Posts Tagged ‘top’

The Needle / Игла one of top 20 USSR, 1988 movies with english/russian subtitles

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Игла / The Needle (СССР, 1988) with english/russian subtitles


 

I just watched a movie famous in the ex-USSR. Just like most USSR movies, the movie is a bit boring slowly going and not much is happening. However it is clear how strong the dissolution processes in the USSR are accelerated. This is visible by the fall of moral of society. The movie shows people taking drugs, something almost taboo in the ex-Communist countries. The main actor is an anti-social who also happens to be one of the famous rock musicians in Russia at that time Viktor Tsoi. Just like many other Russian movies of the Soviet Era, the actors in movie are only few thus making the movie somehow miss dynamics. There is a high dose of surrealism like in other movies I've seen from the Soviet Era. The unexpected turn out of movie is also something I've noticed in most Russian movies. The movie gives out signals how the Soviet dream has fallen especially around minute 35:00 in movie

The movie is hardly to understand for a regular normal person, as the cause-result moment is missing. Maybe the main reason why the movie gained big popularity in USSR was the striking scenes not shown earlier in the restricted regime ruling in USSR.

How much memory users uses in GNU / Linux and FreeBSD – Commands and Scripts to find user memory usage on Linux

Tuesday, February 17th, 2015

 

how-much-memory-users-use-in-gnu-linux-freebsd-command-to-find-and-show-ascending-descending-usage-of-system-memory-tux-memory-logo

 


If you have to administrate a heterogenous network with Linux and FreeBSD or other UNIX like OSes you should sooner or later need for scripting purposes to have a way to list how much memory separate users take up on your system. Listing memory usage per user is very helpful for admins who manager free-shells or for companies where you have developers, developing software directly on the server via ssh. Being able to check which process eats up most memory is essential for every UNIX / Linux sysadmin, because often we as admins setup (daemons) on servers and we forgot about their existence, just to remember they exist 2 years later and see the server is crashing because of memory exhaustion. Tracking server bottlenecks where RAM memory and Swapping is the bottleneck is among the main swiss amry knives of admins. Checking which user occupies all server memory is among the routine tasks we're forced to do as admins, but because nowdays servers have a lot of memory and we put on servers often much more memory than ever will be used many admins forget to routinely track users / daemons memory consumption or even many probably doesn't know how.  Probably all are aware of the easiest wy to get list of all users memory in console non interactively with free command, e.g.:
 

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         32236      26226       6010          0        983       8430
-/+ buffers/cache:      16812      15424
Swap:        62959        234      62725

 

but unfortunately free command only shows overall situation with memory and doesn't divide memory usage by user

Thus probably to track memory users the only known way for most pepole is to (interactively) use good old top command or if you like modern (colorful) visualization with htop:

debian:~# top

 

linux-check_memory_usage_by_logged-in-user-with-top-process-command-gnu-linux-freebsd-screenshot

Once top runs interactive press 'm' to get ordered list of processes which occupy most system memory on Linux server.Top process use status statistics will refresh by default every '3.0' seconds to change that behavior to '1' second press  s and type '1.0'. To get Sort by Memory Use in htop also press 'm'
 

[root@mail-server ~]# htop


htop_show_users_memory_usage_order_ascending-gnu-linux-screenshot

 

However if you need to be involved in scripting and setting as a cron job tasks to be performed in case if high memroy consumption by a service you will need to use few lines of code. Below are few examples on how Linux user memory usage can be shown with ps cmd.

Probably the most universal way to see memory usage by users on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS / RHEL and BSDs (FreeBSD / NetBSD) is with below one liner:

 

server:~# ps hax -o rss,user | awk '{a[$2]+=$1;}END{for(i in a)print i” “int(a[i]/1024+0.5);}' | sort -rnk2
daemon 0
debian-tor 63
dnscache 1
dnslog 0
hipo 21
messagebus 1
mysql 268
ntp 2
privoxy 1
proftpd 1
qmaill 0
qmailq 0
qmailr 0
qmails 0
qscand 291
root 94
shellinabox 1
snmp 1
statd 1
vpopmail 80
www-data 6765

 

Output is in MBs

Below is output from machine where this blog is running, the system runs ( Apache + PHP + MySQL Webserver + Qmail Mail server and Tor) on Debian GNU / Linux.

