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Happy Ascension of Christ ! – The iconography of Ascension symbolism in the Church explained

Friday, June 11th, 2021

Ascension-Christ-held-on-halo-Angels-Vaznesenie_village-Seslavci_Bulgaria-16-17v

Icon of Ascension held in Church of Saint Great Martyr Georgi in the ex-village Seslavci (now suburb of Sofia)

The ascension of Christ is a feast that is a completion of human salvation. All the events connected to it the Birth of Christ (Nativity), the Crucifixion suffering the death and the Resurrection finalize itself with the Ascension. The Eastern Orthodox Church is famous for having a multitude of Images of major Biblical events, this ancient tradition is mostly present in Eastern Orthodox Churches and Oriental Orthodox Churches (Coptic Church, Syriac Church) etc.

The iconography of this holiday, as accepted by the Orthodox Church, is one of the most ancient iconographies of church holidays. The earliest but already established images of the Ascension date back to the 5th-6th centuries (the ampoules of Monza and the Gospel of Ravula for reference as one of the oldest we know). The iconography of this holiday has remained unchanged to this day, except for some minor details.

Ascension of Christ and Noli me tangere, c. 400, ivory, Milan or Rome, now in Munich.

"Having fulfilled Your providence for us and united the earthly with the heavenly, you have ascended to glory, Christ God, without even slightly separating from us, but abiding (with us) relentlessly, calling to those who love You. : "I am with you and no one can resist you ."
(Ascension feast Kondak).

Expressing above troparion deepness significance, the iconographers often depicted the Ascension as a typical painting on the domes of ancient Basyllicas / Churches.

The first look on the icon marks our eyes on the Mother of God Theotokos, the Angels and Apostles, while the main actor the Savior figure Himself who is depicted ascending is painted smaller and for the modern observer it looks like he is just on the background and of lower significance But this exact external discrepancy is painted on a purpose in order to correspond exactly to the holy scriptures. Actually reading in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles, the Ascension story we are left with the same impression; only few words are devoted to the glorios fact of the Ascension, and all the evangelists attention describing the event focuses instead on the importance of the Church in the world and its connection and relation to God. The back-retrospective of Christ The Savior (as a distant person ascending in Heavents), tends to show the emerce highness of Christ when compared to the most holy of the Earthly the Theotokos, The Apostles and the saints, it also tends to explain the unexplainable by words and for imagination the ascension of Christ with his Glorified Eternal body up to heaven of Heavens and the sitting on the right hand of God. The more detailed description of Ascension is found in the Book of (Apostle) Acts, it gives us the factual data albeit still incomplete underlying the importance of the Ascension.
The center of gravity in the narration of the Holy Scriptures and the stemming iconography falls not on the fact of the Ascension but on the signifance of the consequences of the Glorious unseen in the human history event for the Church and the world.

Ascension in the Rabbula Gospels, 6th century one of oldest icons of the Feast

In fact, when we read the story of the Lord's Ascension in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles, we are left with the same impression: only a few words are devoted to the very fact of the Ascension, and all the evangelists' attention is focused on something else. which establish and determine the influence and significance of the Church in the world, its connection and relation to God. A more detailed description of the Ascension can be found in the book of Acts. This description, together with the account of the Gospel of Luke, gives us those factual data, albeit incomplete, which underlie the Orthodox iconography of Christ's Ascension. The center of gravity in the narration of the Holy Scriptures, and with it in the Orthodox iconography, falls not on the very fact of the Ascension, but on the significance and the consequences it has for the Church and the world.

Olivet and the Chapel of the Ascension (The Mount of Olives)

The traditional site of the Ascension is Mount Olivet (the "Mount of Olives"), on which the village of Bethany sits. Before the conversion of Constantine in 312 AD, early Christians honored the Ascension of Christ in a cave on the Mount, and by 384 the Ascension was venerated on the present site, uphill from the cave.

