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Enable Debian Linux automatic updates to keep latest OS Patches / Security Up to Date

Monday, January 13th, 2025

Enable Debian Linux automatic updates to keep latest OS Patches / Security Up to Date

I'm not a big fan of automatism on GNU / Linux as often using automatic updates could totally mess things especially with a complex and a bit chatic OS-es like is Linux nowadays.
Nevertheless as Security is becoming more and more of a problem especially the browser security, having a scheduled way to apply updates like every normal modern Windows and MAC OS as an option is becoming essential to have a fully manageble Operating system.

As I use Debian GNU / Linux for desktop for my own personal computer and I have already a lot of Debian servers, whose OS minor level and package version maintenance takes up too big chunk of my time (a time I could dedicated to more useful activities). Thus I found it worthy at some cases to trigger Debian's way to keep the OS and security at a present level, the so called Debian "unattended upgrades".

In this article, I'll explain how to install and Enable Automatic (" Unattended " ) Updates on Debian, with the hope that other Debian users might start benefiting from it.

Pros of enabling automatic updates, are:

Debian OS Stay secure without constant monitoring.
You Save much time by letting your system handle updates.
Presumably Enjoying more peace of mind, knowing your system is more protected.

Cons of enabling automatic updates:

Some exotic and bad maintained packages (might break after the update)
Customizations made on the OS /etc/sysctl.conf or any other very custom server configs might disappear or not work after the update
At worst scenario (a very rare but possible case) OS might fail to boot after update 🙂

Regular security updates patch vulnerabilities that could otherwise be exploited by attackers, which is especially important for servers and systems exposed to the internet, where threats evolve constantly.

1. Update Debian System to latest

Before applying automatic updates making any changes, run apt to update package lists and upgrade any outdated packages,to have automatic updates for a smooth configuration process.

# apt update && apt upgrade -y

2. Install the Unattended-Upgrades deb Package

# apt install unattended-upgrades -y

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
distro-info-data gir1.2-glib-2.0 iso-codes libgirepository-1.0-1 lsb-release python-apt-common python3-apt python3-dbus python3-distro-info python3-gi
Suggested packages:
isoquery python-apt-doc python-dbus-doc needrestart powermgmt-base
The following NEW packages will be installed:
distro-info-data gir1.2-glib-2.0 iso-codes libgirepository-1.0-1 lsb-release python-apt-common python3-apt python3-dbus python3-distro-info python3-gi unattended-upgrades
0 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,786 kB of archives.
After this operation, 24.4 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

# apt install apt-listchanges
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
linux-image-5.10.0-30-amd64
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following additional packages will be installed:
python3-debconf
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apt-listchanges python3-debconf
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 137 kB of archives.
After this operation, 452 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 python3-debconf all 1.5.82 [3,980 B]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 apt-listchanges all 3.24 [133 kB]
Fetched 137 kB in 0s (292 kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages …
Deferring configuration of apt-listchanges until /usr/bin/python3
and python's debconf module are available
Selecting previously unselected package python3-debconf.
(Reading database … 84582 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/python3-debconf_1.5.82_all.deb …
Unpacking python3-debconf (1.5.82) …
Selecting previously unselected package apt-listchanges.
Preparing to unpack …/apt-listchanges_3.24_all.deb …
Unpacking apt-listchanges (3.24) …
Setting up python3-debconf (1.5.82) …
Setting up apt-listchanges (3.24) …

Creating config file /etc/apt/listchanges.conf with new version

Example config for apt-listchanges would be like:

# vim /etc/apt/listchanges.conf
[apt]
frontend=pager
email_address=root
confirm=0
save_seen=/var/lib/apt/listchanges.db
which=both

3. Enable Automatic unattended upgrades

Once installed, enable automatic updates with the following command, which will prompt asking if you want to enable automatic updates. Select Yes and press Enter, which will confirm that the unattended-upgrades service is active and ready to manage updates for you.

# dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

Or non-interactively by running command:

# echo unattended-upgrades unattended-upgrades/enable_auto_updates boolean true | debconf-set-selections
dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive unattended-upgrades

4. Set the Schedule for Automatic Updates on Debian

By default, unattended-upgrades runs daily, to verify or modify the schedule, check the systemd timer:

# sudo systemctl status apt-daily.timer
# sudo systemctl status apt-daily-upgrade.timer
# systemctl edit apt-daily-upgrade.timer

Current apt-daily.timer config as of Debian 12 (bookworm) is as follows

root@haproxy2:/etc/apt/apt.conf.d# cat /lib/systemd/system/apt-daily.timer
[Unit]
Description=Daily apt download activities

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 6,18:00
RandomizedDelaySec=12h
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target
root@haproxy2:/etc/apt/apt.conf.d#

# systemctl edit apt-daily-upgrade.timer

[Timer]
OnCalendar=
OnCalendar=03:00
RandomizedDelaySec=0

At Line num 2 above is needed to reset (empty) the default value shown below in line num 5.
Line 4 is needed to prevent any random delays coming from the defaults.

Now both timers should be active, if not, activate them with:

# systemctl enable –now apt-daily.timer
# systemctl enable –now apt-daily-upgrade.timer

These timers ensure that updates are checked and applied regularly, without manual intervention.

5.Test one time Automatic Updates on Debian works

To ensure everything is working, simulate an unattended upgrade with a dry run:

# unattended-upgrade –dry-run

You can monitor automatic updates by checking the logs.

# less /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log

Log shows details of installed updates and any issues that occurred. Reviewing logs periodically can help you ensure that updates are being applied correctly and troubleshoot any problems.

6. Advanced Configuration Options

If you’re a power user or managing multiple systems, you might want to explore these additional settings in the configuration file:

# vim /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Configure unattended-upgrades to send you an email whenever updates are installed.

Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "your-email-address@email-address.com";

Enable automatic reboots after kernel updates
by adding the line:

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true";

To schedule reboots after package upgrade is applied at a specific time:

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-Time "02:00";

Specify packages you don’t want to be updated by editing the Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist section in the configuration file.

Here is alternative way to configure the unattended upgrade, by using apt configuration options:

# vim /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02periodic

// Control parameters for cron jobs by /etc/cron.daily/apt-compat //

// Enable the update/upgrade script (0=disable)
APT::Periodic::Enable "1";

// Do "apt-get update" automatically every n-days (0=disable)
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";

// Do "apt-get upgrade –download-only" every n-days (0=disable)
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";

// Run the "unattended-upgrade" security upgrade script
// every n-days (0=disabled)
// Requires the package "unattended-upgrades" and will write
// a log in /var/log/unattended-upgrades
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

// Do "apt-get autoclean" every n-days (0=disable)
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "21";

// Send report mail to root
// 0: no report (or null string)
// 1: progress report (actually any string)
// 2: + command outputs (remove -qq, remove 2>/dev/null, add -d)
// 3: + trace on
APT::Periodic::Verbose "2";

If you have to simultaneously update multiple machines and you're on a limited connection line, configure download limits if you’re on a metered connection by setting options in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades.

7. Stop Automatic Unattended Upgrade

Under some circumstances if it happens the unattended upgrades are no longer required and you want to revert back to manual package updates, to disable the updates you have to disable the unattended-upgrades service

# systemctl stop unattended-upgrades

8. Stop an ongoing apt deb package set of updates applied on Debian server

Perhaps not often, but it might be you have run an automated upgrade and this has broke a server system or a service and for that reason you would like to stop the upcoming upgrade (some of whose might have started on other servers) immediately, to do so, the easiest way (not always safe thogh) is to kill the unattended-upgrades daemon.

# pkill –signal SIGKILL unattended-upgrades

Note that this a very brutal way to kill it and that might lead to some broken package update, that you might have to later fix manually.

If you have the unattended-upgrade process running on the OS in the process list backgrounded and you want to stop the being on the fly upgrade on the system more safely for the system, you can stop and cancel the ongoing apt upgrade it by running the ncurses prompt interface, through dpkg-reconfigure

# dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

Then just select No, press Enter. In my case, this has promptly stopped the ongoing unattended upgrade that seemed blocked (at least as promptly as the hardware seemed to allow 🙂 ).

If you want to disable it for future, so it doesn't automatically gets enabled on next manual update, by some update script disable service as well.

# systemctl disable unattended-upgrades
…

Close up

That’s all ! Now, your Debian system will automatically handle security updates, keeping your system secure without you having to do a thing.
The same guide should be good for most Deb based distributions such as Ubuntu / Mint and there rest of other Debian derivative OS-es.
You’ve now set up a reliable way to ensure your system stays protected from vulnerabilities, but anyways it is a good practice to always login and check what the update has done to the system, otherwise expect the unexpected.

Tags: Advanced Configuration Options, background, close, configure, dependency tree, Description Daily, disable, Done, Enable Debian Linux, installed, level, logs, MAC, packages, peace, possible, reading package, root, running, security, servers, setting, state information, sudo, system, systemctl, time, timer, updates, upgrade, without
Posted in Computer Security, Curious Facts, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux on Laptops, Various | No Comments »

Saint Barbara of Bulgarian Origin, Spring that came by her prayer situated in a Bulgarian village Eleshnica

Wednesday, December 4th, 2024

A sensational legend, prooved by modern Theologist to be a fact is the famous Great Martyr Barbara (Varvara as known in Slavonic realm) is of Bulgarian origin and her martyrdom has occured in country territory of contemporary Bulgaria.

Saint Barbara and her famous Tower where her father kept her imprisoned

From very ancient times Saint Barbara is highly venerated in both Eastern Church and Western Church. The Barbara is a common baby name till this very date, there are countless hospis and hospitals, and institutions all arount the world in her name. Her Living has been an inspiration for the civillized world for many centuries, she is
After the Church Schism in 1054, when Roman-Catholics seperated from the Church and the Pope started to claim rulership over the whole church heresy and many other erronous, believe slowly the great veneration for Saint Barbara, started to deteriorate especially in the early 20th century in Pan-Roman Calendar in the 1969 revision after the Second Vatican assembly although she remains on the list of saints of the Catholic Church, her veneration in Catholicism fade away with claims, there is not enough historical data to proove the living of the saint is not just a pious legend.

