Posts Tagged ‘aim’

Improve MobaXterm Best Windows terminal client with some additional settings tune ups / Install extra Linux Cygwin tools on MobaXterm and various post install configuration goodies

Friday, January 20th, 2023

mobaxterm-logo_400x400-terminal-client-tune-up-howto-for-a-new-install

Earlier I've written a an article MobaXTerm: A good gnome-terminal like tabbed SSH client for Windows / Windows Putty Tabs Alternative in which I've introduced the best in my opinion SSH / Telnet / VNC / RDP / Xserver in one Terminal client emulator for Windows operating systems.

The client has been around for quite some time and it has been improving rapidly over the last 10 years, where it now more looks like a separate Operating System than a single terminal client. It's size is quite compact as well and my opinion and every self respectiving developer, system administrator, IT geek or a hacker would definitely
use the mobaxterm at home or at work place on a daily. I guess some of my readers, who have already migrated SuperPutty / SecureCRT or Putty / XMing or whatever kind of exotic Remote SSH Console terminal is used could validate this 🙂

Therefore as I've set up Mobaxterm on a multiple computers all around, I've found it useful to write a small article with some post-install hints (tune ups) one can do immediately once he has installed the Desktop or Portable Apps version of mobaxterm on desktop PC / notebook.
 

1. Set up your bashrc server / command aliases

Lets say you need to setup some rules for connectivity via a socks proxy to dig holes over a harsh company firewalls or add
custom options to every ssh client attempt to remote server, or simply alias some of your servers with custom connectivity options
and so on simply open vi / vim text editor from mobaxterm local terminal and place inside your rules, for example that could be anything like:

 

alias ssh='ssh -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password  -v'
alias sftp='sftp -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

alias work-server='ssh UserName@work-server -v -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

alias proxy='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxyIP-host1 -o ConnectTimeout=80'
alias proxy1='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxy-host2 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'
alias proxy3='ssh -D 3128 Username@proxy-host3 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'

Simply open the terminal and setup whatever you require
export ftp_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export https_proxy="https://proxy-host:8080"
export http_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTP_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"

 

2. Set mobaxterm presistent directory / persistent root directory and default text editor

Make sure you have properly defined at least Persistent directory / Persistent directory if you want to keep the files under your /home/mobaxterm and root directory be able to save your data from local mobaxterm terminal work you have done.

To do so o to Configuration -> General

MobaXterm-persistent-home-directory
 

3. Change default settings for Opening / Closing Terminal tabs just like in gnome-terminal

MobaXterm is really awesome as the developer, followed pretty much the logic of some common GNU / Linux Terminal clients like Gnome-Terminal and KDE's default Konsole terminal.

One of the first things to do once Mobaxterm is installed on the PC is to set up nice key binds as default onces might be heard to learn at the beginning or you might have already the habit to use the certain set of key combinations on your Linux desktop:

Common once are:

1. Open tab / Close tab common once I bind to are (CTRL + T / CTRL + W)
2. Previous tab move / Next tab move keys common one I use are (ALT + LEFT / ALT + RIGHT)
3. Find in terminal (CTRL + F)

rebind-mobaxterm-standard-keys
 

4. Make MobaXterm to automatically open a terminal to not Start local terminal every time

By default mobaxterm it is really annoying cause every time you run it after system reboot you have to select
Start local terminal
Once you run the terminal you get this prompt and you have to press on Start local terminal

mobaxterm-start-local-terminal


How to make Mobaxterm automatically open local Terminal Tab on every boot?
 

To fix this so every time a local terminal is spawn on MobaXterm you have get to:
 

Settings -> Configuration -> Misc


Open the Following tab at startup by default it will be

<Home (Pinned)>

Change it to:

<Terminal>

mobaxterm-open-the-followintab-tab-in-startup

That's it on next login your Local Terminal with /bin/bash.exe will auto load !
 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ env|grep -i SHELL
SHELL=/bin/bash.exe
PATH=/bin:/drives/c/Users/hipo/DOCUME~1
/MobaXterm/slash/bin:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:
/drives/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/drives/c/Windows/sysnative
PSModulePath=C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
CMDPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\;
C:\Users\hipo\DOCUME~1\MobaXterm\slash\bin
WINPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\


5. Make menu buttons to appear smaller


Go to menu and select
View -> (Small Buttons)

mobaxterm-select-small-buttons-screenshot

6. Disable auto start of XServer to prevent a port listener on the machine on TCP port

By default mobaxterm opens XServer listener, so you can immediately connect from a remote SSH servers missing Xserver and install software requiring an XServer, for example software such as Oracle Database or some MiddleWare WebLogig or IBM's Web Sphere. This is useful but if you want to have a good security only allow this server on a purpose. Otherwise the XServer will run in parallel with rest of your Moba and just load up your PC and eat up some RAM memory. To disable it go to:

mobaxterm-x11-automatically-start-X-server-disable-stop-at-startup

7. Change the mobaxterm Default theme to Dark

This is optional I like to set the Theme to Dark, also as a Theme for Windows as well as for MobaxTerm, the aim of that is simply to not put extra stress on my eye sight. Being on the PC around 8 to 10 hours and spending some 6 to 8 hours on console work is enough. If you want to do as well.

mobaxterm-change-default-theme-to-dark-theme

8. Install additional set of common Linux tools to mobaxterm to use on Windows
 

Tools such as:

1. Midnight Commander (mc)
2. Wget
3. Curl
4. Vim
5. Screen
6. Rsync
7. Perl
8. W3m
9. dosunix
10. unix2dos
11. gnupg
12. diffutils
13. mysql
14. mpg123
15. whois


If you want to have a set of packages pre-installed that are including above as well as the rest of mine, here is a dump of my installed mobapt manager packages:

For more simply use the experimental Mobaxterm  Graphical Package installer
 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤  for i in $(cat Downloads/installed-packages-mobaxterm.txt ); do apt-cyg install $i; done
 

Found package GeoIP-database

Installing GeoIP-database
Downloading GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…
Unpacking GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…


Running postinstall scripts
Package GeoIP-database installed.

Rebasing new libraries

Found package adwaita-icon-theme

Installing adwaita-icon-theme
Downloading adwaita-icon-theme-3.26.1-1.tar.xz…


You will be prompted for a single Yes for the respository

MobApt Packages Manager

mobapt-pkg-manager-install-git-from-gui-mobaxterm-package-installer

Though it is said it is experimental, I have to say the MobApt Apt Manager works quite good, I never had any issues with it so far.

9. Mobaxterm.ini the settings storage file that can help you move your configurations

If you have to prepeare new MobaXterm on multiple PCs frequently perhaps it is best to just copy the Mobaxterm.ini file. 
Here is an example of my mobaxterm.ini for download.
 