 To get more human readable (but obscure to type – useful for scripting) output list of which user takes how much memory use on deb / rpm etc. based Linux :

 

server:~# echo "USER                 RSS      PROCS" ; echo "——————– ——– —–" ; \
ps hax -o rss,user | awk '{rss[$2]+=$1;procs[$2]+=1;}END{for(user in rss) printf “%-20s %8.0f %5.0f\n”, user, rss[user]/1024, procs[user];}' | sort -rnk2

 

USER                 RSS      PROCS
——————– ——– —–
www-data                 6918   100
qscand                    291     2
mysql                     273     1
root                       95   120
vpopmail                   81     4
debian-tor                 63     1
hipo                       21    15
ntp                         2     1
statd                       1     1
snmp                        1     1
shellinabox                 1     2
proftpd                     1     1
privoxy                     1     1
messagebus                  1     1
dnscache                    1     1
qmails                      0     2
qmailr                      0     1
qmailq                      0     2
qmaill                      0     4
dnslog                      0     1
daemon                      0     2

 

It is possible to get the list of memory usage listed in percentage proportion, with a tiny for bash loop and some awk + process list command
 

TOTAL=$(free | awk '/Mem:/ { print $2 }')
for USER in $(ps haux | awk '{print $1}' | sort -u)
do
    ps hux -U $USER | awk -v user=$USER -v total=$TOTAL '{ sum += $6 } END { printf "%s %.2f\n", user, sum / total * 100; }'
done

107 1.34
115 2.10
119 1.34
daemon 1.32
dnscache 1.34
dnslog 1.32
hipo 1.59
mysql 4.79
ntp 1.34
privoxy 1.33
proftpd 1.32
qmaill 1.33
qmailq 1.33
qmailr 1.32
qmails 1.33
qscand 4.98
root 1.33
snmp 1.33
statd 1.33
vpopmail 2.35
www-data 86.48

Also a raw script which can be easily extended to give you some custom information on memory use by user list_memory_use_by_user.sh is here.
You can also want to debug further how much memory a certain users (lets say user mysql and my username hipo) is allocating, this can easily be achieved ps like so:
 

root@pcfreak:~# ps -o size,pid,user,command -u mysql –sort -size
 SIZE   PID USER     COMMAND
796924 14857 mysql   /usr/sbin/mysqld –basedir=/usr –datadir=/var/lib/mysql –plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mysql/plugin –user=mysql –pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid –socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock –port=3306

 

root@pcfreak~# ps -o size,pid,user,command -u hipo –sort -size|less
 SIZE   PID USER     COMMAND
13408 19063 hipo     irssi
 3168 19020 hipo     SCREEN
 2940  2490 hipo     -bash
 1844 19021 hipo     /bin/bash
 1844 19028 hipo     /bin/bash
 1844 19035 hipo     /bin/bash
 1844 19042 hipo     /bin/bash
 1844 19491 hipo     /bin/bash
 1844 22952 hipo     /bin/bash
  744  2487 hipo     sshd: hipo@pts/0
  744  2516 hipo     sshd: hipo@notty
  524  2519 hipo     screen -r
  412  2518 hipo     /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

You see from below output user running with www-data (this is Apache Webserver user in Debian) is eating 86.48% of overall system memory and MySQL server user is using only 4.79% of available memory

Output is shown in Megabytes per username memory usage, and user memory usage is ordered (stepping-down / descentive) from top to bottom

Getting more thoroughful and easier to read reporting without beeing a 31337 bash coder you can install and use on Linux smem – memory reporting tool .

SMEM can provide you with following memory info:

  • system overview listing
  • listings by process, mapping, user
  • filtering by process, mapping, or user
  • configurable columns from multiple data sources
  • configurable output units and percentages
  • configurable headers and totals
  • reading live data from /proc
  • reading data snapshots from directory mirrors or compressed tarballs
  • lightweight capture tool for embedded systems
  • built-in chart generation


Installing smem on Debian 6 / 7 / Ubuntu 14.04 / Turnkey Linux etc. servers is done with standard:

 

debian:~# apt-get install –yes smem
….

 

 

To install smem on CentOS 6 / 7:

 

[root@centos ~ ]# yum -y install smem
….