Close-up of the Rock of the Ascension inside the Ascension edicule

Round the year 390 a wealthy Roman woman named Poimenia financed construction of the original church called "Eleona Basilica" (elaion in Greek means "olive garden", from elaia "olive tree", and has an oft-mentioned similarity to eleos meaning "mercy"). This church was destroyed by Sassanid Persians in 614. It was subsequently rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt again by the Crusaders. This final church was later destroyed by Muslims, leaving only a 12×12 meter octagonal structure (called a martyrium—"memorial"—or "Edicule") that remains to this day.

Jerusalem-mt-olives-ascension-edicule-the-temple-Church-onsite-of-Christ-Ascension

The Ascension edicule site in Jerusalem

The site was ultimately acquired by two emissaries of Saladin in the year 1198 and has remained in the possession of the Islamic Waqf of Jerusalem ever since. The Russian Orthodox Church also maintains a convent of the Ascension on the top of the Mount of Olives.

According to the testimony of the Bible's Book of Acts 1:12, the Lord's Ascension took place on the Mount of Olives, that is a well known pilgrimage place in Jerusalem even to this date.

Hence the icon depicts the event either at the very top of the mountain or among a mountain landscape. To accent that the mountain was the mount of olives, olive trees are sometimes painted. In accordance with the worship of the feast, the Savior is depicted ascending in glory ("Thou hast ascended into glory, Christ, our God …" – derived from the troparion of the feast). Some icons depics the Savior sitting on an ornate throne based on Church sung ("When God was carried on the throne of glory … "(Verse, voice 1 from the "praiseworthy').

Christ-ascended-with-two-angels-Vyznesenie

The glory of Christ is shown moving on a oval, rounded Halo consisting of several concentric circles – symbolizing not only the material skies we know but also the spiritual skies.

This symbolism shows that the ascending Savior is beyond the dimensions of earthly existence and thus the Ascension acquires a timeless character, which in turn gives a very special meaning to the details, taking them out of the narrow confines of the historical event.

The role of the Angels here is different and varies depending on the liturgical texts on which the image of the icon is based. For example, in some icons the Angels do not carry the halo "platform" with the savior, but turn to the Savior with a prayerful gesture, expressing their astonishment at seeing "how human nature rises with Him" (from the canon of the feast, song 3). In other icons agels are depicted trumpeting, in accordance with the words of the antiphon sung: "God ascended with an exclamation, the Lord ascended with a trumpet sound" (Antiphon, verse 4, Ps 46: 6).

Sometimes in the upper part of the icon, in the halo, the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven are seen opened before the ascending King of glory – symbolism according to the words of Psalm 23, "repeated in the worship: gates, and the King of glory will enter. " All these details, depicted on the icon, indicate the fulfillment of the prophecy of St. King David for the Ascension of the Lord.The role of the Angels here is different and varies depending on the liturgical texts on which the image of the icon is based. For example, in some icons the Angels do not carry the halo, but turn to the Savior with a prayerful gesture, expressing their astonishment at seeing "how human nature rises with Him" (from the canon of the feast, song 3). In other icons they are depicted trumpeting, in accordance with the words of the antiphon: "God ascended with an exclamation, the Lord ascended with a trumpet sound" (Antiphon, verse 4, Ps 46: 6).

In the foreground of the icon are depicted in the center the Mother of God between two groups of Apostles and two Angels. Here the role of the Angels is already different: they are messengers of the Divine providence, as we know from the book of Acts of the Holy Apostles (Acts 1: 10-11).

The Ascension of the Lord was attended by the Mother of God, which is definitely affirmed by Church Tradition, through the liturgical service texts, for example in the Troparion of the Mother of God, of the ninth song from the canon of the feast: St. The Mother of God has a very special place in the icon of the Ascension. Virgin Mary is depicted just below the ascending Savior, as she seems to be the center of the whole composition in order to depict the Church belief that the Mother of God is even higher in spiritual rank than anges and archangels. Her silhouette, extremely clean, light and clear, stands out sharply against the white robes of the Angels. Her stern, motionless figure contrasts even more sharply with the Apostles gesturing briskly on both sides of her. The distinctiveness of Her image is often emphasized by the foot on which She stands and which makes her central position stand out even more.