10. Change terminal colors and curor type and enable blinking (customizations)


Settings -> Configuration -> Terminal -> (Default Terminal Color Settings)
 


mobaxterm-change-terminal-colors-and-blinking-cursor-setting-screenshot

11. Use very useful moba Tools
 

mobaxterm-terminal-great-useful-tools-screenshot
For sysadmins Moba has plenty of other jems such as:

  • Network Port scanner such as Nmap with GUI

  • list open network ports (GUI interface to netmap)

  • SSH tunnel tool

  • Moba Diff

  • Wake on Lan

  • Network Packet capturer (such as tcpdump)

  • List running processes (such as taskmgr in simple form)

  • List machine hardware devices (such as Windows Device manager)

 
12. Remote monitoring of opened ssh session


To enable remote monitoring for a Saved session simply use the "Remote monitoring" button on the down left corner of the terminal.

mobaxterm-remote-monitoring-of-remote-ssh-server-screenshot-button

Or to enable it for a new host, open:

1. "Saved sessions"
2. Click over "User sessions"
3. New Session -> (SSH)
4. Basic SSH Settings (Remote host) -> OK
5. Click over the new created session
6. Click on Remote monitoring for the opened session

remote-monitoring-from-mobaxterm-screenshot

13. Play some mobaxterm console games

As you might have pissed off of configuring go on and enjoy some of the great console games, some of which are also present on a normal Linux new distribution installation. 🙂

mobaxterm-list-of-games-screenshot

List of Moba Games

teamwalk-mobaxterm-console-connect-network-routers-game
TeamWalk (Use your mouse or keyboard to connect every server to the central router)

ctris-console-text-game-mobaxterm

Ctris Console tetris from Mobaxterm

solitaire-text-console-game-played-on-mobaxterm-screenshot

Text console Solitaire from Moba
 

Ninvaders-console-game-mobaxterm

Here is NinVaders (Text Version of Space Invaders Arcade Classic)
 

Enjoy ! 🙂

Christ is Risen Eastern Orthodox Resurrection Paschal Greeting in Different Languages

Friday, April 24th, 2020

Resurrection-of-Christ-holy-orthodox-icon-Voskresenie-Hristovo

Happy Easter to All Orthodox Christians worldwide ! 
We are the the bright week –  this is the week after The Feast of Feasts Resurrection of Christ. This year in 2020, we Orthodox Christians celebrated this feast on 19th, 20th and 21st of April. The celebrations of the Feast of Christians and the Paschal joy continues for the whole week, so I found some time to quickly blog to share the Joy of the Resurrection of the Savior Jesus Christ who has freed all People from the Fear of the Death by Manifestating Death has been overtaken by Life Eternally.
Earlier years, I've blogged shortly on the Christ is risen in many languages. But this time I decided to extend my previous blog by adding some more details on which are the Member Churches consisting the Christ body of Holy Orthodoxy, What is the Creed of Faith (Symbol of Faith) difference Between Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics and why we're not catholics and do celebrate Easter on a different date from Roman Catholics. Finally I will post the Paschal Greeting translated to as many languages I could find.

In the Eastern Orthodox Christian world which is the True Church of Christ consists of 15 National Churches each traced back to the Holy Apostles of Christ, each of Churches is in eucharistic Communion with the other. 

Canonical Orthodox Christ Churches as of year 2020 are the following:

1. Orthodox Church of Constantinople
2. Orthodox Church of Alexandria
3. Orthodox Church of Antiochia
4. Jerusalem Patriarchal Orthodox Church
5. Bulgarian Orthodox Church
6. Georgian Orthodox Church
7. Serbian Orthodox Church
8. Russian Orthodox Church
9. Romanian Orthodox Church
10. Orthodox Church of Cyprus (archibishopship)
11. Greek Orthodox Church
12. Albanian Orthodox Church
13. Polish Orthodox Church
14. Orthodox Church of Chech Lands and Slovakia
15. American Orthodox Church


Historically Christ Church was one before the Great Schism that was perhaps the greatest tragedy of mankind after Christ's Crucifix it occured in 1054 A.D. About this saddening events, the manuscripts and contemporary saints says with this terrible event, the whole world shaked its basis. The result of the Bulla brought by Pope's messangers in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople in the Holy Alter of the Church putting in document of official schism and the Church of the east condeming the Western Church Cuhrch action headed by the pope due to the false Creed of faith inclusion legallized by the pope with the so called 'Filioque' word formula that changed the original agreement of Church fathers decisions on the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. (which by the way puts Anathemas on anyone who dares to change the Creed of Faith as well change by the Popes in the well known ancient Baptism Formulas like oilment (receving the sign of the holy spirit during baptism).

The historical number of Orthodox Churche dioceses were much more numerous but with the time and the hardships this are the only ones that left as official Churches, many dioceses were destroyed by the Muslims Conquests and Roman Catholics orders like the Jesuits whose fight against orthodoxy has been severe in their attempt to make the whole world to turn to the pope, this is very well known by the many remains of Uniates around Europe, especially in nowadays Ukraine. There is a lot of nations like Chechz and Hungarians whose for many centuries confessed orthodoxy but due to the economic relations with the West and the converion of their rulers (princes / Kings) etc. to Roman Catholicism has gradually converted their Eastern Churches to Roman Catholics.

The origional Nicean Creed (Nicea-Constantinople) creed of faith reads as this:

Nicean Creed of Faith ( Agreed on 381 Anno Dommini in Emperor Constantine City of Byzantine Empire Constantinople)

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

by whom all things were made;

who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;

he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;

from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead. ;

whose kingdom shall have no end.

* And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

In one Holy Catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Western Church head Bishop the Pope and local priests due to some historical regions of Spain and other parts of Western Europe's aim to fight heresies included the word Latin word Filioque in above translated text (Word which is translated as "And from the Son") in above starred line 'And in te Holy Ghost, The Lord Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father' become 'And in the Holy Ghost, The Lord Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father (Filioque) = and from the Son.' this was acceptable for the Eastern Churches until the moment when this Confession of Faith has been legalized for the Whole Western Church with a decree so called pope 'Bulla' with which it become the official confession of faith for the whole Catholic Church. The Eastern Church of course was following the accepted Canon rules from the first Ecumenical Council in 381 A.D. and rejected to accept the definition of the Pope at first in the Face of Saint Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople (year 810 –  893) and become official in 1054 by the rule of Pope Leo whose legates tried to claim Headship of the Pope over the whole Church and questioned the title of the Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarch Michael I Cerularius.
Along with the chages of the Creed of Faith the West, the years during centuries VII and IX centuries has already put a lot of differences in the East and West Church along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines so the split was a reflection of all this. The Latin Church was much more power hungry and more progressive for its time and authoritarian, trying to combine the Worldly power with the Spiritual one given by the line of Apostoles from Christ Ceasaris-Papism, where the Eastern Church was governed in the ancient model of the Worldly power in face of Eastern Roman empire Emperor and the Patriarch who was a governor of the Spiritual power. The schism was worsened also by the many Latins raids in the Eastern Empire Christian brothers and the sacking of Constantinople in 8-13 April year 1204. Of course both Wester and Eastern Roman Empire had an appetite for a conquest over the other and often this has lead the secular rulers on both sides to try to manipulate activities of the spiritual leaders of both to work for their interests, but the schism would never occur if the spiritual establishment of the Church which are the Holy Canons (decision of the Ecumenical Councils) were not breached by the Western Church.
One of this breaches of the Ancient canons is the Celebration of Eastern Pascha which says the Christian Pascha should never coincide with Jewish Pascha. However in the Western Church this rule was breached and nowadays The Eastern (The Day of the Resurrection of Christ) in the Roman Catholic Church (Western Church) coincides most of the years with Jewish Pascha (both Roman Catholics and the executors of Christ who never accepted him the Jews celebrate together … a sad fact).

Nowadays most of the Ancient Churches of the East together with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, who are confessing the Faith of Christ such as it was handed by the Saint Fathers has a very specific ancient way of confession of faith similar to the Creed of Faith which was a very common short ancient way to confess the faith when two Christians met it is perhaps originating from the times of the Heresies in the 1st century right after the Christ Crucifix, when the pupil of Christ used it to confirm the Glorious and unexplainable Miracle of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Death in Real Body in the 3rd day from the Grave in the Cave where his body was buried.