Saint Baraba is well known for being the protector of young Children and all people who are in danger of sudden and unexpected death.
Saint Barbara feast day is always celebrated on 4th of December.

For that reason, the representatives of the most risky professions like:
miners, gunners, firefighters, sappers, pyrotechnicians – celebrate December 4, when it is the feast of the Great Martyr, all over the world.

The personality of the saint is shrouded in mystery. Her appearance on the historical scene came too late, nearly five centuries after her martyrdom.
That is why it is not surprising that in our country a village keeps an ancient early Christian legend about the saint.

вяра - ВЯРА: Извор на Св. Варвара лекува край Елешница

The old chapel place of St. Barbara and the rebuild chapel built on the site

Those legend tells us, she wandered the lands near Razlog, where she lived and where she was martyrdom.
There on those martyrdom place is built a chapel in honor of the saint and a miraculous spring called by local citizens for ages "the Myrrh".
It is believed that whoever washes with the medicinal water in it can be cured of any disease.

According to a fascinating study by famous Bulgarian Theologian researcher Doctor. Vencislav Karavalchev, St. Varvara was not born in Nicomedia (Bythinia) in the 3rd century, as her life dictates, but the actual location for that historical place is in the village of Eleshnitsa (near Blagoevgrad), which in ancient times was called Iliopolis (Ilioupoli). Her father Dioscorus was a high-ranking administrator. Because she was of fabulous beauty, out of jealousy he locked her in a tower. When he was away on state affairs,
Barbara (Varvara) converted to Christianity.

The martyr was sentenced to death by beheading by her father and the governor of the city. They cut off her head in front of the baths, and her blood turned into healing mineral water. Locals say that the water started gushing out where her blood soaked into the ground.

Today, the gushing spring has a temperature of 57-58 degrees. The Myrrh is lined with stones, and people come from all over the country and abroad for healing baths.

Prayer-in-from-of-Saint-Barbara-Chapel-entry-in-Eleshnica-Village-near-Blagoevgrad-Bulgaria-martyrdom-place
Church Akathist Service in honor of saint Barbara in her Chapen , who is honored in Eleshnica on the fourth day after Easter.

It is assumed that there was a pagan sanctuary near the healing spring, which later grew into a Christian shrine. It can be seen near the built chapel. The entire area has long been known by the name of St. Barbara. Large stones can be seen above, piled up like a herd.
It is assumed that these are the remains of the tower in which the saint stood, who paid with her head for the acceptance of the Christian faith.

It is believed that the legend that Varvara was born here started from a Russian monk from Mount Athos, who was treated in the spring near the village of Eleshnitsa. In 1856 in Moscow, the memories and notes of monk Parthenius were published in several volumes, who, as he himself wrote, did so at the request and with the blessing of Bishop Athanasius. In four voluminous volumes, Parthenius set forth what he saw and heard during his travels and residence on the Holy Mountain, as well as in Russia, Moldavia, Turkey, Jerusalem, and the Holy Land. The fourth volume of these memories contains the information that confirms the legend of St. Barbara living in Eleshnica.

Here is what the Russian Monk Parthenius writes back then:

"I will announce something else, which for us, Russians, is very important, but its credibility has not yet been proven, it has not been investigated, and therefore causes confusion in me. And this thing is the following: the Bulgarians affirm that the great martyr Varvara was more Bulgarian by birth, Slavic by language, from the Macedonian side. That's what Bulgarian monks told me in our Russian monastery on Mount Athos, not one and not two, but more than twenty people.And they received this tradition from ancient times and from their forefathers.

They say thus: In Macedonia there is a city of Nevrokop, six days' journey from the Athonian woods; and from the city of Nevrokop there is a village one day's journey, in Bulgarian called Leshnitsa (Eleshnitsa – b.r.), and in Greek – the former Iliopolis. In this village there is a bathhouse, next to the bathhouse flows a strong source of hot water, which has healing powers, and when it cools, it becomes sweet and delicious like milk. This bath is called Dioskorova, after the father of St. Barbara; and it would be better to say – banya sv. Varvara. On the day in which the memory of the saint is celebrated, a large number of people, Bulgarians, gather here, and a prayer is performed and a great celebration takes place, and they drink from the water and bathe there in the font. There is also a ruined tower in the same village; they say that St. lived there. Barbara and that the tower was built by her father'.

According to the official biography, these events took place in Nicomedia.
The belief says that God's retribution overtakes Varvara's father and the governor of the city – they are both struck by lightning.
The young woman was buried by the Christian Valentine, and her tomb became a source of miracles of faith. In the 6th century, the relics of Saint Barbara were transferred to Constantinople. In the 12th century they were moved to the Mikhailovsky Zlatoverkh Monastery by Svyatopolk II, and from 1930 rest in the Patriarchal Cathedral "St. Vladimir" in Kyiv. Fragments of the miraculous relics of the saint can be found in the Transfiguration Church in Sofia. In the Troyan monastery "Assumption", along with the miraculous icon "The Virgin of Troeruchitsa", relics of St. Varvara.

Saint-Barbara-depicted-on-United-States-Artillerymen-coins

The saint is of the Order of the United States State Artillerymen.

Protectors for Artillery man and Gunners

Every year on December 4, artillerymen in the armies of a number of Christian countries honor their patron – the holy great martyr Barbara. In the French Army, this day has been celebrated since 1671. during the reign of Louis XIV with the creation of the Regiment of Royal Fusiliers, the first commander of which was the King himself. In the West, the saint is called Barbara. In the US Army, this day is usually accompanied by an official military dinner with the solemn presentation of orders established in the name of St. Varvara. Orders can be awarded not only to military personnel, but also to civilians for services to the artillery corps. The saint was called upon to assist in accidents resulting from the explosion of the first samples of artillery guns. That is why, at the dawn of artillery, the ancient gunners, addressing their prayers to St. Varvara, they accepted her as their patron. The history of the cult of the saint goes back to the time when China invented gunpowder. As expected, the first cannons began to be produced soon. They made their way from Asia to Europe, and the fear of the new weapon proved just as sinister as the fear of the wrath of St. Varvara. The cannon killed suddenly and from a distance like the lightning that pierced the murderers of the Christian martyr. But there was something else. In the initial period of its development, fire artillery was very far from perfection. The first guns were made of iron. When fired, it was distorted in the body, and some of the elements of the projectiles were soldered to the channel of the cannon. A frequent phenomenon under these conditions was instead of firing the projectile, its spraying, which struck not the enemy, but its own soldiers. In such cases, the artillerymen looked for hope, protection and protection in such misfortunes from St. Barbara, patroness of lightning and thunder. Over time, the artillerymen had the feeling that they were always under the protection of the saint. Miners in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany celebrate the saint's day. Even in faraway Australia, miners honor her with an annual parade.

old-picture-of-traditional-Eleshnica-village-Assembly-on-saint-Barbara--martyrdom-place-near-Razlog-in-Eleshnica-village

Since ancient times, a feast assembly is held in the area of St. Varvara, near Razlog (Razlozhko).

Cities and early Medicine tranquility Pills bear name in her honour

Barbiturates, one of the oldest sedatives group of medicines used in medical practice, are named after the saint known in the West as Barbara.
The story goes that in the distant 1864 the chemist Adolf von Bayer entered a tavern. He had just discovered a group of substances acting on the central nervous system in a wide range from sedative to anesthetic.
An artilleryman celebrated his holiday there. In his honor (knowing saint Barbara is protector of artillerists), for providence reason the chemist decided to named his discovery after the saint.

Many cities and temples all over the world bear her name. Today, part of the California coast, now occupied by the city of Santa Barbara, is named after the saint. It was named in 1602 after the sea explorer Sebastian Vizcaino survived a storm at sea just before her feast day. Other Spanish and Portuguese settlements named Santa Barbara were established in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Philippines.

Source of Research prooving Saint Barbara of (Bulgarian origin):

St. Barbara of Iliopol – following the trail of a legend (Research in Bulgarian by Ventzislav Karavylchev)

Tags: ancient, Bulgarian Theologian, celebrated, healing, martyrdom, named, place, prayers, Saint Barbara, Source, village, water
Posted in Christianity, Educational, Everyday Life, Various | No Comments »

Zabbix Power Shell PS1 script to write zero or one if string is matched inside log file

Monday, December 2nd, 2024

At work we had setup zabbix log file processing for few servers for a service that is doing a Monitoring Health Checks for a a special application via an encrypted strong encrypted tunnel. The app based on the check reports whether the remote side has processed data or not.
As me and my team are not maintainers of the zabbix-server where the zabbix-agents are sending the data, there is a multiple content of data being sent in simply "" empty strings via a zabbix Item setup. Those empty strings however gets stored in the zabbix-server database and since this check is made frequently about 500 hundred records of empty string lines are being written to the zabbix server, we got complaint by the zabbix adminsitrators, that we have to correct our Monitoring setup to not flood the zabbix-server.

Since zabbix cannot catch up the "" empty string and we cannot supress the string from being written in the Item, we needed a way to change the monitoring so that the configured Application check returns 1 (on error) and 0 (on success).

Zabbix even though advanced has a strange when zabbix log[] function, e.g.

log[/path/to/log,,,,skip]

log function, used to analyze a log file and cut out last or first lines of a file simmilar to UNIX's head and tail over log files this is described in the zabbix log file monitoring here . If a string is matched it can return string 1, but if nothing gets matched the result is empty string "" and this empty string cannot be used in a way to analyze the data with Item is used.

There is plenty of discussions online for this weird behavior and many people do offer different approaches to solve the strange situation, but as we have tried with our colleagues sys admins none of those really worked out.