This whole group, together with the Holy Mother of God, represents the Church of Christ acquired through the blood of the Savior. Left in the earth on the day of the Ascension, the Church receives the fullness of her existence through the promised descent of the Holy Spirit on the forthcoming feast of Pentecost just 10 days following the Feast of the ascension which by the way is one of the 12 Main Church feasts in the early cycle.

Ascension-Drago-sacramentary-320px-Enluminure_Drogon_c

Drogo Sacramentary c. 850 Carolingian illuminated manuscript

The connection of the Ascension with Pentecost is revealed in the Savior's words: "If I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; if I go away, I will send Him to you" (John 16: 7). This connection between the Ascension of the deified human flesh of the Savior and the forthcoming Pentecost, which is the beginning of the deification of man through the descent of St. Spirit is also emphasized by the whole worship of the holiday. Placing the foreground in the icon of the group of saints, apostles and the the Theotokos is depicting the Church, makes clear expression of the meaning assigned to its foundation according to the Holy Scriptures in the last commandments of the Savior.

The fact the whole Church is meant here, and not only the persons historically present at the Ascension icon, is evident both from the presence of St. Paul the Apostle (to the right of the spectator, to the Mother of God), who historically could not attends the Ascension together with the other apostles, and from the special place of the Mother of God in the icon of the feast. The Mother of God and "Mother of the Church", the One, Who has received God in Herself the Theotokos has become a temple of the incarnate Word, here personifies the Church – the body of Christ, the Head of which is the ascending Christ as Ephesians reads ("And set Him above all the Head of the Church, which is His body, fullness to Him who fulfills all things in all things "(Eph. 1: 22-23).

That's why, showing the personification of the Church, the Holy Mother of God is depicted on the icon immediately below the ascending Christ and in this way it seems that they complement each other.

The gesture of Her hands corresponds to her importance. In some icons it is a gesture of Oranta – an ancient prayer gesture with raised hands, expressing its role and the role of the Church personified by it in relation to God, the prayer to Him and the intercession for the world daily by the Church. On other icons, Theotokos is depicted in gesture of confession, expressing the role of the Church in relation to the world. In this case, the Blessed Virgin holds her hands in front of her, palms facing forward, as depicted in the iconography of the martyrs-confessors. Her strict immobility seems to accent the immutability of the God-revealed truth, whose guardian is the Church.

The movements of the whole group from the foreground of the icon, the gestures of the angels and the apostles, the direction of their gazes, the postures – everything is turned upwards, to the Source of the life of the Church, its Head residing in the heavens. Thus, the image conveys the call with which the Church addresses her children on this day:
"Come, let us rise and raise our eyes and thoughts, let us gather our feelings …, let us stand mentally on the Mount of Olives and look to The Savior, Who floats on the clouds … "
(Ikos of the Kontakion, voice six.).

With these words, the Church urges believers to join the Apostles in their urge to ascend to Christ, as St. Pope Leo the Great says:
"Christ's Ascension is also our ascension, because where the Head is crowned with glory, there is hope for the body."

(St. Leo the Great, Word 73 (Word 61. dedicated to the Feast of the Ascension)

Ascension_Rabbula_gospels_antiochian_6v.

Ascension of Christ Syriac Gospel of Monk Rabbula, VI century Antiochian Church
The Savior, ascending, leaving the earthly world with His Body, does not leave it with His Deity, does not separate from His property – the Church, which He acquired with His blood – "does not separate at all, but abides in it"
(Kontakion). on the holiday).

"And behold, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20) – These words of the Savior apply both to the entire history of the Church and to every single moment of its existence, as well as to the life of each of its members until the very Second Coming of the Lord. The icon conveys this connection of Him with the Church, always depicting Him blessing with the right hand (very rarely He is depicted blessing with both hands ), and usually in the left hand holding a Gospel or scroll – a symbol of teaching and preaching. He ascends by making sign of benediction, not after blessing His disciples, according to the words of the Gospel: on the Church after His Ascension. Depicting Him benedicting, the icon clearly shows that even after the Ascension He remains a source of blessing for the Apostles, and through them for their successors and all those who will bless them.

Ascension_of-Christ-from_Vasilyevskiy_chin_15th_c_GTG-Andrei-Rublev-year-1408AD

Ascension of Christ by the most famous medieval iconographer Andrei Rublev year circa 1408 A.D.