Resurrection-of-Christ-Anastasis-Greek-orthodox-icon

The Greeting Formula is the well known in the Eastern Orthodox Churches such as in Bulgaria / Greece / Russia / Serbia etc. Christ is Risen.
On every easter Almost everyone in the Orthodox Christian Countires greats everyone else both in homes on the street at work or anywhere relatives friends and even unfamiliar people who has to do business deeds with the immersely joyful greeting.

ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ / CHRIST IS RISEN !!!!! !!!

Then the greeted Person answers back

ВОЙСТИНУ ВОСКРЕСЕ / TRULY HE IS RISEN (INDEED HE IS RISEN) !!!!!!!!

In the Orthodox Churches, believers do greet themselves with this heartful joyful greeting for the whole 40 days after the Feast of Resurrection of Christ.

In Russia, Ukrain, Belarus and the surrounding Slavonic lands there is this tradition that the greeting is repeated 3 times as an interaction between person A and person B, for example.

Person A (3 times) greets:
ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ = CHRIST IS RISEN !!!
Person B (3 times) answers:
ВОЙСТИНУ ВОСКРЕСЕ = TRULY HE IS RISEN !!!

Resurrection-of-Christ-Velikden-orthodox-holy-icon

Below is a good list with Paschal Resurrection Greeting in multiple languages, for those who has curious polyglot minds who want to learn few words in different languages.

Indo-European languages

Greek: Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Khristós anésti! Alithós anésti!)

Voskresenie-Gospoda-Nashego-Iisusa-Hrista-Mosaic

Slavic languages

Church Slavonic: Хрїсто́съ воскре́се! Вои́стинꙋ воскре́се! (Xristósŭ voskrése! Voístinu voskrése!)

Belarusian: Хрыстос уваскрос! Сапраўды ўваскрос! (Chrystos uvaskros! Sapraŭdy ŭvaskros!)

Bulgarian: Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе! (Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!), as if in Church Slavonic; Христос възкресе! Наистина възкресе! (Khristos vâzkrese! Naistina vâzkrese!) in Modern Bulgarian

Croatian: Krist uskrsnu! Uistinu uskrsnu!

: Kristus vstal z mrtvých! Vpravdě vstal z mrtvých!

Macedonian: Христос воскресе! Навистина воскресе! (Hristos voskrese! Navistina voskrese!), traditional; or Христос воскресна! Навистина воскресна! (Hristos voskresna! Navistina voskresna!)

Polish: Chrystus zmartwychwstał! Prawdziwie zmartwychwstał!

Russian: Христос воскрес(-е)! Воистину воскрес(-е)! (Khristos voskres(-е)! Voistinu voskres(-е)!) (the version with -e is in Church Slavonic, one without it is in modern Russian; both are widely used)

Rusyn: Хрістос воскрес! Воістину воскрес! (Hristos voskres! Voistynu voskres!)

Serbian: Христос васкрсе! Ваистину васкрсе! (Hristos vaskrse! Vaistinu vaskrse!) or Христос воскресе! Ваистину воскресе! (Hristos voskrese! Vaistinu voskrese!)

Slovak: Kristus vstal z mŕtvych! Skutočne vstal (z mŕtvych)! (though the Church Slavonic version is more often used)

Slovene: Kristus je vstal! Zares je vstal!

Ukrainian: Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес! (Khrystos voskres! Voistynu voskres!)

Tosk Albanian: Krishti u ngjall! Vërtet u ngjall!

Armenian

Western Armenian: Քրիստոս յարեա՜ւ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնեա՜լ է Յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի: (Krisdos haryav i merelotz! Orhnyal e Haroutyunen Krisdosi!)

eastern dialect, Քրիստոս հարյա՜վ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնյա՜լ է Հարությունը Քրիստոսի: (Khristos haryav i merelotz! Orhnyal e Harouthyoune Khristosi!); literally "Christ is risen! Blessed is the resurrection of Christ!")
 

Christus-Resurrexit-Latin-icon-Christ_Resurrection

 

Germanic languages

 

Anglic languages

Scots: Christ has ryssyn! Hech aye, he his ain sel!

English: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Or Christ is risen! Truly, he is risen!

Old English: Crist is ārisen! Hē is sōþlīċe ārisen!

Middle English: Crist is arisen! Arisen he sothe!

Danish: Kristus er opstanden! Sandelig Han er Opstanden!

West Frisian: Kristus is opstien! Wis is er opstien!

German: Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaft auferstanden! or Der Herr ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!

Icelandic: Kristur er upprisinn! Hann er sannarlega upprisinn!

Faroese: Kristus er upprisin! Hann er sanniliga upprisin!

Low Franconian languages

Dutch: Christus is opgestaan! Hij is waarlijk opgestaan! (Netherlands) or Christus is verrezen! Hij is waarlijk verrezen! (Belgium)

Afrikaans: Christus het opgestaan! Hy het waarlik opgestaan!

Norwegian

Bokmål: Kristus er oppstanden! Han er sannelig oppstanden!

Nynorsk: Kristus er oppstaden! Han er sanneleg oppstaden!

Swedish: Kristus är uppstånden! Han är sannerligen uppstånden!

Italic languages

Latin: Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!

Romance languages

Aromanian: Hristolu anyie! Di alihea anyie!

Resurrection-of-Christ-Coptic-christian-icon

Catalan: Crist ha ressuscitat! Veritablement ha ressuscitat!

French: Le Christ est ressuscité ! En vérité il est ressuscité! Or Le Christ est ressuscité ! Vraiment il est ressuscité !

Galician: Cristo resucitou! De verdade resucitou!

Italian: Cristo è risorto! È veramente risorto!

Portuguese: Cristo ressuscitou! Em verdade ressuscitou! or Cristo ressuscitou! Ressuscitou verdadeiramente!

Arpitan: Lo Crist es ressuscitat! En veritat es ressuscitat!

Romanian: Hristos a înviat! Adevărat a înviat!

Romansh: Cristo es rinaschieu! In varded, el es rinaschieu!

Sardinian: Cristu est resuscitadu! Aberu est resuscitadu!

Sicilian: Cristu arrivisciutu esti! Pibbiru arrivisciutu esti!

Spanish: ¡Cristo resucitó! ¡En verdad resucitó!

Walloon: Li Crist a raviké! Il a raviké podbon!

Baltic languages

Latvian: Kristus (ir) augšāmcēlies! Patiesi (viņš ir) augšāmcēlies!

Lithuanian: Kristus prisikėlė! Tikrai prisikėlė!
 

Celtic languages

Goidelic languages

Old Irish: Asréracht Críst! Asréracht Hé-som co dearb!

Irish: Tá Críost éirithe! Go deimhin, tá sé éirithe!

Manx: Taw Creest Ereen! Taw Shay Ereen Guhdyne!

Scottish Gaelic: Tha Crìosd air èiridh! Gu dearbh, tha e air èiridh!

 

Brythonic languages

 

Breton:Dassoret eo Krist! E wirionez dassoret eo!

Cornish: Thew Creest dassorez! En weer thewa dassorez!

Welsh: Atgyfododd Crist! Yn wir atgyfododd!