Thus we decided to use the classical way to work around, e.g. to simply use a powershell script that would check a number of lines inside a provided log file analyze if a string gets found and print out value of "1" if the string is matched or "0" "if not and this PS1 script to be set to run via a standard zabbix userparameter script.

This worked well, as all of us are mainly managing Linux systems, and we don't have enough knowledge on powershell we have used our internal Aartificial Intelligence (AI) clone tool to LibreChat – A free and open source ChatGPT clone.

LibreChat includes OpenAI's models, but also others — both open-source and closed-source — and its website promises "seamless integration" with AI services from OpenAI, Azure, Anthropic, and Google — as well as GPT-4, Gemini Vision, and many others. ("Every AI in one place," explains LibreChat's home page.) Plugins even let you make requests to DALL-E or Stable Diffusion for image generations. (LibreChat also offers a database that tracks "conversation state" — making it possible to switch to a different AI model in mid-conversation…)

$logfile = "C:\path\to\your\logfile.log"
$searchString = "-1"

# Get the last 140 lines
$lines = Get-Content $logfile -Tail 140

# Filter lines containing the search string
$found = $lines | Where-Object { $_ -match [regex]::Escape($searchString) }

# Output found lines or 0 if none were found
if ($found) {
$found | ForEach-Object { $_ }
} else {
Write-Host 0
}

You can download and the return_zero_or_one-if-string-matches-in-log-powershell.ps1 script here

Tags: data, empty, file, found, generations, inside, Item, last, log, log files, make, Monitoring Health Checks, none, page, possible, requests, search string, simply, switch, tail, tool, zabbix
Posted in Educational, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »

How to reboot stuck Iphone due to Appstore unable to close Pop-up

Friday, November 22nd, 2024

Recently Sonya Ankova which is the most famous youtuber that shares tons video on Orthodox Christianity and friend of mine has bought a brand new IPhone 13. As she is a complete startup with Iphone, just like i was in the old days, she had no idea how to configure the Phone Basics.
She as as a partially technical person do to the constant use of Computers to Edit and Create Videos captured Videos on her Camera and compile videos on various interesting topics on what is the Orthodox Christian believer approach to thinking and life philosophy, managed to Upgrade the Software of Iphone via WI-Fi connection to the latests shipped updates by Iphone and setup some very basic settings on the new Phone, in her desperate update to Migrate her old Android Phone to the new Iphone, but did not managed to completely succeed.

Thus as I already have some experience on setting up, my personal phone and 2 more friends iPhones I already had some knowledge and started configuring her Phone.

As a first logical step to be able to do anything further on the phone of course i had to configure AppStore and started creating her iCloud user that is as usually necessery for login and use of Apple Appstore Magazine.

First on trying to login to AppStore without still having the iCloud created by automatism the phone got locked up exactly on the screen where i have to fill in user login data and pass credentials and this annoying pop-up stayed on the screen even after trying to unlock and i couldn't remove the annoying thing in any way thus I had to find a way to resolve the issue and be able to reboot the phone and unlock and try to fill in the App store new account just created credentials from icloud.com, but that was not possible.

One approach of course is to wait for the Phone to Discharge on couple of days, but i needed a quick fix to continue with setup the phone so after quick googling I found the work around to such buggy stuff by forcing the Iphone to restart itself forcably.

On Iphone that is easy by:

iphone 12 buttons front copy

1. Quickly press and release the Volume Up button.

2. Quickly press and release the Volume Down button.

3. Press and hold the Side (right) button until the Apple logo appears, then release the Side button.

Not that the side right Phone button has to be kept press for about 15 to 30 secs to force the restart, otherwise just the restart
phone Prompt slider appears and you have to slide left to make the Phone restart (the slider did not work, however as the Pop Up from AppStore was blocking me to do anything on the Iphone screen.

After reboot the Phone booted normal and the PopUp from Appstore was no more and Unlocking the screen was possible with configured FaceID Recognition or PIN code unlock prompt.

I've read online that the Same Force Restart iPhone trick is very useful and very much loved by many people,

if due to Bugs or whatever your iPhone is dead frozen and doesn’t want to turn on.

There is a bug in recent generations of iPhones that you might want to be aware of, especially when traveling and heavily relying on your smartphone.

It might happen that all of a sudden your iPhone doesn't turn back on.

If the iPhone isn't responding and you can't turn it off and on, try forcing it to restart.

If Iphone Biten Apple doesn't rise up, don't hurry to you panic, make sure the iPhone is sufficiently charged by connecting it to a known good charger for at least 15 minutes.

Hope this little article helps someone with IPhone stuck, enjoy !

Tags: about, Account, after, ALL, and, annoying, annoying thing, ANY, apple, around, first, How to, IPhone, life philosophy, login, release, screen, trying, use, Videos
Posted in Linux, Mobile Phone Apps & Games, Various | No Comments »

How to install and use WSL 2 Windows native Linux emulation Debian and Ubuntu Linux on Windows 10 / Windows 11

Thursday, October 31st, 2024

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is perhaps relatively rarely known to the old school sys admins rats who usually use stuff like QEMU / KVM for Windows or Virtualbox / VMWare for Host machine.
However most people most lileky heard but never used or heard about the native (container like) virtualization WSL which was introduced in Windows 10 and Windows 11 as an attempt from Microsoft to improve the interoperability between Windows and Linux.
WSL version 1 and ver 2 allows Microsoft Windows for using a Linux environment without the need for a separate virtual machine.

In Windows 10, it is existing in Windows 10 Professional version can be installed either by joining the Windows Insider program or manually via Microsoft Store or Winget.
Hence perhaps you don't know that WSL virtualization can be used by those who want to mix Linux and Windows or for example get an advantages against dual-boot (installing Linux and Windows on the same computer).
Even better most significant WSL pros is you can literally running both systems at the same time without the need to run or stop every software that’s running and reboot to another system.

Procedure to set up a WSL is simple and similar to setting up a real Linux OS, therefore this guide can also be used as a reference to Linux setup.The specifications of WSL setup procedure are mainly in Install WSL and then setup any packages you would like to use for example if you want to be able to access remotely the WSL emulated Debian / Ubuntu or other of the installable distros via OpenSSH server.

1. Requirements to install and use WSL Linux emulation

To have the wsl subsystem used on Windows 10 or Windows 11 requirements:

You must be running Windows 10 version 2004 and higher (Build 19041 and higher) or Windows 11 to use the commands below. If you are on earlier versions please see the manual install page.

2. List available installable Linux distributions

WSL subsystem has ported only a certain set of Linux distributions, so if you need a very specific and unique Linux distribution, you would perhaps need to use Hyper-V virtualization or Virtualbox / VMWare.
However for people like me who are mainly using Debian GNU / Linux on daily basis as well as some OracleLinux admins / SUSE it is a perfect solution.

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –list –online
The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed.
Install using 'wsl.exe –install <Distro>'.

NAME FRIENDLY NAME
Ubuntu Ubuntu
Debian Debian GNU/Linux
kali-linux Kali Linux Rolling
Ubuntu-18.04 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Ubuntu-20.04 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu-22.04 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Ubuntu-24.04 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
OracleLinux_7_9 Oracle Linux 7.9
OracleLinux_8_7 Oracle Linux 8.7
OracleLinux_9_1 Oracle Linux 9.1
openSUSE-Leap-15.6 openSUSE Leap 15.6
SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP5 SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5
SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP6 SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6
openSUSE-Tumbleweed openSUSE Tumbleweed

3. Install Linux distribution for a first time

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –install

The default Linux distribution that will get installed inside WLS Virtlualization is Ubuntu.

4. Install Debian GNU / Linux distribution as a second distro

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –install Debian

That second installed distro would make Debian now the default one to boot by WSL.

To run the fresh installed Debian GNU / Linux distribution, run only wsl command with no arguments.

# wsl

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –set-version Debian 2
For information on key differences with WSL 2 please visit https://aka.ms/wsl2
Conversion in progress, this may take a few minutes.
The distribution is already the requested version.
Error code: Wsl/Service/WSL_E_VM_MODE_INVALID_STATE
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –set-version 2
There is no distribution with the supplied name.
Error code: Wsl/Service/WSL_E_DISTRO_NOT_FOUND
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0>

Simply pressting CTRL + D from the actively running WSL emulated Linux (that is pretty much like a native Windows docker container if we have to compare to Linux) would stop the VM.