But the icon of the Ascension has other meanings as well. The two angels, standing behind the Holy Mother of God and pointing to the Savior, announced to the Apostles that the ascended Christ would come again in glory: "This Jesus, who ascended from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go to heaven ” (Acts 1:11). In the Acts of the Apostles, as St. John Chrysostom says, "two angels are mentioned, because indeed there were two angels, and they were so, because only the testimony of two is unquestionable (2 Cor. 13: 1) (St. John Chrysostom) – A Word on the Acts of the Apostles, parat3).

Depicting the fact of the Ascension of the Savior and the teaching of the Church, the icon of the Ascension is at the same time a prophetic icon, an icon displaying how the Second and glorious Coming of Jesus Christ is to happen. Therefore, on the icons of the Last Judgment He is depicted as on the icons of the Ascension, but no longer as a Redeemer, but as a Judge of the universe.

In this prophetic sense, the group of Apostles with the Mother of God (in the center of the icon) depict the Church awaiting the Second Coming of Christ. So, as we said, the icon of the Ascension is prophetic, it is an icon of the Second Coming, because it reveals to us a spectacular picture, beginning with the Old Testament and ending with the end of world history.

It should be noted that despite the versatile content of the icon "Ascension", its distinctive feature is the extraordinary tightness and monumentality of its composition.

The iconography in the West has been pushed away due to the reformatoins in the Roman Catholic Church and the style of iconography has been severely changed to be more realistic and fleshly not according to the ancient Church tradition that the icon should be "passionless". The renessance and the Protestant reformation, who in pratice killed icon veneration in the west put an end to the old beautiful ancient Church iconography of the Ascension.

Rembrandt van Rijn Ascension of Christ painting y. 1636 A.D.

Ascension – Dosso Dossi (16h century) painting

Ascension of Christ Giotto year 1304 – 1306 Scrovegni chapel Padua-Italy

As you see in Catholic tradition after the Great Schism, the deviations from the old Church tradition is already seenable even in early western iconographists as Giotto in 13th century, the back-retrospective is exchanged, the center of the picture becomes Christ (displayng already the erroneous Roman-Catholic Dogma teaching the Pope as being a vicar of Christ – in catholicism they believe even to this day The Pope is Earthly representative of Christ) as you see the meaning that the Chruch is the focal point has exchanged.

Artcile is a Translation from Leonid Uspensky From the book. "Theology of the Icon" with minor inclusions (by G. Georgiev – back-retrospective explanation, and ratio over western iconography etc.)
Iconographic sources: pravoslavieto.com / wikipedia / orthodoxwiki and public Internet resources

N.B. Léonid Alexandrovich Ouspensky (1902–1987) was a famous Russian painter and art historian emigration who spend most of his life in French

Tags: accordance, Account, actor, acts of the apostles, AD, addresses, after, again, against, ALL, ancient tradition, and, Andrei Rublev, antiphon, Apostle, Apostles, are, art, ascension of christ, attention

Saint Georgi of Sofia “the Newest” Bulgarian Confessor Christian saint martyred 1534 AD during reign of Turkish Sultan Selim in Medieval Serdika (Sofia)

Tuesday, June 1st, 2021

Saint-Martyr-George-of-Sofia-Georgi-Sofijski-in-traditional-wear-kalpak

Troparion, voice 4
With a soul wounded by the love of your God, the wise George the Glorious, he preached to the ungodly, Christ God, trampled with his feeth, the Turkish heresy; and when he adorned himself with the crown of martyrdom, you ascended to the heavenly multitudes: ask Christ God to preserve your homeland, this city (Sofia) and the people who always worship your deeds.