Indo-Iranian languages

Ossetian:Чырысти райгас! Æцæгæй райгас! Or бæлвырд райгас! (Ḱyrysti rajgas! Æcægæj rajgas or bælvyrd rajgas!)

Persian: مسیح برخاسته است! به راستی برخاسته است!‎ (Masih barkhaste ast! Be rasti barkhaste ast!)

Hindi: येसु मसीह ज़िन्दा हो गया है! हाँ यक़ीनन, वोह ज़िन्दा हो गय یسوع مسیح زندہ ہو گیا ہے! ہاں یقیناً، وہ زندہ ہو گیا ہے!‎ (Yesu Masīh zindā ho gayā hai! Hā̃ yaqīnan, voh zindā ho gayā hai!)

Marathi: Yeshu Khrist uthla ahe! Kharokhar uthla ahe!

Abkhazian: Kyrsa Dybzaheit! Itzzabyrgny Dybzaheit!
 

Jesus-Christ-Resurrected-arabic-coptic-icon

Afro-Asiatic languages

 

Semitic languages

 

Standard Arabic: المسيح قام! حقا قام!‎ (al-Masīḥ qām! Ḥaqqan qām!) or المسيح قام! بالحقيقة قام! (al-Masīḥ qām! Bi-l-ḥaqīqati qām!)

Aramaic languages

 

Classical Syriac: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܡ! ܫܪܝܪܐܝܬ ܩܡ!‎ (Mshiḥa qām! sharīrāīth qām! or Mshiḥo Qom! Shariroith Qom!)

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܡܠܗ! ܒܗܩܘܬܐ ܩܡܠܗ!‎ (Mshikha qimlih! bhāqota qimlih!)

Turoyo: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܝܡ! ܫܪܥܪܐܝܬ ܩܝܡ!‎ (Mshiḥo qāyem! Shariroith qāyem!)

 

East African languages

 

Tigrinya: Christos tensiou! Bahake tensiou!

Amharic: Kristos Tenestwal! Bergit Tenestwal!

Hebrew: המשיח קם! באמת קם!‎ (Hameshiach qam! Be'emet qam!)

Maltese: Kristu qam! Huwa qam tassew! or Kristu qam mill-mewt! Huwa qam tassew!

Egyptian

Coptic: (Pi'Christos aftonf! Khen oumetmi aftonf!)

Judeo-Berber: Lmasih yahye-d ger lmeytin! Stidet yahye-d ger lmeytin!


Dravidian languages

Tamil: கிறிஸ்து உயிர்த்தெழுந்தார், மெய்யாகவே அவர் உயிர்த்தெழுந்தார்.

Malayalam: ക്രിസ്തു ഉയിര്ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! തീര്ച്ചയായും ഉയിര്ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! (Christu uyirthezhunnettu! Theerchayayum uyirthezhunnettu!)
 

Eskimo–Aleut languages

Aleut: Kristusaaq Aglagikuk! Angangulakan Aglagikuk!

Pacific Gulf Yupik: Kristusaq ungwektaq! Pichinuq ungwektaq!

Central Yupik: Kristuussaaq unguirtuq! Ilumun unguirtuq!

Mayan languages

Tzotzil: Icha'kuxi Kajvaltik Kristo! Ta melel icha'kuxi!

Tzeltal: Cha'kuxaj Kajwaltik Kristo! Ta melel cha'kuxaj!

Christ-resurrection-Anastasis

 

Austronesian languages

Malayo-Polynesian

Batak: Tuhan nunga hehe! Tutu do ibana hehe!

Carolinian: Lios a melau sefal! Meipung, a mahan sefal!

Cebuano: Nabanhaw Si Kristo! Nabanhaw gayud!

Waray: Hi Kristo nabanwaw! Matuod nga Hiya nabanhaw!

Chamorro: La'la'i i Kristo! Magahet na luma'la' i Kristo!

Fijian: Na Karisito tucake tale! Io sa tucake tale!

Filipino: Nabuhay muli Si Kristo! Nabuhay talaga!

Hawaiian: Ua ala hou ʻo Kristo! Ua ala ʻiʻo nō ʻo Ia!

Indonesian: Kristus telah bangkit! Dia benar-benar telah bangkit!

Kapampangan: Y Kristû sinûbli yáng mèbié! Sinûbli ya pin mèbié!

Malagasy: Nitsangana tamin'ny maty i Kristy! Nitsangana marina tokoa izy!

Cook Islands Māori: Kuo toetu’u ‘ae Eiki! ‘Io kuo toetu’u mo’oni!

 Austroasiatic languages: Mon-Khmer

: Preah Christ mean preah choan rous leong vinh! trung mean preah choan rous leong vinh men!

 Vietnamese

: Chúa Ki-tô đã sống lại! Ngài đã sống lại thật!

 Thai

Thai: พระคริสต์เป็นขึ้นจากความตาย! or พระคริสต์ทรงกลับคืนพระชนม์ชีพ!

Basque

Basque: Cristo Berbiztua! Benetan Berbiztua!

Japanese

Japanese: ハリストス復活!実に復活! (Harisutosu fukkatsu! Jitsu ni fukkatsu!)

 Korean

Korean 그리스도 부활하셨네! 참으로 부활하셨네! (Geuriseudo buhwalhasyeonne! Chameuro buhwalhasyeonne!)

 Na-Dené languages

Athabaskan languages

Navajo: Christ daaztsą́ą́dę́ę́ʼ náádiidzáá! Tʼáá aaníí daaztsą́ą́dę́ę́ʼ náádiidzáá!

Tlingit: Xristos Kuxwoo-digoot! Xegaa-kux Kuxwoo-digoot!

Niger–Congo languages

: Kristo Ajukkide! Kweli Ajukkide!

Swahili: Kristo Amefufuka! Amefufuka kweli kweli!

Gikuyu: Kristo ni muriuku! Ni muriuku nema!

Quechuan languages

Quechua: Cristo causarimpunña! Ciertopuni causarimpunña!

Mongolic languages

Classical Mongolian: Есүс дахин амилсан, Тэр үнэхээр амилсан! (Yesus dahin amilsan, ter uneheer amilsan)

Turkic languages

Turkish: Mesih dirildi! Hakikaten dirildi!

Uyghur: ‫ئەيسا تىرىلدى! ھەقىقەتىنلا تىرىلدى!‬‎ (Əysa tirildi! Ⱨəⱪiⱪətinla tirildi!)

Azerbaijani: Məsih dirildi! Həqiqətən dirildi!

Chuvash: Христос чĕрĕлнĕ! Чăн чĕрĕлнĕ! (Hristos čĕrĕlnĕ! Čyn čĕrĕlnĕ!)

Khakas: Христос тірілді! Сыннаң тірілді! (Hristos tíríldí! Sınnañ tíríldí!)

Uzbek: Масих тирилди! Хақиқатдан тирилди! (Masih tirildi! Haqiqatdan tirildi!)

Sino-Tibetan languages

Chinese: 基督復活了!他確實復活了! (Jīdū fùhuó-le! Tā quèshí fùhuó-le!) or 耶穌復活了,真的他復活了! (Yēsū fùhuó-le, Zhēnde tā fùhuó-le!)

Uralic languages

Estonian: Kristus on üles tõusnud! Tõesti on üles tõusnud!

Finnish: Kristus nousi kuolleista! Totisesti nousi!

Hungarian: Krisztus feltámadt! Valóban feltámadt!

Karelian: Hristos nouzi kuollielois! Tovessah nouzi!