5. List runnable / installed VM Linux distributions

To list the available runnable Linux VMs on your Windows status on Windows Subsystem for Linux:

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –list –verbose
NAME STATE VERSION
* Debian Stopped 2
Ubuntu Stopped 2
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0>

6. Run and check recent installed Linux distribution version

wsl2-windows-virtualization-install-virtual-machine-debian4

To run the newly install Debian Virtualized Linux (which as you can see is the default set distribution to run by WSL virtualization) simply type

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl

hipo@PC2LP3:/mnt/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0$hipo@WL-2SLPWL3:/mnt/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0$ cd ~
hipo@PC2LP3:~$

hipo@PC2LP3:~$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
hipo@WL-2SLPWL3:~$

7. Update the Debian distribuion packages to latest available

hipo@PC2LP3:~$ sudo su – root
hipo@PC2LP3:~# apt update –fix-missing

8. Install openssh server to be able to connect to the WSL hosted Virtual Machine

hipo@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# apt install openssh-server –yes
…

windows-wsl-linux-emulation

root@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# systemctl start openssh-server telnet
System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.
Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
root@WL-2SLPWL3:/home/hipo# /etc/init.d/ssh start
Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.
root@WL-2SLPWL3:/home/hipo# ps -ef|grep -i ssh
root 30 9 0 18:19 ? 00:00:00 sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd [listener] 0 of 10-100 startups
root 32 15 0 18:20 pts/1 00:00:00 grep -i ssh

windows-wsl-linux-emulation

By default a fresh new installed VM would have a process list like below:

root@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# ps axuwef

wsl2-windows-virtualization-install-virtual-machine-debian7

To be able to have ifconfig and a number of other network tools it is useful to install net-tools package

root@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# apt install net-tools –yes
…

root@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# /sbin/ifconfig
…

Once the WSL VM and OpenSSHD is run you can try to telnet or ssh to the VM locally or remotely.

root@PC2LP3:/home/hipo# telnet localhost 22
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_9.2p1 Debian-2+deb12u3

9. Run commands directly from Windows command line or Powershell

You can also use the powershell to run commands via the virtualized Linux environment using simple syntax

# wsl [cmd-to-run]

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl ls /
bin dev home lib lost+found mnt proc run srv tmp var
boot etc init lib64 media opt root sbin sys usr
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl ps -ef
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 18:07 hvc0 00:00:00 /init
root 5 1 0 18:07 hvc0 00:00:00 plan9 –control-socket 5 –log-level 4 –server-fd 6 –pipe-fd 8 –log-t
root 8 1 0 18:07 ? 00:00:00 /init
root 9 8 0 18:07 ? 00:00:00 /init
hipo 10 9 0 18:07 pts/0 00:00:00 ps -ef
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0>

10. Enable systemd on Linux distribution in WSL 2

Once you boot into the WSL installed distro shell edit /etc/wsl.conf:

$ vim /etc/wsl.conf

[boot]
systemd=true

11. Setting extra useful variables to boot the WSL emulated Linux VM

root@debian-wsl:/home/hipo# cat /etc/wsl.conf
[boot]
systemd=true

# Automatically mount Windows drive when the distribution is launched
[automount]

# Set to true will automount fixed drives (C:/ or D:/) with DrvFs under the root directory set above. Set to false means drives won't be mounted automatically, but need to be mounted manually or with fstab.
enabled = true

# Sets the directory where fixed drives will be automatically mounted. This example changes the mount location, so your C-drive would be /c, rather than the default /mnt/c.
root = /

# DrvFs-specific options can be specified.
options = "metadata,uid=1003,gid=1003,umask=077,fmask=11,case=off"

# Sets the `/etc/fstab` file to be processed when a WSL distribution is launched.
mountFsTab = true

# Network host settings that enable the DNS server used by WSL 2. This example changes the hostname, sets generateHosts to false, preventing WSL from the default behavior of auto-generating /etc/hosts, and sets generateResolvConf to false, preventing WSL from auto-generating /etc/resolv.conf, so that you can create your own (ie. nameserver 1.1.1.1).
[network]
hostname = debian-wsl
generateHosts = true
generateResolvConf = true

# Set whether WSL supports interop processes like launching Windows apps and adding path variables. Setting these to false will block the launch of Windows processes and block adding $PATH environment variables.
[interop]
enabled = false
appendWindowsPath = false

# Set the user when launching a distribution with WSL.
[user]
default = hipo

# Set a command to run when a new WSL instance launches. This example starts the Docker container service.
#[boot]
#command = service docker start
root@debian-wsl:/home/hipo#

To learn about on Advanced settings configuration in WSL check out official Microsoft documentation here

12. Shutting down a running emulated Linux VM

If you have run a WSL VM and you want to shut it down do:

# wsl shutdown

If you at a point want to delete / uninstall the installed distribution you can do

# wsl –terminate Distro_Name
# wsl –uninstall Distro_Name

Or you if you want to do a cleanup of the stored files inside the installed distribution (if you have stored files), do:

# wsl –unregister Distro_Name

For more in depth details check out the manual

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> wsl –help
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
For privacy information about this product please visit https://aka.ms/privacy.

Usage: wsl.exe [Argument] [Options…] [CommandLine]

Arguments for running Linux binaries:

If no command line is provided, wsl.exe launches the default shell.

–exec, -e <CommandLine>
Execute the specified command without using the default Linux shell.

–shell-type <standard|login|none>
Execute the specified command with the provided shell type.

—
Pass the remaining command line as-is.

Options:
–cd <Directory>
Sets the specified directory as the current working directory.
If ~ is used the Linux user's home path will be used. If the path begins
with a / character, it will be interpreted as an absolute Linux path.
Otherwise, the value must be an absolute Windows path.

–distribution, -d <Distro>
Run the specified distribution.

–user, -u <UserName>
Run as the specified user.

–system
Launches a shell for the system distribution.

Arguments for managing Windows Subsystem for Linux:

–help
Display usage information.

–debug-shell
Open a WSL2 debug shell for diagnostics purposes.

–install [Distro] [Options…]
Install a Windows Subsystem for Linux distribution.
For a list of valid distributions, use 'wsl.exe –list –online'.

Options:
–no-launch, -n
Do not launch the distribution after install.

–web-download
Download the distribution from the internet instead of the Microsoft Store.

–no-distribution
Only install the required optional components, does not install a distribution.

–enable-wsl1
Enable WSL1 support.

–manage <Distro> <Options…>
Changes distro specific options.

Options:
–move <Location>
Move the distribution to a new location.

–set-sparse, -s <true|false>
Set the vhdx of distro to be sparse, allowing disk space to be automatically reclaimed.

–mount <Disk>
Attaches and mounts a physical or virtual disk in all WSL 2 distributions.

Options:
–vhd
Specifies that <Disk> refers to a virtual hard disk.

–bare
Attach the disk to WSL2, but don't mount it.

–name <Name>
Mount the disk using a custom name for the mountpoint.

–type <Type>
Filesystem to use when mounting a disk, if not specified defaults to ext4.

–options <Options>
Additional mount options.

–partition <Index>
Index of the partition to mount, if not specified defaults to the whole disk.

–set-default-version <Version>
Changes the default install version for new distributions.

–shutdown
Immediately terminates all running distributions and the WSL 2
lightweight utility virtual machine.

–status
Show the status of Windows Subsystem for Linux.

–unmount [Disk]
Unmounts and detaches a disk from all WSL2 distributions.
Unmounts and detaches all disks if called without argument.

–uninstall
Uninstalls the Windows Subsystem for Linux package from this machine.

–update
Update the Windows Subsystem for Linux package.

Options:
–pre-release
Download a pre-release version if available.

–version, -v
Display version information.

Arguments for managing distributions in Windows Subsystem for Linux:

–export <Distro> <FileName> [Options]
Exports the distribution to a tar file.
The filename can be – for stdout.

Options:
–vhd
Specifies that the distribution should be exported as a .vhdx file.

–import <Distro> <InstallLocation> <FileName> [Options]
Imports the specified tar file as a new distribution.
The filename can be – for stdin.

Options:
–version <Version>
Specifies the version to use for the new distribution.

–vhd
Specifies that the provided file is a .vhdx file, not a tar file.
This operation makes a copy of the .vhdx file at the specified install location.

–import-in-place <Distro> <FileName>
Imports the specified .vhdx file as a new distribution.
This virtual hard disk must be formatted with the ext4 filesystem type.

–list, -l [Options]
Lists distributions.

Options:
–all
List all distributions, including distributions that are
currently being installed or uninstalled.

–running
List only distributions that are currently running.

–quiet, -q
Only show distribution names.

–verbose, -v
Show detailed information about all distributions.

–online, -o
Displays a list of available distributions for install with 'wsl.exe –install'.

–set-default, -s <Distro>
Sets the distribution as the default.

–set-version <Distro> <Version>
Changes the version of the specified distribution.

–terminate, -t <Distro>
Terminates the specified distribution.

–unregister <Distro>
Unregisters the distribution and deletes the root filesystem.
PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0>

Once wsl is installed you can run it directly from Windows start menu, by searching for the name of the distribution you would like to run for example to run my Debian WSL running emulator::

Sum it up

What was shown up is how to run in parallel virtualized Linux distribution on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and how to install update to latest and run opensshd server to be able to ssh into the WSL Linux virtual machine remotely.
.Also i've shown you, How to test ssh is reachable and how to stop / start or destroy and cleanup any stored files for VM if necessery, as well as how to apply some extra advanced configurations to boot VM for.

Using WSL is not the best virtualization ever but anyways it is an alternative for people employed in Domain attached Windows PCs part of Big Corporations, where VirtualBox use is blocked / prohibited and you still need to experiment or develop Shell scripts or software on Python / Perl / Ruby on Linux before you do stuff on the PreProd or Production Linux host.

That's all folks, Enjoy ! 🙂

Tags: about, access, Admins, com, Connected, Debian Ubuntu, Debian Virtualized Linux, distributions, emulator, Failed, How to, linux?, Lists, procedure, reference, running, setting, use, Windows, WSL
Posted in Debian, Educational, Linux, Various, Virtual Machines, Windows | 1 Comment »

How to view WIFI Passwords for Profile from command line with netsh on Windows 10

Wednesday, May 29th, 2024

The common way, if you have connected to a Wireless Network Access Point and saved the password in Windows is to view the password via Windows GUI interface, via menus following few easy steps:

1. Settings -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center

2. Click on (Wifi Network name) for which you need password and
3. In View your active networks section

4. When the Wi-Fi network status window opens, click Wireless Properties

5. Move to the Security Tab and check the checkbox, next to "Show Characters" to view the network password.

Nevertheless as a system administrator you might have wondered, how you can easily review in plain text Saved Wireless Networks Wi-FI passwords, without using the Graphical Interface via a direct command line cmd.exe?
Such thing is helpful on maintaining multiple Windows 10 hosts, especially if you have a telnet or SSH remote administration enabled or you have a domain of PCs.
To do so open cmd.exe command prompt and run:

C:\Users> netsh

netsh>wlan show profile

Profiles on interface Wi-Fi:

Group policy profiles (read only)
———————————

User profiles
————-
All User Profile : WIFI_Pofile-name
All User Profile: Hotel stage 2
All User Profile: Home Wifi
All User Profile: HP_Custom
…

Now lets review the clear text password of the profile from netsh console:

netsh>wlan show profile "WIFI_Pofile-name" key=clear

Profile WIFI_Pofile-name on interface Wi-Fi:
===================================================

Applied: All User Profile

Profile information
——————-
Version : 1
Type : Wireless LAN
Name : WIFI_Pofile-name
Control options :
Connection mode : Connect automatically
Network broadcast : Connect only if this network is broadcasting
AutoSwitch : Do not switch to other networks
MAC Randomization : Disabled

Connectivity settings
———————
Number of SSIDs : 1
SSID name : "WIFI_Pofile-name"
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : [ Any Radio Type ]
Vendor extension : Not present

Security settings
—————–
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : GCMP
Security key : Present
Key Content : Very-secret-password-for-WIFI-plain-text

TADADAM !