On Slackware and other Linux-es where smem is not available as a package you can install it easily from binary archive with:

 

cd /tmp/
wget http://www.selenic.com/smem/download/smem-1.3.tar.gz
tar xvf smem-1.3.tar.gz
sudo cp /tmp/smem-1.3/smem /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/smem

 


Two most common smem uses are:

 

root@mail:~# smem -u
User     Count     Swap      USS      PSS      RSS
dnslog       1       44       48       54      148
qmaill       4      232      124      145      464
hipo        11    13552     8596     9171    13160
qscand       2     4500   295336   295602   297508
root       188   217312  4521080  4568699  7712776

 

Below command shows (-u – Report memory usage by user, -t – show totals, -k – show unix suffixes)

root@mail:~# smem -u -t -k
User     Count     Swap      USS      PSS      RSS
dnslog       1    44.0K    48.0K    54.0K   148.0K
qmaill       4   232.0K   124.0K   145.0K   464.0K
hipo        11    13.2M     8.4M     9.0M    12.9M
qscand       2     4.4M   288.4M   288.7M   290.5M
root       188   212.2M     4.3G     4.4G     7.4G
—————————————————
           206   230.1M     4.6G     4.6G     7.7G


To get users memory use by percentage with smem:
 

root@mail:~# smem -u -p
User     Count     Swap      USS      PSS      RSS
dnslog       1    0.00%    0.00%    0.00%    0.00%
qmaill       4    0.00%    0.00%    0.00%    0.01%
hipo        11    0.17%    0.11%    0.11%    0.16%
qscand       2    0.05%    3.63%    3.63%    3.66%
root       194    2.64%   56.18%   56.77%   95.56%

It is also useful sometimes when you want to debug system overloads caused by external hardware drivers loaded into kernel causing issues to get list of system wide memory use sorted by user

 

 root@mail:~# smem -w -p
Area                           Used      Cache   Noncache
firmware/hardware             0.00%      0.00%      0.00%
kernel image                  0.00%      0.00%      0.00%
kernel dynamic memory        38.30%     36.01%      2.28%
userspace memory             60.50%      0.98%     59.53%
free memory                   1.20%      1.20%      0.00%


smem is very nice as if you're running it on a Desktop Linux system with Xserver installed you can see also graphical output of memory use by application:
 

root@desktop-pc:~# smem –bar pid -c "pss uss"


smem_graphical_representation-of-which-user-application-is-consuming-most-memory-gnu-linux-kde-screenshot-smem-command-line-tool

smem can even generate graphical pie charts to visualize better memory use
 

root@desktop-pc:~# smem -P '^k' –pie=name

 

generate-graphical-staticstics-linux-memory-use-by-pie-chart

If there is a high percentage shown in firmware/hardware this means some buggy module is loaded in kernel eating up memory, to fix it debug further and remove the problematic module.
userspace memory actually shows the percantage of memory out of all server available RAM that is being consumed by applications (non kernel and other system processes which make the system move). You see in above example the kernel itself is consuming about 40% of system overall available memory. 

We all know the SWAP field stands for hard disk drive used as a memory when system is out, but there are 3 fields which smem will report which will be probably unclear for most here is also explanation on what USS / PSS / RSS means?

RSS is the Resident Set Size and is used to show how much memory is allocated to that process and is in RAM. It does not include memory that is swapped out. It does include memory from shared libraries as long as the pages from those libraries are actually in memory. It does include all stack and heap memory too.

There is also PSS (proportional set size). This is a newer measure which tracks the shared memory as a proportion used by the current process. So if there were two processes using the same shared library from before.

USS stands for Unique set size, USS is just the unshared page count, i.e. memory returned when process is killed 

PSS = Proportional set size, (PSS),  is a more meaningful representation of the amount of memory used by libraries and applications in a virtual memory system.  
Because large portions of physical memory are typically shared among multiple applications, the standard measure of memory usage known as resident set size (RSS) will significantly overestimate memory usage. The parameter PSS instead measures each application’s “fair share” of each shared area to give a realistic measure. For most admins checking out the output from RSS (output) should be enough, it will indicate which user and therefore which daemon is eating up all your memory and will help you to catch problematic services which are cause your server to run out of RAM and start swapping to disk.

IQ world rank by country and which are the smartest nations

Friday, March 14th, 2014

IQ_world_rank_by_country_world_distribution_of_intelligence
In a home conversation with my wife who is Belarusian and comparison between Bulgarian and Belarusian nation, the interesting question arised – Which nation is Smarter Bulgarian or Belarusian?