On 26-th of May the Bulgarian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of one of the great Bulgarian Martyr saints Saint Georgi the Newest.
С~тый Геԝ̀ргїй Софїѝскїй Новѣ̀йшїй) St. Georgi (The Bulgarian equivalent name of George) is one of the 3 saints holding the name Georgi which has confessed Christianity refused to accept islam and accepted Martyrdom for Christ in period of 1396 till year 1530 and one of the 9 famous Sofia city saints. Saint Georgi of Sofia the Newest was named after the highly venerated in Bulgarian just like in whole Christian world saint George.

saint-Georgi-Sofijski-saint-great-martyr-George-and-The-Mother-of-God-iconostasis

St. Georgi was born in the city of Medieval Sofia (Sredetz), fortress of Serdika today’s Sofia in a family of Ivan and Maria – a wealthy and society recognized family of that time. He has born after a fervent and lengthly prayers of his parents who couldn’t have children for a long time and has been given a kid by the prayers of Saint Great Martyr George
It is important to say Georgi (the newest) celebrated on 26-th of May is a different saint from St. Georgi called “the new” whose memory in the Church is commemorated on 11-th of February.

Miracle making icon of saint Georgi Sofiyski (currently in the Church in yard of Alexandrovska Hospital Sofia)

The young Georgi quickly learned to write and read, a skills that only the most educated people usually coming from noble families could do. His favourite activity
in his free time when he was not in help of his parents was reading the Holy Scriptures.
He was grown by his parents in Christian goodness and fervency for the Christian faith.

Aged 25 he orphaned as his beloved father passed away to Christ. Georgi posessesed an extraordinary beauty, sharp mind and virtues, seeing the young man in his grief the local Turkish authorities tried as they usually do to attract the youngster to the islamic faith to make their way to interact with Georgi and do their business easier and most importantly have Georgi in their auhotirities congregation consisting only of people belonging to the islam as it was up to the Ottoman Turkish consistution law of the day.

To attract Georgi, turks first tried with hypocritical kindness and a care for the young to help him raise in the power of authorities of the city, not succeeding with that they have, they have forcefully wrapper the Muslim turban on his head and proclaimed him officially Muslim. Feeling offended by the ungodly deed of this enemies of Christ, immediately the saint throw the imposed turban on the ground and trampled on it.
The enraged muslim crowd seing his public offence for the prophet Muhammed handed him over to the Qadi in the court.

Neither the seductive promises of high office nor the cruel tortures could break the unshakable firmness of his Christian faith. The judge ordered that his body be cut into strips from head to toe and that the wounds received be scorched with dirty candles, which made the martyr’s body so hot that his face could not be seen. But all efforts were in vain.

The final verdict of the judge followed – Georgi to be hanged on the main barn in the city of Sofia, where there was a furnace for melting iron and copper ore. The execution command also stated that his body should remain on the gallows for three days in order to begin to decay, so that the faith of the Christians in the incorruptible relics of the saints and in the resurrection of the dead to be refuted and hence disgrace christianity. However, exhausted from his suffering mrtr. Georgi died at the hands of the executioners before they managed to hang him. To fulfill the command turks, anyhow hung him on a rope to show the sentence has been successfully carried out.

For three days the body hung on the gallows without any sign of decomposition, and on the contrary, an unusual fragrance of the holy relics of the martyr wafted through the barn. His mother sat under the gallows and grieving his beloved son hugged her son’s legs, staying next three three days to her son. The hanging took place on May 26, 1530 (according to other document sources in 1534). Thus on 26th of may the Church set a service in memoriam.

Ancient-Church-ROtonda-St-George-Sofia-Bulgaria

5-th Century Church of Rotonda St. George Centre of Sofia

The-Grave-of-Saint-Georgi-Sofiyski-Grobat-na-sv-Georgi-nai-novi

Saint Georgi Sofiyski / Saint George of Sofia the Newest grave near Rotonda Church Saint George in City Center of Sofia, Bulgari

After the expiration of the sentence, the kadi handed over the body of the martyr to be buried in a Christian way, and the burial was solemnly performed by the then Metropolitan of Sofia Jeremiah in the church “St. the great martyr George the Victorious ”. Now these relics are in obscurity. The mother of the martyr died on the 40th day of George’s death and was buried at her son’s feet.

These events took place during the reign of Sultan Suleiman I Kanuni (the Legislator) also known as Suleiman the Magnificent. This “Golden Age” for the Ottoman Empire was a time of unheard of atrocities against Christians in the territory of the empire and very difficult times for the Bulgarian people. The reign of Suleiman I and his father Selim I was a time of obscurantism and severe persecution of the Christian population, a time during which many Christian new martyrs on Balkans had the courage to defend their faith.