We see the password key text Saved WIFI Passwords plain text !

Note that sometimes, if you have a Hidden Wifi Network the command to use to reveal the plain text password with netsh would be:

C:\Users> netsh wlan show profile "name=SSID hidden WiFi Net" key=clear
…

This trick is very much used today by "hackers" e.g. script kiddies, who break up into others windows.
It is also useful if you want to have a quick way to review plain text passwords for WIFI accounts with organization, lets say if you're a security expert and doing some kind of periodic Security audits within a corporation on multiple Domain attached computers.

Thanks to Martin Petrov (Amridikon) for his trick as I've learned first time from his blog https://mpetrov.net, which is full of many computer geek goodies stuff.

Of course this approach can be easily scripted with a short PowerShell script:

netsh wlan show profile |
Select-String '(?<=All User Profile\s+:\s).+' |
ForEach-Object {
$wlan = $_.Matches.Value
$passw = netsh wlan show profile $wlan key=clear |
Select-String '(?<=Key Content\s+:\s).+'

[pscustomobject]@{
Name = $wlan
Password = $passw.Matches.Value
}
}

If you need the script View-all-wifi-passwords-plaintext-windows10.ps1 to reuse it download it from here.

There is also some freeware tools online which can help you reveal passwords, saving you any typing, that might be useful if you want to delegate the task to a non-sysadmin user, you can simply point him and ask him to install a GUI Win tool like Wifi Password revealer (that makes showing plain text passwords piece of cake) and let user reveal his passwords for himself, if needs the password to share it to a colleague 🙂
That's all folks, Happy hacking !

Tags: CCMP, Click, GCMP, How to, Key Content, passwords, plain, Profile, text, Wireless Network Access Point
Posted in Remote System Administration, Security, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »

Improve haproxy logging with custom log-format for better readiability

Friday, April 12th, 2024

Haproxy logging is a very big topic, worthy of many articles, but unfortunately not enough is written on the topic, perhaps for the reason haproxy is free software and most people who use it doesn't follow the philosophy of free software sharing but want to keep, the acquired knowledge on the topic for their own and if possible in the capitalist world most of us live to use it for a Load Balancer haproxy consultancy, consultancy fee or in their daily job as system administrators (web and middleware) or cloud specialist etc. 🙂

Having a good haproxy logging is very important as you need to debug issues with backend machines or some other devices throwing traffic to the HA Proxy.
Thus it is important to build a haproxy logging in a way that it provides most important information and the information is as simple as possible, so everyone can understand what is in without much effort and same time it contains enough debug information, to help you if you want to use the output logs with Graylog filters or process data with some monitoring advanced tool as Prometheus etc.

In our effort to optimize the way haproxy logs via a configured handler that sends the haproxy output to logging handler configured to log through rsyslog, we have done some experiments with logging arguments and came up with few variants, that we liked. In that article the idea is I share this set of logging parameters with hope to help some other guy that starts with haproxy to build a good logging readable and easy to process with scripts log output from haproxy.

The criterias for a decent haproxy logging used are:

1. Log should be simple but not dumb
2. Should be concrete (and not too much complicated)
3. Should be easy to read for the novice and advanced sysadmin

Before starting, have to say that building the logging format seems tedious task but to make it fit your preference could take a lot of time, especially as logging parameters naming is hard to remember, thus the haproxy logging documentation log-format description table comes really handy:

Haproxy log-format paremeters ASCII table

Please refer to the table for log-format defined variables :

+---+------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------+
| R | var  | field name (8.2.2 and 8.2.3 for description)  | type        |
+---+------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------+
|   | %o   | special variable, apply flags on all next var |             |
+---+------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------+
|   | %B   | bytes_read           (from server to client)  | numeric     |
| H | %CC  | captured_request_cookie                       | string      |
| H | %CS  | captured_response_cookie                      | string      |
|   | %H   | hostname                                      | string      |
| H | %HM  | HTTP method (ex: POST)                        | string      |
| H | %HP  | HTTP request URI without query string (path)  | string      |
| H | %HQ  | HTTP request URI query string (ex: ?bar=baz)  | string      |
| H | %HU  | HTTP request URI (ex: /foo?bar=baz)           | string      |
| H | %HV  | HTTP version (ex: HTTP/1.0)                   | string      |
|   | %ID  | unique-id                                     | string      |
|   | %ST  | status_code                                   | numeric     |
|   | %T   | gmt_date_time                                 | date        |
|   | %Ta  | Active time of the request (from TR to end)   | numeric     |
|   | %Tc  | Tc                                            | numeric     |
|   | %Td  | Td = Tt - (Tq + Tw + Tc + Tr)                 | numeric     |
|   | %Tl  | local_date_time                               | date        |
|   | %Th  | connection handshake time (SSL, PROXY proto)  | numeric     |
| H | %Ti  | idle time before the HTTP request             | numeric     |
| H | %Tq  | Th + Ti + TR                                  | numeric     |
| H | %TR  | time to receive the full request from 1st byte| numeric     |
| H | %Tr  | Tr (response time)                            | numeric     |
|   | %Ts  | timestamp                                     | numeric     |
|   | %Tt  | Tt                                            | numeric     |
|   | %Tw  | Tw                                            | numeric     |
|   | %U   | bytes_uploaded       (from client to server)  | numeric     |
|   | %ac  | actconn                                       | numeric     |
|   | %b   | backend_name                                  | string      |
|   | %bc  | beconn      (backend concurrent connections)  | numeric     |
|   | %bi  | backend_source_ip       (connecting address)  | IP          |
|   | %bp  | backend_source_port     (connecting address)  | numeric     |
|   | %bq  | backend_queue                                 | numeric     |
|   | %ci  | client_ip                 (accepted address)  | IP          |
|   | %cp  | client_port               (accepted address)  | numeric     |
|   | %f   | frontend_name                                 | string      |
|   | %fc  | feconn     (frontend concurrent connections)  | numeric     |
|   | %fi  | frontend_ip              (accepting address)  | IP          |
|   | %fp  | frontend_port            (accepting address)  | numeric     |
|   | %ft  | frontend_name_transport ('~' suffix for SSL)  | string      |
|   | %lc  | frontend_log_counter                          | numeric     |
|   | %hr  | captured_request_headers default style        | string      |
|   | %hrl | captured_request_headers CLF style            | string list |
|   | %hs  | captured_response_headers default style       | string      |
|   | %hsl | captured_response_headers CLF style           | string list |
|   | %ms  | accept date milliseconds (left-padded with 0) | numeric     |
|   | %pid | PID                                           | numeric     |
| H | %r   | http_request                                  | string      |
|   | %rc  | retries                                       | numeric     |
|   | %rt  | request_counter (HTTP req or TCP session)     | numeric     |
|   | %s   | server_name                                   | string      |
|   | %sc  | srv_conn     (server concurrent connections)  | numeric     |
|   | %si  | server_IP                   (target address)  | IP          |
|   | %sp  | server_port                 (target address)  | numeric     |
|   | %sq  | srv_queue                                     | numeric     |
| S | %sslc| ssl_ciphers (ex: AES-SHA)                     | string      |
| S | %sslv| ssl_version (ex: TLSv1)                       | string      |
|   | %t   | date_time      (with millisecond resolution)  | date        |
| H | %tr  | date_time of HTTP request                     | date        |
| H | %trg | gmt_date_time of start of HTTP request        | date        |
| H | %trl | local_date_time of start of HTTP request      | date        |
|   | %ts  | termination_state                             | string      |
| H | %tsc | termination_state with cookie status          | string      |
+---+------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------+
R = Restrictions : H = mode http only ; S = SSL only

Our custom log-format built in order to fulfill our needs is as this:

log-format %ci:%cp\ %H\ [%t]\ [%f\ %fi:%fp]\ [%b/%s\ %si:%sp]\ %Tw/%Tc/%Tt\ %B\ %ts\ %ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%sq/%bq

Once you place the log-format as a default for all haproxy frontend / backends or for a custom defined ones, the output you will get when tailing the log is:

# tail -f /var/log/haproxy.log

Apr 5 21:47:19 10.42.73.83:23262 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:46:23.879] [ft_FRONTEND_NAME 10.46.108.6:61310] [bk_BACKEND_NAME/bk_appserv3 10.75.226.88:61310] 1/0/55250 55 sD 4/2/1/0/0/0
Apr 5 21:48:14 10.42.73.83:57506 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:47:18.925] [ft_FRONTEND_NAME 10.46.108.6:61310] [bk_BACKEND_NAME//bk_appserv1 10.35.242.134:61310] 1/0/55236 55 sD 4/2/1/0/0/0
Apr 5 21:49:09 10.42.73.83:46520 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:48:13.956] [ft_FRONTEND_NAME 10.46.108.6:61310] [bk_BACKEND_NAME//bk_appserv2 10.75.226.89:61310] 1/0/55209 55 sD 4/2/1/0/0/0