This little conversation pushed me to intriguing question What is the IQ World rank if compared by country? Since a moment of my life I'm trying to constantly prove to myself I'm smart enough. For years my motivation was to increase my IQ. I had periods when studied hard history, philosophy and literature then I had periods to put all my efforts in music and mysticism then there was my fascination about IT and informatics and hacking, I had periods with profound interest in Biology and neourosciences, then of course psychology and social sciences and since last 10 years as I belived in God, I'm deeply interested in world religions and more particularly in Christniaty. All this is connected with my previous IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and my desire to develop my IQ. I'm quite aware that IQ statistics can never be 100% reliable as there is deviation (standard error) and its a very general way to find out about a person psychology. But anyways it is among the few methods to compare people's intelligence… I've done an IQ test in distant 2008 and I scored about 118 out of 180  – meaning my  IQ level is a little bit above average. The IQ conversation triggered my curiousity so I decided to check if my current IQ has changed over the last 6 years. Here is results from test I took March, 2013 on free-iqtest.net

IQ Test
IQtest just prooved, my IQ kept almost same, still a little bit above avarage.
Further on, I did investgation online to see if I can prove to my wife the thesis Bulgarians overall IQ is higher than Belarusian. I googled for IQ world rank by Country
Here is what I found ;

 

Nations Intelligence as sorted by Country

Rank
——–

Country
———————–

%
————-

1

Singapore

108

2

South Korea

106

3

Japan

105

4

Italy

102

5

Iceland

101

5

Mongolia

101

6

Switzerland

101

7

Austria

100

7

China

100

7

Luxembourg

100

7

Netherlands

100

7

Norway

100

7

United Kingdom

100

8

Belgium

99

8

Canada

99

8

Estonia

99

8

Finland

99

8

Germany

99

8

New Zealand

99

8

Poland

99

8

Sweden

99

9

Andorra

98

9

Australia

98

9

Czech Republic

98

9

Denmark

98

9

France

98

9

Hungary

98

9

Latvia

98

9

Spain

98

9

United States

98

10

Belarus

97

10

Malta

97

10

Russia

97

10

Ukraine

97

11

Moldova

96

11

Slovakia

96

11

Slovenia

96

11

Uruguay

96

12

Israel

95

12

Portugal

95

13

Armenia

94

13

Georgia

94

13

Kazakhstan

94

13

Romania

94

13

Vietnam

94

14

Argentina

93

14

Bulgaria

93

15

Greece

92

15

Ireland

92

15

Malaysia

92

16

Brunei

91

16

Cambodia

91

16

Cyprus

91

16

FYROM

91

16

Lithuania

91

16

Sierra Leone

91

16

Thailand

91

17

Albania

90

17

Bosnia and Herzegovina

90

17

Chile

90

17

Croatia

90

17

Kyrgyzstan

90

17

Turkey

90

18

Cook Islands

89

18

Costa Rica

89

18

Laos

89

18

Mauritius

89

18

Serbia

89

18

Suriname

89

19

Ecuador

88

19

Mexico

88

19

Samoa

88

20

Azerbaijan

87

20

Bolivia

87

20

Brazil

87

20

Guyana

87

20

Indonesia

87

20

Iraq

87

20

Myanmar (Burma)

