefore, if you are a regular Linux user, sudo is a must-use tool. Sudo is a Unix utility that allows trusted users to run commands with […]

Message-Digest algorithm, commonly known as md5 hash, is a type of cryptographic hash function mainly used to verify the integrity of files. Md5 is a 128-bit message digest produced after running the MD5 function against a file. Md5 has its flaws and is therefore not a very good choice for certain encryption methods, but it […]

In various instances, you will need to edit the host file in the system. That can be to either use it as a firewall, i.e., control some network traffic, add a domain name, or test out its functionality. The host file is a local file or local DNS system that contains a static table lookup […]

Names or labels are useful as they allow us to identify one thing or one person from another. Even a person’s name, which might not be globally unique, contains a set of characters that allow a person to become distinguished from another person. Similarly, computers support labels or names that help give them a unique […]

You may have come across the saying, “Everything is a file in Linux.” Although this is not entirely true, it does hold a set of truths to it. In Linux and Unix-like systems, everything is like a file. That means the resources in the Unix system get assigned a file descriptor, including storage devices, network […]