Glorious-Resurrection-of-Jesus-Christ-icon

Constructed languages

International auxiliary languages

Esperanto: Kristo leviĝis! Vere Li leviĝis!

Ido: Kristo riviveskabas! Ya Il rivivesakabas!

Interlingua: Christo ha resurgite! Vermente ille ha resurgite! or Christo ha resurrecte! Vermente ille ha resurrecte!

Quenya: (Hristo Ortane! Anwave Ortanes!)

Klingon: Hu'ta' QISt! Hu'bejta'!

 

My E-Marketing Report Final Godaddy.com Versus Enom.com for Download (Godaddy.com compared to Enom.com)

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Some few months ago, I’ve posted some study materials for e-marketing & commerce course (discipline) that I followed in Arnhem Business School (ABS)
Apart from that I had a final assignment which was supposed to be handed in some few weeks before the begging of the Christmas break.

The Emarketing assignment’s aim was to make a comparison of two websites which are operating in the same or very similar business field

The report’s goal was to present to the E-marketing teacher which in my case was Peter Stemers that the student has been acquainted with the basic theories of Emarketing.
The project was actually rather easy and the main issue to build up a project like this is the start up to complete it you just need to put a start and persist in expanding the document.

As the topic was very interesting to myself I started quite early in preparing my assignment (just a few weeks after it was assigned).

I’ve considered my profound interest into Information and Computer Technology (ICT) and decided to create a report which evaluates two websites which are into the IT sphere.
After a examination over a few possible domain names like for example:
Verizon – verizon.com and AT&T – att.com
1& 1and1.co.uk and Godaddy etc.

I’ve finally set my websites to compare choice on: Godaddy.com and enom.com

The criterias for selection of Godaddy and Enom as a target companies to compare their online business was as follows::

1. Both Godaddy and Enom are into the same business online industry, ( e.g. domain selling, reselling, blog hosting, webhosting, SSL certificates, online presence Search Engine optimization etc.)
Some other selection factor that convinced me to choose exactly Enom.com and Godaddy were that this are the biggest companies in the domain names selling IT sector and even better the Domain Selling industry has a tight relation to the History of how the Internet emerged.

The report became really thoroughful, the Godaddy vs Enom emarketing report has the size of 59 pages. Officially the study criterias has been that normally the usual student emarketing reports contains about 15 to 20 pages, however as the business products and services that this huge internet domain reseller companies has, I was forced to exceed the set teacher limitation of 20 pages and do it in 59 pages.

I’ve handed in my emarketing report and Peter Stemers graded it with 8.5 points from 10 possible (which by the way is quite a high mark for Arnhem Business School)

By the wat the E-marketing course was quite a silly one though for people that are not have an avarage computer knowledge and interest into Internet Commerce it was okay.

To read the table of contents of the Report comparison Enom compared to Godaddy click over here
Here is also my Emarketing Final Report Godaddy.com vs Enom.com (Godaddy.com compared to Enom.com) in both PDF and DOC, I hope this reports will be helpful to some marketing researchers out there to get an estimate on how the two companies are performing in the domain selling and reselling business:

1. Download My Emarketing and E-commerce report Godaddy Versus Enom.com (Godaddy Compared to Enom.com) doc version

2. Download E-marketing report Godaddy.Com VS Enom.Com (Godaddy.com Compared to Enom.com) in PDF

Compiling this Emarketing report costed me a lot of effort and time, the overall completion of the report has took me about a two weeks time, whether each day I worked a couple of hours on it.
I express also my big thanks to Alex Petrov (a friend of mine) for helping me read and review the report and fix some minor errors in sentence structures and my language of expression.

The Godaddy VS Enom Emarketing report outlines, numerous pitfalls that both Enom Company and Go Daddy has done in terms of SEO, Emarketing, user friendliness and usability

I believe this report could be really helpful for the these two competitive companies and could help them improve both their user image, their accessibility and Search Engine indexing.
On the other hand the report could be a good example for (HAN – Arnhem Business School E-Marketing) students on how to write a good looking Emarketing report to give themselves a pass.

An interesting fact is that before I decide to publish the report online and make it available to everyone I tried a known selling marketing report, I tried to offer to both Godaddy.Com and Enom.Com to sell them this report by sending the offer to their marketing and sales guys.
Enom.com has returned me an email, that they will look forward to my request, whether with Godaddy I have received an email by Go Daddy founder and CEO Bob Parons and the COO Warren Adelman

I will present you here the reply just to show you how impodent this mans are! My offer to sell them this great report for the symbolic sum of 200 EUR which will help their companies grow was considered I quote: “Unsolicated Report”.
Below I present you my offer email plus the impudent reply email by GoDaddy’s CEO and CEO:


SNAP – My Email to Godaddy
Hi Bob,

My name is Georgi Georgiev and I’m currently completing my bachelor in
Business Administration in HAN University of Applied Sciences (The
Netherlands).

Currently I’m developing an E-marketing report which is comparing the 2
largest internet domian registrars
godaddy.com and enom.com.

The report is a in depth SEO and E-marketing analysis of current
positioning in major search engines of Godaddy.com and Enom.com as well
as an overall analysis of user user friendliness, screen resolution
readiness of the two websites.
In the report I also analyse the behaviour of the enom.com and
godaddy.com as tested with different major Internet web browsers,
general user experience. External statistical websites etc. etc.

This research document does also concludes what are the strengths &
weaknesses of both your company and enom.com. The aim of the report is
to show, what Godaddy advantages and pitfalls if compared to Enom.com.

It also includes a number of suggestion for improvements which will be
beneficial for your company to drive more internet traffic to you as
well as increase your number of customers.

The report is 60 pages long document and includes many things that might
be beneficial for your business.

If you’re interested into the report and you’d like to buy it for me for
a very cheap price of 200 EUR, please contact me on my mail
hipo@www.pc-freak.net or systemexec@gmail.com.

Best Regards,
Georgi


Georgi Georgiev

——
END of SNAP

SNAP – Godaddy’s Bob Parson and Warren Adelman Reply Email:

Office of the President Response
Dear Georgi Georgiev,

Thank you for contacting the Office of the President. Our CEO, Bob Parsons, and President and COO, Warren Adelman, have asked me to respond on their behalf.

We value your time and appreciate the information you have provided regarding this request. Please understand that we are not seeking to acquire any unsolicited reports of this nature at this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Jordan McAlister

Hope this post is helpful to some students stucked with writting their E-marketing report
I also hope it shows how proficient, I’m in building reports and might be a good exapmle on how qualitative my work is and enhearten somebody to hire me as an E-marketing consultant 😉

Origin of Halloween (All Hallows Eve) or the Day of All Saints is actually Christian

Thursday, October 30th, 2014

 

 

The-Christian_Original-of-Halloween-Cross_on-a-pumpkin

 

 

Many people would "celebrate" Halloween today, however many don't know or understand the true feast origin. It would probably news to many that halloween that is today so much associated with satanism, evil spirits and horror has christian origin! Here is what wikipedia States about Halloween quote:
 

The word Halloween or Hallowe'en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin. The word "Halloween" means "hallowed evening" or "holy evening". It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day). In Scots, the word "eve" is even, and this is contracted to e'en or een. Over time, (All) Hallow(s) Eve(n) evolved into Halloween. Although the phrase "All Hallows'" is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, all saints mass-day), "All Hallows' Eve" is itself not seen until 1556.