87

20

Tajikistan

87

20

Turkmenistan

87

20

Uzbekistan

87

21

Kuwait

86

21

Philippines

86

21

Seychelles

86

21

Tonga

86

22

Cuba

85

22

Eritrea

85

22

Fiji

85

22

Kiribati

85

22

Peru

85

22

Trinidad and Tobago

85

22

Yemen

85

23

Afghanistan

84

23

Bahamas, The

84

23

Belize

84

23

Colombia

84

23

Iran

84

23

Jordan

84

23

Marshall Islands

84

23

Micronesia, Federated States of

84

23

Morocco

84

23

Nigeria

84

23

Pakistan

84

23

Panama

84

23

Paraguay

84

23

Saudi Arabia

84

23

Solomon Islands

84

23

Uganda

84

23

United Arab Emirates

84

23

Vanuatu

84

23

Venezuela

84

24

Algeria

83

24

Bahrain

83

24

Libya

83

24

Oman

83

24

Papua New Guinea

83

24

Syria

83

24

Tunisia

83

25

Bangladesh

82

25

Dominican Republic

82

25

India

82

25

Lebanon

82

25

Madagascar

82

25

Zimbabwe

82

26

Egypt

81

26

Honduras

81

26

Maldives

81

26

Nicaragua

81

27

Barbados

80

27

Bhutan

80

27

El Salvador

80

27

Kenya

80

28

Guatemala

79

28

Sri Lanka

79

28

Zambia

79

29

Congo, Democratic Republic of the

78

29

Nepal

78

29

Qatar

78

30

Comoros

77

30

South Africa

77

31

Cape Verde

76

31

Congo, Republic of the

76

31

Mauritania

76

31

Senegal

76

32

Mali

74

32

Namibia

74

33

Ghana

73

34

Tanzania

72

35

Central African Republic

71

35

Grenada

71

35

Jamaica

71

35

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

71

35

Sudan

71

36

Antigua and Barbuda

70

36

Benin

70

36

Botswana

70

36

Rwanda

70

36

Togo

70

37

Burundi

69

37

Cote d'Ivoire

69

37

Ethiopia

69

37

Malawi

69

37

Niger

69

38

Angola

68

38

Burkina Faso

68

38

Chad

68

38

Djibouti

68

38

Somalia

68

38

Swaziland

68

39

Dominica

67

39

Guinea

67

39

Guinea-Bissau

67

39

Haiti

67

39

Lesotho

67

39

Liberia

67

39

Saint Kitts and Nevis

67

39

Sao Tome and Principe

67

40

Gambia, The

66

41

Cameroon

64

41

Gabon

64

41

Mozambique

64

42

Saint Lucia

62

43

Equatorial Guinea

59

 

North Korea

N/A

 

– Countries are ranked highest to lowest national IQ score.

Above statistics are taken from a work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist. To extract statistics they analized  IQ studies from 113 countries.  

For my surprise it appeared Belarusian (ranking 10th in the world) have generally higher IQ than Bulgarians (ordering 14th). Anyways being 14th in world IQ Ranking is not bad at all as we still rank in the top 20 smartest nations.

IQ is a relative way to measure intelligence, so I don't believe these statistics are revelant but they give some very general idea about world IQs.

I learned there are some claims that in more developed economies people have higher IQs than less developed. If we take in consideration above statistics its obvious such claims are dubious as you can see there are countries in top 5 countries with highest IQ, and surely Mongolia is not to be ordered in countries with high economic development.

There are plenty of other interesting researches like "Does IQ relates to people Income?", Does Religious people score higher than atheists? According to research done in U.S. Atheists score 6 IQ points higher than Religious people. However most "religous" people IQ tested were from protestant origin so results are relative (I'm sure Orthodox Christian would score higher 🙂 ). The IQ nation world ranks fail in a way that, a social, economic and historical factors are not counted. According to Gallups research, the world poorest people tend to be the most religious, a fact supporting well the saying of all saints who say that for saintly life people who preferred deliberately to live as poor people.

 

Linux: Virtualbox shared folder – how to share files from host to guest OS in Virtualbox

Monday, June 9th, 2014

add-shared-folder-in-virtualbox-linux-virtual-machine-on-top-of-windows-howto

If you just installed Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS Linux on top of Windows inside Virtualbox Virtual Machine and you're wondering how to Share files between Windows Host Operating System and Guest Operating System (Linux), here is how:

1. First make sure Virtualbox guest additions are installed

Besides installing Virtualbox guest additions which will enable you to resize VBox Window / enable copy paste between guest and host OS it is useful to have also Virtualbox extension packs which allows your Virtual Machine to be accessed remote via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) – the so called VRDP

2. From Virtualbox VM select folder on Windows hsot which will be shared

Selection of which Win folder to mount in Vbox is done via Virtualbox menus:
 

Machine -> Settings -> Shared Folder

virtualbox-windows-linux-guest-OS-how-to-shared_folder-screenshot2

virtualbox-windows-linux-guest-OS-how-to-shared_folder-screenshot

3. Launch Linux Virtual Machine and use mount command to mount shared folder

I like the practice of creating a new folder inside c:UsersgeorgiDownloadsShared_folder

Then fire up gnome-terminal / xterm whatever terminal you like and to mount shared folder inside emulated Linux issue:

mount -t vboxsf -o rw Shared_folder /mnt/Shared_folder/

 