If you don't care about extra space and logs being filled with more naming, another variant of above log-format, that makes it even more readable even for most novice sys admin or programmer would look like this:

log-format [%t]\ %H\ [IN_IP]\ %ci:%cp\ [FT_NAME]\ %f:%fp\ [FT_IP]\ %fi:%fp\ [BK_NAME]\ [%b/%s:%sp]\ [BK_IP]\ %si:%sp\ [TIME_WAIT]\ {%Tw/%Tc/%Tt}\ [CONN_STATE]\ {%B\ %ts}\ [STATUS]\ [%ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%sq/%bq]

Once you apply the config test the haproxy.cfg to make sure no syntax errors during copy / paste from this page

haproxy-serv:~# haproxy -c -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
Configuration file is valid

Next restart graceously haproxy

haproxy-serv:~# /usr/sbin/haproxy -D -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /var/run/haproxy.pid -sf $(cat /var/run/haproxy.pid)

Once you reload haproxy graceously without loosing the established connections in stead of restarting it completely via systemd sysctl restart haproxy:

2024-04-05T21:46:03+02:00 localhost haproxy[1897731]: 193.200.198.195:50714 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:46:03.012] [FrotnendProd 10.55.0.20:27800] [BackendProd/<NOSRV> -:-] -1/-1/0 0 — 4/1/0/0/0/0
2024-04-05T21:46:03+02:00 localhost haproxy[1897731]: 193.100.193.189:54290 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:46:03.056] [FrotnendProd 10.55.0.20:27900] [BackendProd/<NOSRV> -:-] -1/-1/0 0 — 4/4/3/0/0/0
2024-04-05T21:46:03+02:00 localhost haproxy[1897731]: 193.100.193.190:26778 haproxy-fqdn-hostname.com [05/Apr/2024:21:46:03.134] [FrotnendProd 10.55.0.20:27900] [BackendProd/tsefas02s 10.35.242.134:27900] 1/-1/0 0 CC 4/4/3/0/0/0

Note that in that log localhost haproxy[pid] is written by rsyslog, you can filter it out by modifying rsyslogd configurations

The only problem with this log-format is not everyone wants to have to much repeating information pointer on which field is what, but I personally liked this one as well because using it even though occuping much more space, makes the log much easier to process with perl or python scripting for data visualize and very for programs that does data or even "big data" analysis.

Tags: about, address, admin, AES, ALL, and, another, are, article, better, connections, custom, data, fi, handy, haproxy, HTTP, Improve, logging, string
Posted in Haproxy, Linux, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Dormition of Saint Methodius excerpt from the Biography letter on Saint Methodius from Saint Clement of Ohrid

Sunday, April 7th, 2024

Saint-Methodius-Dormition-enlightener-of-the-Bulgarian-Slavs-author-of-alphabet

..Both on his father's and on his mother's side, he came not from a simple, but from a very good and honorable family, known first of all to God, and then to the king and to the whole Thessalonica (Solun) region, which was also evident from his appearance. That is why the princes, who loved him since his childhood, held dignified conversations with him.

Finally, the king, learning of his abilities, gave him the rule of a Slavic principality – as if he foresaw, I would say, that he would send him as a teacher and first archbishop of the Slavs, so that he could learn all their customs and gradually come to love them .

Having spent many years in this principality, and seen many tumults and crimes in this life, he exchanged his aspirations for gloomy earthly affairs for heavenly thoughts; for he would not trouble his noble soul with things that do not abide forever.

Having found a suitable occasion, he released himself from the princeship, and going to Olympus, where the holy fathers lived, he cut his hair, put on a black garment, and obeyed obediently, fully fulfilling all the monastic rule and diligently occupying himself with books.

When some occasion arose, the king sent his brother [Constantine] to the Khazars, and he took him with him to help. Because there were Jews there who blasphemed the Christian faith very much.
And he said, "I am ready to die for the Christian faith," and he did not disobey, but went and helped his younger brother as a servant, obeying him.
And so he by prayer, and the Philosopher by word, overthrew the Jews and put them to shame.

...And then God revealed the Slavonic writings to the Philosopher, and he, arranging the letters and composing the [Gospel] discourse, took the road to Moravia, taking Methodius with him. And he again began to obediently obey and serve the Philosopher and teach with him.

… After many days, when the Philosopher was about to appear before [God’s] judgment, he said to his brother Methodius: "Here, brother, we were a pair harnessed to draw a furrow, and I, having finished my day, fall into the fields .
You, on the other hand, love the mountain too much; but do not forsake your teaching for the sake of the mountain, for by it you can better be saved.”

…On all the roads, he fell from the devil into many calamities: in desolate places – among robbers, on the sea – in violent disturbances, on the rivers – in sudden sandy shoals, so that the apostolic words were fulfilled with him: "Misery from robbers, miseries by sea, troubles by rivers, troubles by false brothers; in labors and pains, often in vigils, often in hunger and thirst," as well as other afflictions that the apostle mentions.

Then, putting aside all [life’s] noise, and entrusting all his cares to God, he first appointed from among his disciples two priests, good scribes, and quickly translated from the Greek language into Slavonic all the [Bible] books in their entirety, with except the Maccabees, for six months, beginning in the month of March until the twenty-sixth day of the month of October.

When he had finished, he gave worthy praise and glory to God, who gives such grace and such quick success. And by serving together with his clergy the holy mysterios elevation, he celebrated the memory of Saint Demetrius.
Because before that he had translated together with the Philosopher (Kiril) only the Psalter, the Gospel with the Apostle and selected church services. And now he also translated the Nomocanon, that is, the church rules, and the books of the Fathers…

He took, therefore, that the time was approaching for him to receive rest from his sufferings and a reward for his many labors. … On Palm Sunday, when all the people had gathered, he entered the church and, although weak, pronounced blessings for the king, for the prince, for the clergy and for all the people and said: "Keep me, children, until the third day." So it happened.

On the third day at dawn he said: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit," and he died in the hands of the priests on the sixth day of the month of April, indict three, in the year six thousand three hundred and ninety-three (6393) from the creation of the whole world, ( 885 A .D.).

His disciples placed him in a coffin, gave him due honors by performing a funeral service in Latin, Greek, and Slavonic, and laid him in the cathedral church. And he joined his fathers and the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and the martyrs. An innumerable people gathered, people who saw him off with candles, weeping for the good teacher and shepherd: men and women, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, widows and orphans, foreigners and natives, infirm and healthy – all [lamented] him who was all things to all, that he might win all.

Excerpt from writtings of
Saint Clement of Ohrid:(St. Kliment Ohridski)
From "Extensive Life of Archbishop Methodius"

Translation of Hristo Kodov based on the text of the Assumption Collection from the 12th-13th centuries.
Old Bulgarian literature. Volume IV. Biographical works. Ed. "Bulgarian Writer", Sofia. 1986
(See the full text in Bulgarian – HERE

Troparion of St. Equal to the Apostles Methodius

Through Your Saint Methodius, O Christ, grant mercy to us who perform the bright celebration of his Assumption, open the doors of the Kingdom to us, free us from the chains of our many sins, and through his intercession, Lord, have mercy on us.

Kontaktion

Let us praise the divine and faithful Methodius, people, and praise him with love as a great shepherd of the Slavs, an honest servant of the Trinity and a banisher of heresies: he prays unceasingly for us all.

Tags: books, brother, cathedral church, Dormition, first, good, hands, love, month, Ohrid, saint methodius, Slavonic, third day, translated
Posted in Christianity, Educational, Various | No Comments »

Second Sunday of Great Lent Saint Gregory Palamas – Hesychasm as a mean of Theosis (Union of of God and Man through Deification) and the Orthodox Christian Teaching of God’s Energies

Monday, April 1st, 2024

These week passed the Second Sunday of Lent, for one more year prat of Church Lent Calendar. This Pre-Easter Great Lent holiday marks one of the spiritually important stops along the way and our participation in the Calvary sufferings of our Divine Master, and above all in His glorious Resurrection, that is repeated throughout the 40 days of Great Lent.
In the Western Church in the Roman Catholic Christiandome, Saint Gregory of Palama is little known as he is one of those typical Eastern Orthodox Saints that did not make fame in the West as the western christian, has departed from its ancient Christian teachings and put more importance on didactical thinking of the world (didactism) and scholastism and left away the importance of heart as part of the restoration of soul and unification with God in the completenes of work of attaining salvation and attendance of God's energy in the Eternal Soul, here and now throughout this temporary life. God's energies are not the same as God itself and Saint Gregory Palamas give a very in depth and complete hierarchical structure of different kind of energies that God used to built the world and the createres starting from creation of the Lights and Energies of the World, the Space, The Stars, Galaxies, The Sun, The Moon the Earth and the rest of the multitude of Pleiades that comtemporary astronomy knows to the tiniest plant and creater animal towards the crown of his creation the Man and Woman (Adam and Eve)..
The topic of teaching of Hesychasm is enormous and in this article, I'll be unable to give even a very brief of overview of it as Hesychasm. Hesychasm was a practice that perhaps started even in the Old Testament and practiced by the Ancient Prophets and continued first in the Holy Apostles, later by the Archibishops, Bishops, priest, deacons, monks, martyrs towards the last layman in the church.
In short it is rooted in the Simple repeation of The Lord's Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ Son of the Blessed God have Mercy on me the Sinner!", again and again combined with a very specific breathing in and breathing out. The first part of the Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ Son of the Blessed God" is said during breathing in while the second one "have mercy on me the sinner" is said during breathing out, the inhailed air within trachea. This is continued as practice by the Prayer practicioner all and on throughout day and night with the blessing of an Spiritual Elder or a practicioner who has received the prayer from his teacher and the practice is to be done, only with a blessing of a experienced spiritual elder (staretz) and not to be done on by own will. Usually the prayer is being transferred from Elder to a Apprentice pupil, just like the (Son / Daughter) Kid receives his DNA from the parent, thus practicing it without the proper blessing too much might be dangerous and lead the practicioner in a very dangerous realm of proudness for thinking one being more enlightened than the rest (more superior) more knowledable (or more proud – that is a deadly sin we fight against), throughout our whole life as christians.