 

All-Saints-day-Latin-Roman-Catholic-icon

Before Christianization of Western societies – e.g. Irish, Old English, Scots and the other Gaelic nations, in Ancient celtic traditions Samhain (celebrated at end of October) give the beginning of the Celtic New Year. Celts believed that the spirits of the dead over the previous year come to roam the world looking for living people to possess. As a mean of protect Celts put on their face animal skin and other objects in order to be as scare as possible to drive out spirits from themselves. The Celtic people of Europe and Britain were pagan Druids (priests / educated people) whose major celebrations were marked by the seasons. At the end of the year in northern Europe, people made preparations to ensure winter survival by harvesting the crops and culling the herds, slaughtering animals that wouldn't make it. Life slowed down as winter brought darkness (shortened days and longer nights), fallow ground, and death. The imagery of death, symbolized by skeletons, skulls, and the color black, remains prominent in today's Halloween celebrations.

seasonal_activities_medieval_seasons_calendar

The "Samhain" season used to be a favourite times before Christianization and (even by some witches, later haunted by Inquisition) for occult practices such as divination and communication with the dead. They sought "divine" spirits (demons) and the spirits of their ancestors regarding weather forecasts for the coming year, crop expectations, and even romantic prospects. Bobbing for apples was one practice the pagans used to divine the spiritual world's "blessings" on a couple's romance.

Interetingly in Eastern Europe countries, there is similar traditions in multiple countries – e.g. Romania, Moldova Serbia, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia even in my own Bulgarian culture we still have regions celebrating similar pagan feast, on whose feast KukeriKukers are called the dressed people in the form and masked as scary beasts with horns dance on the streets in hope to drive away with their awful looking outlook any "evil spirits". Kukeri traditionally appear still in Eastern Bulgaria, the feast has been known to have origin from Thracians.

kukeri in Bulgaria Shiroka Lyka

It is intriguing that since, even very ancient times people believed in immortality of the human spirit and this is not coincidence, because from ancient times people know "instinctively" the soul is importal and life continues on after physical dead of the body.

The modern version of Halloween celebrated mainly by kids wandering the homes of neighbors with the question "Trick or Treat?" started being marked in that way in England, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Italy at least as early as 15th century.
Traditionally groups of poor children would go to homes collecting the so called soul-cakes (special burned small breads) made as an aim of remembrance of the Christian relatives who passed away – it was a very widespread custom to give food to strangers as a mean of charity  just like it is still in Orthodox Christian countries, we give away food to strangers as an aim to remembrance of our departed (and forgiveness of sins) to our relatives.

Halloween-christian-tradition-soul-cake-with-Cross-on-it

In the Middle Ages, churches displayed the holy relics of martyred saints for veneration and those parishes that were too poor to have relics let parishioners dress up as the saints instead a practice that some Christians continue in Halloween celebrations today.

Cross_and_Halloween_origin-of-feast

Unfortunately the Christian root of Halloween tradition gradually mixed with some of the old still not completely forgotten beliefs of paganism in pre-christian times and with the gradual raise of materialism, the protestant reformation, the enlightenment, the french revolution, the world wars etc. this mostly Christian traditions loose their Christian ground and left mostly its pagan element.
After Christianization of Europe from the 9th century onwards the Church, pagan traditions continued to be practiced by many, probably because the Church "mass" language and preaching was in Latin, people doesn't have bibles and many even baptized doesn't really had a good knowledge / understanding on Christian faith.
It is not a coincidence the Church's decision to place the All Hallows Eve (The Day of All Saints) on "Halloween" feast on 1  November.

Pope_Gregory_III-icon-Catholic-Pope-who-fighted-iconoclasm-heresy

The feast of All Saints on its current date, is traced to the foundation by Pope Gregory III (731–741) – (who was a defender of true Orthodox Christian faith  and openly against the heresy of Iconoclasm) who set this date to be  "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world", the feast was moved to 1 November from the prior feast from 13 May suppressed.

With the emigration of many Europeans to America the secular Halloween feast has been transferred to America and set itself as one of the United States citizens tradition in which reminded emigrants for their homeland europe making the feast popularity to boast. The bloom of TV advertisement and the decrease of faith in people, increase of occult mindset in society made the feast primordial understanding to invert associating Halloween with evil which is fun in the mass. This is quite strange as evin the ancient pagans, had not associated with evil but used the feast as a mean to protect from evil. That's another sign in what kind of tragic state currently society is … sadly the feast Americanization made it to the number of "International feasts". And now there is almost no country where Halloween is not celebrated in a secular way.

It is not a hidden fact that Halloween feast for its connection with magical powers, paganism and occult is often believed and said to be 'A feast day for Witches and magicians', its considered important feast in Anton Sandor Lavey's Church of Satan.

A lot of parents nowdays does encourage their children to celebrate the feast not understanding the real Christian roots of it and teaching children to enjoy evil often without even realizing the psychological damage this makes to a kid.
Some countries such as Russia has already legislation prohibiting the pupils in school to mask like monsters and celebrate publicly the feast.
roman_catholic_christian_halloween_pumpkin
If you're a parent it is always a good idea to tell your kid that the truth is Halloween feast is not connected to darkness as it is often publicly illustrated but on the contrary Halloween tradition is early Christian one.

diskinfo Linux hdparm FreeBSD equivalent command for disk info and benchmarking

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

FreeBSD Linux hdparm equivalent is diskinfo artistic logo

On Linux there is the hdparm tool for various hard disk benchmarking and extraction of hard disk operations info.
As the Linux manual states hdparmget/set SATA/IDE device parameters

Most Linux users should already know it and might wonder if there is hdparm port or equivalent for FreeBSD, the aim of this short post is to shed some light on that.

The typical use of hdparm is like this:

linux:~# hdparm -t /dev/sda8

/dev/sda8:
Timing buffered disk reads: 76 MB in 3.03 seconds = 25.12 MB/sec
linux:~# hdparm -T /dev/sda8
/dev/sda8:
Timing cached reads: 1618 MB in 2.00 seconds = 809.49 MB/sec

The above output here is from my notebook Lenovo R61i.
If you're looking for alternative command to hdparm you should know in FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD, there is no exact hdparm equivalent command.
The somehow similar hdparm equivallent command for BSDs (FreeBSD etc.) is:
diskinfo

diskinfo is not so feature rich as linux's hdparm. It is just a simple command to show basic information for hard disk operations without no possibility to tune any hdd I/O and seek operations.
All diskinfo does is to show statistics for a hard drive seek times I/O overheads. The command takes only 3 arguments.

The most basic and classical use of the command is:

freebsd# diskinfo -t /dev/ad0s1a
/dev/ad0s1a
512 # sectorsize
20971520000 # mediasize in bytes (20G)
40960000 # mediasize in sectors
40634 # Cylinders according to firmware.
16 # Heads according to firmware.
63 # Sectors according to firmware.
ad:4JV48BXJs0s0 # Disk ident.