The capture, trial and torture of St. George of Sofia The latest took place near the then Sofia. Today the place is located in the yard of the famous Alexandrovska Hospital which was a King’s hospital during the times of Kingdom of Bulgaria after liberation took place from the Turks in 1878 y.. The exact location where martyrdom occured is between street St. Georgi Sofiyski ”and“ Pencho Slaveykov ”Blvd.

There was a large stone cross with an inscription on the site, which a few years after 1944, due to the risk of being destroyed, was collected by Sofia priests and is still preserved in the altar of the church “St. Georgi Pobedonosets ”on Blvd. Partriarch Euthymius”. Until the 1940s, a liturgical procession was held from the place of death of the saint to the Rotunda on May 26.
Nowadays happily, the old Lithia tradition is being renewed and a small Lithia is conducted by Bulgarian Orthodox Christian clergy and layman.

In the garden next to the building of the Second Surgical Clinic there was a stone cross, which indicated the place and history of the martyrdom of the saint, and today a temple was built in honor of the saint.

Church-of-saint-Georgi-Sofijski-in-Alexandrovska-hospital-Sofia-Bulgaria-the-place-of-martyrdom-of-saint-Georgi-Sofijski
source: Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Lefkada and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev).

Saint_Georgi-naj-novi_Sofijski

HOLY MARTYR GEORGE OF SOFIA THE NEWEST, PRAY GOD FOR US!

Tags: AD, after, against, age, ALL, and, ANY, Anyhow, are, balkans, Begin, beloved son, body, city, com, during, faith, Georgi Sofiyski, Islam, long time, martyr, martyrdom, muslim faith, org, php, place, reading, rejection, saint, today, www

How to Install and Play old Arcade Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator Games on Linux in 2021 with xmame and GXMame GUI Frontend

Friday, May 14th, 2021

mame-multiple-arcade-machine-emulator
I've earlier blogged on how to install and play old arcade games with xmame compiled from source on the now old Debian 7 Linux under the article Install xmame from source on Debian Linux 7.0 (Wheezy) to play for better MAME (Arcade Games Emulation)
as well article on using the newer version of MAME emulator instead of xmame under the article Playing Arcade old school games on Debian Linux as well as how to make the MAME emulator work with a joystick see my previous How to configure Joystick ( Gamepad ) on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint GNU / Linux easily.

Since I have preinstalled my notebook with fresh Debian 10 Buster, for a long time I did not have the time as well as desire to play my favourite games of the youth to name a few this is Xain'd Sleena / Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993) / the Punisher (1993) / Captain Commando (1991) / Super Mario / Contra / Final Fight etc. and rest of the the SEGA Mega Drive / GameBoy / Nintendo / Terminator game (fake clone of nintendo) and other killing Arcade Classics of the late 90s and early year 2000, which we played on a public houses on a game cabinets with a joysticks.
Hence I tried to reproduce some of my articles just as of 2021 to see whether still we can get a nice playable MAME emulator on Linux with a Graphical GUI for Mate or GNOME. And it seems using a straight mame out of Debian standard repositories did not work with some of the more sophisticated ROM .zip files from the nices such as Punisher or XSLEENA.zip, this is how this article got born in an attempt to give a way for such old school game freaks as me to be able to play there favorite games of the youth.

Below is the few steps adapted mostly from above articles with some head banging and loosing multiple hours wondering until I finally got a working XMAME ROM emulator with the simple but working GXMAME graphical frontend for M.A.M.E..