Theosis is also a Topic that multitude of Books cannot describe as to be attained is a hard path through a combination of a practical knowledge about God and his laws and the Theoria (the intellectual attaindance of God's energies throgh prayer). The topic of Theosis is being exposed and discussed of tens of hundred thousand of various books and thus the simple path to attain it throgh constant repetition of Prayer by illuminating the Soul, instead of doing intellectual exercises as was thought in the west would be perhaps revolutionary for roman catholics and protestant western people.

But enought talk lets see shortly the biography of Saint Gregory Palamaes and why he is so important for Eastern Orthodox Christians, that the Church decided to have a special Sunday every year during the period of great Lent.

When did the saint Saint Greagory of Palames lived?

Saint Gregory lived in the 14th century. This is also the time of the teaching of hesychasm, which we mainly associate with the personality of Sаint Gregory, but the truth is the tradition of hesychasm was an ancient tradition practiced even by apostles and every christian since the time of Christ through the centuries, traditioan that was often neglected by many through the centuries, just to be retold and shown again in the early mid centuries in 14 century.

St. Gregory was born in 1296 in a family of refugees from Asia Minor. The surname Palama indicates a noble ancestry, since at that time ordinary people had only names and nicknames. Having completed his education in Constantinople, Gregory Palamas had the reputation of a brilliant connoisseur (well knowing the phylosophy) of Aristotle.

Around 1315, he and his brother became monks on Athos. On Mount Athos, Gregory lived in various monasteries, until he finally settled in the hermitage of Saint Sava, which was attached to the Great Lavra of Saint Athanasius of Athos. Living for most of his time in this hermitage, Gregory attended the Lavra to participate in the common services and sacraments.[1]

Short Movie about the Cave of Saint Gregory Palama in (Beroea) Veria in Russian

Gregory later became Archbishop of Thessalonica. He died in 1359, and his memory is celebrated two times in the year in the Church calendar (as many of the saints) on November 14, as well as on today's second Sunday of Great Lent, that in 2024 falls on 30th of March.

Saint Gregory Palamas defends the position that, although unknowable in His essence, God is knowable through His external appearances, energies.

God's energies are the grace poured out by God upon His creation. Although not God in His essence, the divine energies are not something created either, "they flow eternally from the one essence of the Holy Trinity.".

The times in which Saint Gregory lived were very unrestful, the Byzantine empire has been attacked and big parts of it already conquered by the Ottoman Turks and before he before he became archibishopship of Thessaloniki has been captured by the invading turks and has lived as a captive.
He went through many hardships, lived as a hermit and wanted to live a life in total seclusion and isolation of the world, just like the ancient hermit saints, a life of continuous prayer through which he wanted to help the world and reunite himself and the world through himself with God the creator of all things.

Opponents of Saint Gregory and his teaching of Theosis were the Calabrian monk Barlaam and Gregory Akindin. According to them, the divine essence exists, its created consequences also exist, but there are no divine actions. They accused St. Gregory of distorting religious truths. The fight against saint Gregory by those two monks with heretical partly pro-scholastic ideas were also perhaps related to the partial distancing of people from true Orthodoxy because of the Unia (religios union with the Roman Catholics) and acceptence of some heretical ideas that wre already taking part in the Roman Catholic Church after the Great Schism in year 1054 in which the Eastern Church distanced from the Western Church because of both dogmatical, historical and theological reasons and most importanly the false pretencies of the Pope to be the head of the whole Wordly Church as well as the inclusion of the heretical and unknown in the ancient Church "filioque", claiming the false and unknown dogma prior to 8th century that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and The Son, something that is not in the Niceo-Constantinople Creed of Faith, decided by the Holy Fathers in the Ecumenical Councils to be the official confession of the whole church about the Dogmatical definitions of faith.

Saint Gregory Palama

Saint Gregory's Triads

In response to Barlaam's attacks, Palamas wrote nine treatises entitled "Triads For The Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude". The treatises are called "triads" because they were organized as three sets of three treatises.

The Triads were written in three stages. The first triad was written in the second half of the 1330s AD and are based on personal discussions between Palamas and Barlaam although Barlaam is never mentioned by name.

Gregory's teaching was affirmed by the superiors and principal monks of Mount Athos, who met in synod during 1340–1. In early 1341, the monastic communities of Mount Athos wrote the Hagioritic Tome under the supervision and inspiration of Palamas. Although the tome does not mention Barlaam by name, the work clearly takes aim at Barlaam's views. The tome provides a systematic presentation of Palamas' teaching and became the fundamental textbook for Byzantine mysticism.

In response, Barlaam drafted "Against the Messalians", which attacked Gregory by name for the first time. Barlaam derisively called the hesychasts omphalopsychoi (men with their souls in their navels) and accused them of the heresy of Messalianism, also known as Bogomilism in the East. According to Meyendorff, Barlaam viewed "any claim of real and conscious experience of God as Messalianism".

Saint Thedosious of Tarnovo a Bulgarian saint one of the Pupils of Saint Gregory Palama and one of the main Hesychasm teacher and disperser of ancient Christian Tradition of Hesychasm within Bulgaria,
Many of his Pupils later spread the Tradition to the rest of Orhodox Newer Local Churches

Barlaam also took exception to the doctrine held by the hesychasts as to the uncreated nature of the light, the experience of which was said to be the goal of hesychast practice, regarding it as heretical and blasphemous. It was maintained by the hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be identical to the light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. Barlaam viewed this doctrine of "uncreated light" to be polytheistic because as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. Barlaam accuses the use of the Jesus Prayer as being a practice of Bogomilism (a heretical movement that was plaguing the Church of 14th century and who has been publicly refused in Local Church council in Medieval Bulgaria organized by the Bulgarian Patriarch of that time was Theodosious, a council who was requested by the insistance Saint Theodosius of Tarnovo", due to the many heretical teachings plaguing the Bulgarian Church of that time)

The second triad quotes some of Barlaam's writings directly. In response to this second triad, Barlaam composed the treatise "Against the Messalians" linking the hesychasts to the Messalians and thereby accusing them of heresy.

In the third Triad, Palamas refuted Barlaam's charge of Messalianism by demonstrating that the hesychasts did not share the antisacramentalism of the Messalians nor did they claim to physically see the essence of God with their eyes. According to Fr. John Meyendorff "Gregory Palamas orients his entire polemic against Barlaam the Calabrian on the issue of the Hellenic wisdom which he considers to be the main source of Barlaam's errors."

As we have said, we associate the personality of St. Gregory with the teachings of Hesychasm. Hesychasm is based on man's ability to attain godlikeness (theosis).

"Worship is supernatural participation in the essential energy of God and union with Him" [3]. This assimilation to God is achieved through the incessant silent prayer (Greek's word hesychia) of the practitioner of hesychasm and the gift of divine grace, in which "man becomes all that God is, except for the essence".

To achieve hesychia, hermit-monks constantly practiced the so-called Jesus prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!"). According to many fathers, this prayer contains the whole gospel in an abbreviated form. We must note that even today the Jesus Prayer is important in the lives of both monks and lay people. Pay attention to the fact that sometimes its use must be done with spiritual-pastoral guidance.

The vision of the Taborian light of grace, which the apostles saw at the time of the Transfiguration of their Master, is a key moment in the whole teaching of hesychasm. Most of the Fathers who speak of the Transfiguration, such as Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint John Chrysostom, etc., assert that the nature of the light which the apostles saw on the mountain was divine and uncreated. This is exactly what Saint Gregory Palamas defended in the 14th century. This is also the proof that his teaching was not new, but the ancient teaching of the Church.

According to St. Gregory, the Light of Tabor is divine. Through it, man communicates with God, who gives him His grace. We know that the grace of God is given most fully in the sacraments of the Church. And above all, in the Holy Eucharist – communion with the body and blood of our Savior. As noted by Professor Georgi Kapriev: "Palama explains that not just nature or just the soul, but the entire hypostasis of the faithful partakes of the worshiping bread and chalice"[5].

In the end, the side of the hesychasmists wins. A council of 1341 condemned Barlaam, but nevertheless some Byzantine theologians continued to protest against Palamas' positions. However, his theology received final conciliar approval successively in 1347 and 1351, as well as posthumously in 1368, when he was canonized as a saint.[6]

In the 14th century, hesychasm was widespread not only among hermits, but also among monks from communal monasteries, and even among many lay people. It is becoming a strong international movement. From Athos, hesychasm spread to Byzantium, and from there to Bulgaria. From Bulgaria, through the so-called "second South Slavic influence", the hesychastic teaching reached Serbia, Wallachia-Moldavia and Russia.[7]

Hesychasm has an influence on the entire "worldview" of the Christian East and its artifacts. This is the time of the so-called Palaeologous Renaissance, which got its name from the ruling dynasty at the time and had its achievements in literature, visual arts and music.

Today, we Christian believers of the 21st century live in a time separated from the life and work of St. Gregory Palamas by more than six centuries. However, our respect for him and his teachings is actually a testimony to our devotion to the teachings of holy Orthodoxy.

The truths that St. Gregory expressed and maintained are valid even now. Many Monks still follow the teachings of Hesychasm and try to constantly repeat in their mind the Lord Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ Son of the Blessed God, Have Mercy on me the Sinner".

The Life of Saint Gregory Palamas and his Teaching on Hesychasm and Theosis

Today we also need the grace of God, our Creator. Without it, we would become barren trees that would be of no use (cf. Luke 3:9).
Let us more often proceed to prayer and observance of the evangelical commandments for active love for our neighbor. May our communion in the Church of Christ by means of the holy sacraments not cease.
And above all, let us proceed to the holy Eucharist, which is given to us by God "for the good and sanctification of our souls and bodies"[8].