Seek times:
Full stroke: 250 iter in 3.272735 sec = 13.091 msec
Half stroke: 250 iter in 3.507849 sec = 14.031 msec
Quarter stroke: 500 iter in 9.705555 sec = 19.411 msec
Short forward: 400 iter in 2.605652 sec = 6.514 msec
Short backward: 400 iter in 4.333490 sec = 10.834 msec
Seq outer: 2048 iter in 1.150611 sec = 0.562 msec
Seq inner: 2048 iter in 0.215104 sec = 0.105 msec

Transfer rates:
outside: 102400 kbytes in 3.056943 sec = 33498 kbytes/sec
middle: 102400 kbytes in 2.696326 sec = 37978 kbytes/sec
inside: 102400 kbytes in 3.178711 sec = 32214 kbytes/sec

Another common use of diskinfo is to measure hdd I/O command overheads with -c argument:

freebsd# diskinfo -c /dev/ad0s1e
/dev/ad0s1e
512 # sectorsize
39112312320 # mediasize in bytes (36G)
76391235 # mediasize in sectors
75784 # Cylinders according to firmware.
16 # Heads according to firmware.
63 # Sectors according to firmware.
ad:4JV48BXJs0s4 # Disk ident.

I/O command overhead:
time to read 10MB block 1.828021 sec = 0.089 msec/sector
time to read 20480 sectors 4.435214 sec = 0.217 msec/sector
calculated command overhead = 0.127 msec/sector

Above diskinfo output is from my FreeBSD home router.

As you can see, the time to read 10MB block on my hard drive is 1.828021 (which is very high number),
this is a sign the hard disk experience too many read/writes and therefore needs to be shortly replaced with newer faster one.
diskinfo is part of the basis bsd install (bsd world). So it can be used without installing any bsd ports or binary packages.

For the purpose of stress testing hdd, or just some more detailed benchmarking on FreeBSD there are plenty of other tools as well.
Just to name a few:
 

  • rawio – obsolete in FreeBSD 7.x version branch (not available in BSD 7.2 and higher)
  • iozone, iozone21 – Tools to test the speed of sequential I/O to files
  • bonnie++ – benchmark tool capable of performing number of simple fs tests
  • bonnie – predecessor filesystem benchmark tool to bonnie++
  • raidtest – test performance of storage devices
  • mdtest – Software to test metadata performance on filsystems
  • filebench – tool for micro-benchmarking storage subsystems

Linux hdparm allows also changing / setting various hdd ATA and SATA settings. Similarly, to set and change ATA / SATA settings on FreeBSD there is the:

  • ataidle

tool.

As of time of writting ataidle is in port path /usr/ports/sysutils/ataidle/

To check it out install it as usual from the port location:

FreeBSD also has also the spindown port – a small program for handling automated spinning down ofSCSI harddrive
spindown is useful in setting values to SATA drives which has problems with properly controlling HDD power management.

To keep constant track on hard disk operations and preliminary warning in case of failing hard disks on FreeBSD there is also smartd service, just like in Linux.
smartd enables you to to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysisand Reporting Technology System (S.M.A.R.T.) built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks.
smartd and smartctl are installable via the port /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools.

To install and use smartd, ataidle and spindown run:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools
freebsd# make && make install clean
freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/ataidle/
freebsd# make && make install clean
freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/spindown/
freebsd# make && make install clean

Check each one's manual for more info.

How to fix a broken QMAIL queue with queue-repair and qmhandle

Friday, May 27th, 2011

How qmail works, qmail queue picture :)

The aim of this small post is to give just a brief idea of how I fix my qmail server after breaking it or in case it is broken after mail bomb attacks, etc.

Most common cases when I break my qmail queue myself, are after I’m implementing some new patches and reinstall parts of the qmail server with a patched version of default qmail binaries.
On other occasions, I simply used the qmailctl to start or stop the server as a part of some routine tasks necessery for the administration of the qmail server.

Everybody who has already experience with qmail should have experienced, that qmail is very fragile and could break even with a simple changes, though if it works once it’s rock solid piece of mail servant.

Below I explain few ways I used through my days as a qmail sys admin to deal with broken or messed queues.

1. Fixing a broken qmail queue using automatic tools There are few handy tools which in most cases are able to solve issues with the queue, one very popular one isqueue-repair – check http://pyropus.ca/software/queue-repair/.
Installation of qmail-repair is dead easy, but it needs to be installed from source as no official debian package is available:

linux:/usr/local/src# wget http://pyropus.ca/software/queue-repair/queue-repair-0.9.0.tar.gz
linux:/usr/local/src# tar -xzvvf queue-repair-0.9.0.tar.gzdrwxr-xr-x charlesc/qcc 0 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/
-rw-r--r-- charlesc/qcc 268 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/TODO
-rw-r--r-- charlesc/qcc 1700 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/CHANGELOG
-rw-r--r-- charlesc/qcc 18007 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/COPYING
-rw-r--r-- charlesc/qcc 1098 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/BLURB
-rwxr-xr-x charlesc/qcc 26286 2003-10-22 16:54 queue-repair-0.9.0/queue_repair.py

To check if there are issues fixable within the qmail queue it’s as easy as:

linux:/usr/local/src# cd queue-repair-0.9.0
linux:/usr/local/src/queue-repair-0.9.0# ./queue-repair -t
...
checking files...
checking queue/mess files...
checking split locations...

The tool will walk through the mail sub-directories containing mail queued files in /var/qmail/queue and will list any issues found.
It’s recommended that the qmail server is stopped before any queue modify operations are issued on the server:

linux:/usr/local/src# qmailctl stop
...

Further on in order to solve any found issues with the queue, there is the “-r”/repair option:

linux:/usr/local/src/queue-repair-0.9.0# ./queue-repair -r
...

Another tool which comes handy whether a repair of a messed qmail queue is needed is qmhandlehttp://sourceforge.net/projects/qmhandle/

The use of qmhandle is also pretty easy, all one has to do is to follow the usual classical steps of a download the source & compile:

linux:/usr/local/src# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/qmhandle-1.3.2.tar.gz
linux:/usr/local/src# tar -zxvvf qmhandle-1.3.2
...
linux:/usr/local/src# cd qmhandle-1.3.2

Once again it’s necessery that the qmail server is stopped via its init script before qmHandle tool is used, e.g.:

linux:~# qmailctl stop
...

There is a difference between qmail queue repair tool and qmail handle , while qmail queue-repair tool is used to fix improper permissions of queued files with the qmail queue, qmhandle ‘s application is to completely delete the stored mail contents of a broken queue.

Deleting all the qmail queue content is in some cases the only option to fix the queue.
Often such a drastic measure is required after a heavy mail server overload, let’s say a result of spammers or caused by virus infected mail users which send a massive amounts of spam mails.

Thus at many cases when queue-repair was unable to solve a queue mess, I use qmhandble and sacrifice all the queued emails by completely wiping them out like so:

linux:/usr/local/src/qmhandle-1.3.2# ./qmhandle -D
...

Above command would eradicate all queued emails. Hopefully after the qmail server gets launched again with qmailctl start all the mail server operations should be back to normal.

Note that the use of qmhandle’s queue delete capabilities is pretty dangerous, if you forgot to stop the qmail server before issuing the above command!

Note that in order to use both qmHandle and queue-repair tools you will need to install python interpreter as both of the tools are written in python.