To compile xmame with joystick support be it analog or whatever joystick you have to use a Makefile like below

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick

Copy it on your PC and remove it to Makefile in the xmame-0.103 source dir:

# cd /usr/local/src/xmame-0.103

I have to install all the necessery package dependencies development header files, some of which are mentioned in the beginning of post articles and some of which I had to install manually, such as the preset Debian meta-package build-essentials Things to install on newly installed GNU / Linux (My favourite must have Linux text and GUI programs missing in fresh Linux installs), just to mention a few I remember had to install based on some compilation errors:

# apt-get install build-essential
# apt-get install –yes zlib1g-dev
# apt-get install –yes libexpat1-dev
# apt-get install –yes libghc-x11-dev
# apt-get install –yes x11proto-video-dev
# apt-get install –yes libxv-dev
# apt-get install libxext6
# apt-get install libxext6-dev
# apt-get install libxext-dev
# apt-get install libjpeg62-turbo-dev
# apt-get install libxinerama-dev
# apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
# apt-get install syslog-ng-dev
# apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev

If I'm missing some package necessery here you will have to find it yourself based on the *.h file produced as error during compile you should look it up with a cmd like:

# apt-file search glib2.h

And install it further.

You will need to edit Makefile or take and straight use or if necessery adapt an already prepared Makefile for my purpose:

# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick;
# mv https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick Makefile
# make && make install

Some .zip roms does not properly work with the newer mame you need to instead use xmame ..

Below is the version I use on Debian 10 as of May 2021 year.

hipo@jeremiah:/usr/local/src$ xmame –version
GLINFO: loaded OpenGL library libGL.so!
GLINFO: loaded GLU library libGLU.so!
xmame (x11) version 0.103 (May 13 2021)

To make the joystick work in xmame you will need to have a preset of modules loaded on the Linux for my old Genius joystick this is what works.

hipo@jeremiah:~/Games$ cat /etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
snd-seq
3c59x
snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss
joydev
ns558
sidewinder
gameport
analog
adi
pcigame
iforce
evdev
usbhid

Fill in your joystick module there and make sure you manually load each one of the modules with modprobe command.
Next calibrate the joystick with some tool like jktest-gtk

If you need a good frontend for MATE / GNOME for xmame try gxmame. It is a real pain in the ass to configure, note that the only working version of xmame with good configuration as well as gxmame with a game list that is prebuild.
If you need xmame-0.103.tar.bz2 exact xmame version I'm using thethe archive is on:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103.tar.bz2
An old bundle of both gxmame and xmamerc configs is here

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame.tar.gz

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-for-joystick-hipo.tar.gz
For example my old working version of xmame ~/.xmame is here https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-for-joystick-hipo.tar.gz

Configuration of gxmame (even though it has has a GUI for configuring is below:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/gxmame.tar.gz

xmamerc sample working file is here

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmamerc

My newest current version as of Debian 10 Squeeze of xmame and gxmame is below:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/gxmame-config-newest_may_2021.tar.gz

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-newest_may_2021.tar.gz

Note that my rom files and stuff is located and configured in neewst configs to be under /home/hipo/Games/roms/ if your location is others grep it in .xmame/* and .gxmame/* files and set the correct PATH locations.

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE is not to use the stable version of GXMAME even though it worked in 2003 fine as the project is abandoned and unsupported as of 2021 the latest downloadable stable gxmame file on Sourceforge gxmame-0.34b website is not working correctly (even though it compiles fine).
You have to compile and use instead the newer version gxmame-0.35beta1.

If you want to use gxmame with a joystick you need to compile it with the respective option:

root@jeremiah:/usr/local/src/gxmame-0.35beta1# ./configure –enable-joystick
…

gxmame 0.35beta1

Print debugging messages…… : no
Joystick support………….. : yes

GXMame will be installed in /usr/local/bin.
Warning: You have an old copy of gxmame at /usr/local/bin/gxmame.

configure complete, now type 'make'

To install compiled binaries do the usual:

# make && make install

gxmame binary should be installed under /usr/local/bin/gxmame once launched you should get the shiny gxmame GUI.

gxmame-screenshot-debian-10-gnu-linux-mate-desktop

Perhaps there was other stuff I've done in the process I forgot to document here, so if you try to follow my guide and something does not work please tell me what I'm missing and you can't handle it either contact me.

The guide is for Debian Linux but should work on other .Deb based Linux distros such as Ubuntu / Linux Mint etc.