Sources
https://dveri.bg
(Article Source Text in Bulgarian by Priest Ivaylo Borisov)

[1] Cf. Meyendorff, John. Introduction to patristic theology (lecture course for seminaries).

[2] Loski, V. An Essay on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church., S., 2005, p. 71.

[3] Kapriev, Greek Byzantine philosophy. Four centers of synthesis. S., 2001, p. 289.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 294.

[6] Cf. Mayendorf, J. Byzantine Theology. S., 1996, p. 102.

[7] Cf. Kuyumdzhieva, S. Old Bulgarian music. S., 2011, pp. 90-91.

[8] From the first thanksgiving prayer after Holy Communion.

Tags: divine grace, first, Great Lent, Holy Eucharist, jesus prayer, layman, life, mean, names, Palaeologous Renaissance, teachings, times, today
Posted in Christianity, Educational, Everyday Life, Various | No Comments »

A Biography of one big Heart + His Holiness Patriarch Neophyte (Neofit) head of Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Friday, March 22nd, 2024

His-Holiness-Patriarch-Neofitos-with-Dikiri-and-Thrikiri-blessing-the-people

Patriarch Neophyte (Simeon Nikolov Dimitrov) was born on October 15, 1945 in Sofia from a highly pious family. His father was a simple railway man and his mother a maid (cleaner). His Mother was a famous in the Church as a good christian who was singing on the Church choire in some churches and had a great perseverance and love for the Christian faith, she was the one to push further his two boys Simeon and Dimitar to take the spiritual path within the Orthodox Church. One of them the older brother Dimitar Nikolov Dimitrov to later become A Proto-Psalt and Director and Head of Sofia's Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral Church choire for many years (the most prestigious place for people who graduated Church music) and the other to become our 7th Patriarch in order from the times of Physical Liberation of Bulgaria From Turkish Slavery and Spiritual liberation from the dictatorship of the Greek Orthodox Church with the restoration of the Bulgarian Church with the Bulgarian Exarchate.

At the age of twenty in 1965, he graduated from the Sofia Theological Seminary "St. Ioan Rilski / Saint John of Rila" (then the seminary moved due to communist party decision) at the Cherepish station nearby the Cherepish monastery, Vrachansko. He served two years of military mandatory service, and in 1971 he graduated from the Theological Academy "St. Kliment Ohridski".

After his specialization at the Moscow Theological Academy in Russia, where he received the title of "Candidate of Theology (COT)" in Church Music (COT equal to our Bulgarian "Phd / doctor") , in 1973 he was appointed a teacher of Choral Church Singing and became the conductor of the student choir at the Theological Academy.

Archimandrite-Gelasij-of-new-York-later-picture-as-metropolitan-of-New-York-America

He began his monastic journey under the Spiritual eldership of Archimandrite Gelasius then abbot of the Troyan Monastery.

His monastic ordination in monkship was performed on August 3, 1975 by the previous Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim on the feast of Assumption of the Virgin Mary, August 15, 1975 , he was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon immediately, on March 25, 1976, Annunciation, he was raised in the Church hierarchy to hieromonk, and on November 21, 1977 ., Presentation of the Theotokos (The Entry of Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple), was raised to the Archimandrite dignity.

He then was assigned the obedience to be Protosyncellus (Protosingel) of the Sofia Metropolia in years 1981 to 1985.

His-All-Holiness-Patriarch-Neophytos-picture-as-young-Bishop-Levkijski-of-Bulgarian-Orthodox-Church

On December 18, 1985, he was ordained as the Bishop of Lefkias (Levkijski) a title earlier held by the all famous Levkijski Bishop Partenius (Partenij) in the Patriarchal Cathedral "Saint Alexander Nevsky" and was appointed as vicar bishop of the Metropolia of Sofia.

In 1989, he became rector of Sofia Theological Academy part of (Sofia University at that time), and in July 1991, when the Theological Academy returned to be the pre-revolutinary Faculty of Theology of the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", was elected the first dean of the restored Faculty of Theology.

His-Holiness-Neophytos-picture-as-Metropolitan-of-Ruse

Since January 27, 1992, he has been the chief Secretary of Holy Synod (A prestioug position) until March 27, 1994, when Bishop Neophyte was elected Metropolitan of Dorostolo-Cherven.eparchy (which is now separated in two separate aparchies (The Eparchy of Ruse and Eparchy of Dorostol – the ancient Roman area Dorostorum)

By decision of the Fifth Church-People's Council in 2001, with the consent and approval of the Holy Synod Assembly of metropolitans, the diocese was divided into two (the Dorostol diocese was separated with the city of Silistra -the Ancient Istrum (Histria ancient city) and he began to be titled Metropolitan of Ruse.
In the function of metropolitan he has won the respect of both church and authorities.and he was given the respectful medal "Respected citizen of Ruse".

In 2008 metropolitan Neophyte received the very prestigious academic title "doctor honoris causa" of the Sofia University "Saint Kliment Ohridski". More about it here.

His-All-Holiness-Patriarch-Neophytos-Patriarch-of-Bulgaria-and-Metropolitan-of-Sofia

On 22 June 2010 he was given a medal "St. St. Cyril and Methodius" as a respectful act for his big contribution to development of Bulgarian Music and Culture.

On February 24, 2013, a Patriarchal Electoral Church Council was convened in Sofia and the people and all people were mostly troubled on who will be the next Patriarch in this muddy times.

Soon after his arise to patriarchical throne in 2013 he was given another medal he received "Glory and Honour" in 2013 by Russian Orthodox Church.
Every Church member of that time was troubled about the future of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and everyone felt a big relief as The Synodal Elders elected Metropolitan Neophyte of Ruse to become the 7th Patriarch of Bulgaria after the restoration of the BPC-BP Bulgarian Church (Bulgarian Patriarchate) after so many years of being under the yoke of Byzantine Church and after liberation of Bulgaria, due to politics delicions and the harsh and anti-bulgarian activities of the Greeks in attempt to own the Church the church suffered its schism and returned its full communion to the family of national members of Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.
After his election His Holiness Patriarch Neofit is titled Metropolitan of Sofia.and Patriarch of Bulgaria.

Patriarch-Neophyte_signature-podpis

His-Holiness-Patriarch-Neophytos-head-of-Bulgarian-Orthodox-Church

Patriarch Neophyte has the fame of being one of the best church singers in Bulgaria and one of the best and most famous Church Hymns has been circulating throughout the public space the Internet / TV and Radio for the last 10+ years as they are invaluable due to the unique voice qualities of the Patriarch. I guess there is no person in Bulgaria and outside of it who did not heard his Paschal (Katavasia and Stychorions) Hymns.

Resurrection of Christ Katavasios and Stychorion Playlist with Patriarch Neophytos (Sung) Famous Eastern Orthodox Hymns Patriarch Neofit passed away on 13 of March 2024 after a months of sickness after being hospitalized on 29 November 2023 in VMA (Army Medical Academy) due to pulmonary disease (later to understand it is a cancer in its latests stages). In his last days in hospital, the Holy Synod summoned all the Churches and people to pray fervently for the quick recovery of the patriarch through a miracle.
Patriarch Neofit passed away silently his clean holy Soul to Christ on 13 of March 2024.
His brother Proto-Psalt (associated professor) Dimitar also passed on on 11 January 2024.

Patriarch Neophytos and his brothre Proto-Psalt Dimitar

Protopsalt Dimitar Dimitrov a brother of the Patriarch passed just 2 days after a famous Metropolitan of Joanichius has passed away to Christ on 9 January 2024 in 82 years of old.

His-Holiness-Mitropolit-Ioanikij-JoanichiusSlivenski
His Holiness Metropolitan Joanichius

Patriarch Neofit and Metropolitan Joanichius

The personality of Patriarch Neophytos was non-conflict, a lover of peace and compromises, anti-war (i would say pacifist in modern terms) and was among the few patriarchs not being in fear or influenced by the overall Church politics of the Russian Church and he publicly condemned the war as a great evil in his Theophany preach.

"The Lord God and the Holy Church bless only that army that does not show aggression, and whose sole purpose is to protect and defend its people and country within its internationally recognized territorial borders," said the patriarch for the feast of Epiphany water sanctification and sprinkling of battle flags.

The patriarch position was to try to reconcile the clergy and try to heal the misunderstandings and human conflicts between his God given flock of Priest, Monks, Bishops and Clergy with true fatherhood love, prayer and a lot of patience that we the people of 21 century miss so badly.
With a lot of sadness we send our beloved Patriarch Neophytos (Neofit) of Bulgaria to the All Mighty God and Pray if he has received a Grace from God to Pray fervently and Always for us his poor pupils and childs!

his-Holiness-Patriarh-Neofit-treti-mart-pic

God Have Mercy on the Soul of Patriarch Neophytos ! Blessed and Eternal to be his Memory ! Amen !

Tags: about, after, age, ALL, amen, and, another, anti, are, bg, Bishop Neophyte, communist party, due, February, Metropolitan, Temple, times, title, two, years
Posted in Christianity, Curious Facts, Educational, Various | 2 Comments »

☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

Archive for the ‘Various’ Category

Saint Barbara of Bulgarian Origin, Spring that came by her prayer situated in a Bulgarian village Eleshnica

Zabbix Power Shell PS1 script to write zero or one if string is matched inside log file

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Dormition of Saint Methodius excerpt from the Biography letter on Saint Methodius from Saint Clement of Ohrid

Second Sunday of Great Lent Saint Gregory Palamas – Hesychasm as a mean of Theosis (Union of of God and Man through Deification) and the Orthodox Christian Teaching of God’s Energies

Saint Gregory Palamas defends the position that, although unknowable in His essence, God is knowable through His external appearances, energies.

God's energies are the grace poured out by God upon His creation. Although not God in His essence, the divine energies are not something created either, "they flow eternally from the one essence of the Holy Trinity.".

Saint Gregory's Triads

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