This will mount Shared_folder in rw (read / write) mode, if you prefer to only mount Virtualbox Shared_folder for reading:

mount -t vboxsf -o ro Shared_folder /mnt/Shared_folder/

4. Configure Virtualbox Shared Folder to auto mount in Linux via fstab

As we all know automating mounts in Linux is done by adding line in /etc/fstab to automate Vbox Shared_Folder mount add new line to fstab like:
 

Shared_folder         /mnt/Shared_folder         vboxsf  defaults,rw    0 0

This will auto-mount in vbox shared folder read / write mode, to auto-mount it in read only mode:

Shared_folder         /mnt/Shared_folder         vboxsf  defaults,ro    0 0

  If you added it to /etc/fstab (and you didn't mount Shared Folder manually before), run

mount -a

to make Linux system re-read auto-mounts defined in fstab
 

The new mounted folder will appear in whenever said to be mounted. Enjoy 🙂

 

Make your WordPress Blog or Site Mobile Friendly with WPTouch plugin

Friday, January 24th, 2014

make your wordpress mobile friendly plugin wordpress mobile seo logo

I bough a new Mobile Phone changing my old Nokia Communicator 9300i (powered by Symbian) with ZTE Blade 3 with Android. I'm not a big fan of big mobility myself. However as I already have it decided to test my blog with Mobile phone default browser and my blog theme looked really crappy. Knowing that the amount of Mobile devices on the Internet is increasing dramatically these days raises the chance my blog is found by Mobile user thus its nice my blog to be Mobile ready well …

To solve that I did a quick search in google and found WPToucha mobile plugin for WordPress that automatically enables a simple and elegant mobile theme for mobile visitors of your WordPress website
To install it downloaded the plugin in usual /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins , enabled it and refreshed in Android Mobile Browser and my blog appeared great in a theme specially designed for mobile browsers as you can see in below screenshot:

my-blog-outlook-in-mobile-android-browser-with-wptouch-wordpress-plugin-screenshot

If you still haven't tried WPTouch give it a try.

Russians Celebrate Christmas / Why some Orthodox Christians celebrate Nativity ( Christmas ) on 7th of January

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

rojdestvo_Iisusa_Hrista_17th-vek-srpska-ikona

Merry Christmas to all Eastern Orthodox Christians!

I wish to all my Russian blog readers Christ's blessings, Wisdom of the 3 Wise man following the star. Humility of Christ for being born in a Cave and love of Mother of God Virgin Mary and Joseph to the incarnated Lord in flesh, Joy of the universe for the Universe rejoiced seing the birth of the savior of us sinful humans!

On 7th of January, the day on which biggest part of Eastern Orthodox Church,- Russian Orthodox Church along with Ukrainian, Macedonian, Croation, Serbian Arabic and part of Greek orthodox Church and Holy Mount Athos celebrate the day of Christ's birth. The original place where the Lord Jesus Christ was born as we read in the Gospels is BethlehemAccording to Church tradition on top of the Cave (known as Grotto) where the savior was born a Church basilica was built around year 333 A.D..

church of nativity bethlehem nowadays palestine - Jesus Christ birth place

The first Church building on top of Nativity Cave begun by Saint Helena, the mother of saint Emperor Constantine.

the_cave_of_nativity-where-Christ-was-born

The Basilica was destroyed a couple of times throughout the 3th, 4th, 5th, 10-th , 14-th and 18-th centuries in attempt to wipe out memory for Christ's birth and futile attempt of early times Roman emperors to destroy christianity.
Today Bethlehem Church is situated on Palestinian territories and place for pilgrimage of both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. Its
interior is a very interesting mixture of a classic Orthodox Christian and a Roman Catholic basillica.

Church of the Holy Nativity Christs birth place Bethlehem

There is plenty of confusion and misunderstanding on the topic why bigger part of Christians worldwide celebrate Christmas on 24th against 25th of December and why more than half of Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate on 6th against of 7th of January?