To check what is currently in the queue in Qmail, there are also native tools available, as you should probably know if you have dealt with qmail, e.g.:

debian:~# qmail-qstat
debian:~# qmail-qstat
messages in queue: 2
messages in queue but not yet preprocessed: 0

Often when there are problems with Qmail and more specificly with qmail server queue the qmail-qstat command does show messages in queue, however when an attempt to check what kind of messages are in the queue with qmail-qread no messages are shown, for instance below you see an example of that, even though qmail-qstat claims 2 messages are in the queue, qmail-qread is unable to list the messages:

debian:~# qmail-qread
debian:~#

If all is fine with qmail queue above’s qmail-qread command should have returned something similar to:

debian:~# qmail-qread
26 May 2011 07:46:47 GMT #659982 3517 <hipo@www.pc-freak.net>
remote somemail@gmail.nl
26 May 2011 07:46:47 GMT #659983 3517 <hipo@www.pc-freak.net>

2. Fixing qmail queue manually This is very dangerous initiative, so before you try anything, make sure that you know what you’re doing, the possibility that you make the situation worst if you attempt to tamper manually the qmail queue is quite high 🙂

However if you’re still convinced to try fixing it manually, take a look at /var/qmail/queue it’s very likely that there are permission issues with some of the queued files, in order to fix the situation it’s necessery that the following directories:

/var/qmail/queue/mess/
/var/qmail/queue/remote/
/var/qmail/queue/bounce
/var/qmail/queue/info

gets explored with midnight commander / mc or some kind of convenient file explorer.

If there are queued files owned by users different from qmailq and user group qmail , for instance if owned by the root user, a simple chown qmailq:qmail to the wrong permissions file, should be able to resolve the issues.

Apart from all I explain above, there are many other ways suggested online on howto clean a qmail queue, one very popular one is using James’s qfixq shell script.

This script as of this very date is not working on Debian based systems, the script is dedicated initially to run on Fedora and Redhat based Linuces

Moreover myy experience with qfixq was never successful.

One very important note which is often a cause of many problems, is always make sure you stop and start the qmail server with an interval of at least of 10 seconds.

I’ve managed many servers which after an immediate (undelayed) qmailctl stop and qmailctl start was unable to run the whole engine of the qmail server (and either email sending or email receiving was not properly working) afterwards.

In that cases many weird behaviours are common, consider this seriously if you deal with the qmail-queue, it might happen that even if you have fixed your qmail queue, after a restart the qmail might breaks up.
I’ve experienced this kind of oddities numerous times, thus when I do changes to qmail I always make sure I restart the server a couple of times (at least 5 times 😉 ) always with a good delay between the HUPs.

And as always with qmail prayer is always needed, this server is complex, you never know what will happen next 🙂

The Edukators 2004 – Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Fat Year are Over) movie short review

Monday, February 6th, 2012

The Edukators movie cover

I'm in Sofia for a couple of days being a guest to a friend (thx Nomen), after my stay for a week in Bodesće (a little village nearby Bled located in Slovenia).
Yesterday on my way to sleep I wanted to see a movie and asked Nomen to recommend me a movie. His recommendation was a German-Australian movie from 2004 called The Edukators The Fat years are Over. I had absolutely no idea what it will be like so I didn't expected much but it seems the movie plot took my attention.

The movie plot revolves around 3 avarage German persons who live in Berlin. The three youngsters has just passed the 20s, Peter and Daniel (two close friends who hold some serious anti-capitalist views and does organize house break-ups without stealing.) Peter and Daniel's rich villas break-ups aim is idealistic, they don't steal but just change the order of furniture and leave messages to make rich people aware that money doesn't make them invincible…
Jule a girlfriend of Peter, becomes friend with Daniel and they fall in love, while Peter is away for a vacation. During Peters sojourn abroad Daniel tells Jule the secret (Peter and Daniel) are the Edukators whose break-ins has just recently become known via the local Berlin newspapers.
The Edukators group leave messages to every of the "victim" homes saying – "die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" – "The fat years are over", a sentence well known from the Holy Bible's story of Joseph in Egypt.

Jule works as a waitress in a luxurious restaurant but her payment is only good to cover her very basic needs as well as pay her debt (as she is already indebted as many youngsters in Germany).

Jule is more indebted compared to many of the young germans, since by accident she hit a rich businessman's car which costs 100 000 eur. Since more than a year she is working for paying the monthly bills to cover richman's car and she succeeded to pay only €55000 …

The Jule's "injustice" is just a part of the many injustices that are in society, but as the youngsters hold anarchistic and anti democratic views, this whole Mercedes crash accelerates as Jule and Daniel break up in the Luxurious Villa of the rich man whose car Jule is still paying.
The Edukators die fetten jahre sind vorbei movie cover

Just like the other break ups Jule and Daniel change completely the order of the furniture and leave the threatening message die fetten Jahre sind vorbei , this time however they do even more as they decide to drop the sofa in the pool. These time Daniel and Jule's planning is more like an venture than just a well planned Edukators break-in. Suddenly the watchdogs in the yard start barking and the two youngesters has to move quickly to prevent being taken by the police patrol.
On the next day Peter is back from his vacation and Jule realizes her mobile phone is missing (probably fallen in the pool or somewhere in the richman's mansion)… On the next night Jule and Daniel, enter the house again in hope to find and cover-up the tracks they left last night and hopefully find, Jule's missing mobile.
They don't know however the richman would arrive his villa to stay for the night. As he enter his house, the businessman encounters Jule and immediately recognizes her.
Daniel being in the other floor comes down and hits the richman from behind and he enters unconscioness. As the two are panicked they call Peter and tell him about "the villa accident". Daniel arrives immediately and the three "revolutionaries" decide to take the wealthy man who as a hostage bringing him in Jule's uncle mountain hut.
The 3 anti-current system democrats and the representative of the wealthy class has to spend few weeks together in a small house each one exposing his stand point and philosophy. Little by little the 4 people become friends and a dramma between Daniel and Peter emerges as Jule is now in love with Daniel and Peter finds out …
Hardenberg (the 3 youngesters hostage) happens to be an ex-leader of a Socialist German Student Union some 35 years go … and tells a story how he and his union members hostiged a VIP german person in their youth days and how funny is that he is in the same situation like the person they hostiged so long time ago…
The movie is interesting as it really shows the sad reality and the falling democratic system which we have established and follow. It exposes the injustice of the system but it doesn't really offer a solution to the society and economic problems and injustices.

How to start a process in background and keep it running after the console / terminal is closed on Linux and FreeBSD

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

The classical way to keep a process running in background after log out of a shell is using screen
Anyways using screen is not the only way to detach a running process , GNU / Linux and BSDs (Free, Open, Net BSDs) had a command nohup which aim is to run a command immune to hangups, with output to a non-tty

Let’s say one wants to keep track (log) constantly ICMP traffic to a certain host with ping command on a UNIX server / desktop which doesn’t have the screen manager … terminal emulation program installed. Achieving this task is possible with nohup cmd by backgrounding the ping process, like so:

guoi@host:~$ nohup ping google.com >ping.log &[1] 45931hipo@host:~$ nohup: ignoring input and redirecting stderr to stdout

Afterwards even after closing up the opened ssh session or console (tty) / terminal (pts) on which the ping process is background nohup prevents the ping to be sent kill SIGNAL so the process continues running in the background.

Later on to check in real time the statistics of the continuous ICMP ping requests tail, less, or cat can be used for example watching the tail:

hipo@host:~$ tail -f ping.log
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=562 ttl=51 time=44.0 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=563 ttl=51 time=43.8 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=564 ttl=51 time=43.3 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=565 ttl=51 time=43.1 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=566 ttl=51 time=43.4 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.39.106): icmp_req=567 ttl=51 time=43.6 ms

I’m using Linux / BSD for quite a lot of time and never before put in use the nohup cmd I guess there are more ppl who never heard of this handy UNIX basic command. Hope I’m not the only one who never heard about it and its useful knowledge to someone out. Cheers 😉