In fact it is interesting fact that in the early Christian one holy apostolic Church, Christmas and Eastern was celebrated many times as this two feasts since beginning of the Church are center of Christian faith. In later times, when Church was already formed as an Eastern and Western Church, there are Church canons on exact date to celebrate Christmas and Eastern following the Julian Calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC). In later times with development of Science it was found that this calendar was not so precise and another Church calendar was introduced in y. 1582 by Roman Catholic pope Gregory XVIII (Gregorian Calendar named after pope). I will not get into details but from modern science Astronomical point of view Gregorian calendar is more scientifically correct. The Gregorian calendar quickly become in secular life because of its mathematical precision. And by Western Roman Catholic church Influence and desire to be more scientifically correct parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church partly accepted use of the Gregorian Calendar for counting the Church feasts. Because of that many of the feasts in those Eastern Orthodox Churches moved in forward with 13 days like the Romanian and Bulgarian Orthodox Church. However due to Church canon part of the feasts in Eastern Church can't be celebrated according to the Gregorian Calendar dates. Most important feast dates is the Resurrection day (Eastern), which according to Orthodox Church rule has always to be one week after the Jewish Pascha. There are plenty of problems that emerged due to change of acceptance of reformed Church calendar in part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, however what is most important is that the difference doesn't separate Orthodox Christian it just gives us reason to celebrate feast twice 🙂

How to run your Own / Personal Domain Web WHOIS service in a minute with SpeedyWHOIS

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Running your own personal WHOIS service speedy whois in browser screenshot

I've been planning to run my own domain WHOIS service, for quite sime time and I always postpone or forgot to do it.
If you wonder, why would I need a (personal) web whois service, well it is way easier to use and remember for future use reference if you run it on your own URL, than wasting time in search for a whois service in google and then using some other's service to get just a simple DOMAIN WHOIS info.

So back to my post topic, I postpopned and postponed to run my own web whois, just until  yesterday, whether I have remembered about my idea to have my own whois up and running and proceeded wtih it.

To achieve my goal I checked if there is free software or (open source) software that easily does this.
I know I can write one for me from scratch, but since it would have cost me some at least a week of programming and testing and I didn't wanted to go this way.

To check if someone had already made an easy to install web whois service, I looked through in the "ultimate source for free software" sourceforge.net

Looking for the "whois web service" keywords, displayed few projects on top. But unfortunately many of the projects sources was not available anymore from http://sf.net and the project developers pages..
Thanksfully in a while, I found a project called SpeedyWhois, which PHP source was available for download.

With all prior said about project missing sources, Just in case if SpeedyWhois source  disappears in the future (like it probably) happened with, some of the other WHOIS web service projects, I've made SpeedyWhois  mirror for download here

 
Contrary to my idea that installing the web whois service might be a "pain in the ass", (like is the case  with so many free software php scripts and apps) – the installation went quite smoothly.
 
To install it I took the following 4 steps:
 
1. Download the source (zip archive) with wget 
 
# cd /var/www/whois-service;
/var/www/whois-service# wget -q https://www.pc-freak.net/files/speedywhois-0.1.4.zip
 
2. Unarchive it with unzip command 
 
 
/var/www/whois-service# unzip speedywhois-0.1.4.zip
3. Set the proper DNS records

My NS are using Godaddy, so I set my desired subdomain record from their domain name manager.
 

4. Edit Apache httpd.conf to create VirtualHost
 
This step is not mandatory, but I thought it is nice if I put the whois service under a subdomain, so add a VirtualHost to my httpd.conf
 
The Virtualhost Apache directives, I used are:
 
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin hipo_aT_www.pc-freak.net
        DocumentRoot /var/www/whois-service
        ServerName whois.www.pc-freak.net
        &lt;Directory /var/www/whois-service
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from All
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
 
Onwards to take effect of new Webserver configs, I did Apache restart
 
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache2 restart
 
Further on You can test whois a domain using my new installed SpeedyWHOISWeb WHOIS service  on http://whois.www.pc-freak.net
Whenever I have some free time, maybe I will work on the code, to try to add support for logging of previous whois requests and posting links pointing to the previous whois done via the web WHOIS service on the main whois page.
 
One thing that I disliked about how SpeedyWHOIS is written is, if there is no WHOIS information returned for a domain request (e.g.) a:
 
# whois domainname.com
 
returns an empty information, the script doesn't warn with a message there is no WHOIS data available for this domain or something.
 
 
This is not so important as this kind of behaviour of 'error' handling can easily be changed with minimum changes in the php code.
If you wonder, why do I need the web whois service, the answer is it is way easier to use.
I don't have more time to research a bit further on the alternative open source web whois services, so I would be glad to hear from anyone who tested other web whois service that is free comes under a FOSS license.
In the mean time, I'm sure people with a small internet websites like mine who are looking to run their OWN (personal) whois service SpeedyWHOIS does a great job.