To enjoy my 4GB present of ROM files containing many of best well known M.A.M.E. ARCADE GAMES check archive here. Note that this collection was downloaded on the Internet and I do not hold any responsibility of the archive. If it contains files with any copyright infringment this is to be on your own.

Tags: ALL, amp, analog, and, ANY, apt-get, arcade, Arcade Games Linux, Below, debian linux, errors, gxmame, How to, linux?, net, old arcade games, pc-freak, purpose, tar, xmame

Tags: ALL, amp, analog, and, ANY, apt-get, arcade, Arcade Games Linux, Below, debian linux, errors, gxmame, How to, linux?, net, old arcade games, pc-freak, purpose, tar, xmame
Posted in Arcade Games, Everyday Life, Games, Games Linux | No Comments »

Christ is Risen – Truly He is Risen – Happy Easter !

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

admin

One more year the Holy Fire has descended and we have been blessed to great Each other with the All Joyful Paschal Greeting !

Христос възкресе! Воистина възкресе! (Hristos vozkrese! Voistina vozkrese!)

Христос Воскресе – Воистину Воскресе! Христос възкресе! Воистина възкресе! (Hristos vozkrese! Voistina vozkrese!)
Христос васкрсе! Ваистину васкрсе! (Hristos vaskrse! Vaistinu vaskrse!)
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!Christ is Risen ! Truly He is Risen !

For complete list of Paschal Greeting as a referrence to get idea how other weird languages sound like and how it is used in the major Eastern Orthodox Churches all around the world check out my previous article Christ is Risen Eastern Orthodox Resurrection Paschal Greeting in Different Languages

Tags: admin, ALL, and, around, article, Blessed, check, Chi, Christ, Churches, complete, complete list, Easter, Eastern, eastern orthodox, eastern orthodox churches, eta, Fire, Great, Risen

Tags: admin, ALL, and, around, article, Blessed, check, Chi, Christ, Churches, complete, complete list, Easter, Eastern, eastern orthodox, eastern orthodox churches, eta, Fire, Great, Risen
Posted in Christianity | No Comments »

Lazarus Sunday – The Resurrection from the Death of Lazarus in the fourth day as a proof for the Mass Coming Resurrection

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Saint_Lazarus_-resurrected-in-4th-day-Miracle_Icon_Sinai_12th_century

Ancient Miracle Making Icon of Lazarus Resurrected in the 4th day after being in the grave by Christ – O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Lazarus Sunday is one the a moveable feast in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Church set it to always be on the 6th Saturday of the Great Lent.
I decided to write few lines about Saint Lazarus because he is one of my favourite saints and because I hope anyone could benefit spiritually by this.

The name Lazarus stems from the Latinised form of the Aramic: אלעזר, Elʿāzār, cf. Heb. Eleazar —"God helped")

The raising of Lazarus at Bethany – today the West Bank town of Al-Eizariya, which translates to "the place of Lazarus" – is the climactic narrative: exemplifying the power of Jesus "over the last and most irresistible enemy of humanity: death. For this reason, it is given a prominent place in the gospel. The feast of Resurrection of Lazarus is a great feast of importance for both us the Eastern Orthodox Christistians as well as Roman Catholics.

Back in the days when I first read about Lazarus while reading the bible for a first time I've been completely wonderstruck, reading that a man who was in the grave for 4 days could come back to life. Perhaps the resurrection of Lazarus story described was a major building block which give me enormous joy and same time fear and hope on God's mercy towards man. Of course reading about the Resurrection that is expecting each and every of us was mostly scareful especially when I remembered all my bad innumerous sins and transgressions but same time it filled me with joy that after all the life we live now is not meaningless, but after death bed another never ending life in a never dying new resurrected bodies is awaiting each human some of is to be living in never ending joy in the new body and some to be living in a new body holding the dark landmarks of their unrepented sins for eternity (the hell) about which we are constantly warned …

The Bible story of Lazarus brings me back in the days, whenI personally have experienced "a spiritual" resurrection when 15 years ago God by his great mercy has given me the gift of faith not because I have done something but because I was in suffer and obviously he had pity on my pain and answered my call for help. Have to say It was not me that have done something special besides a whole hearted prayers to Jesus Christ to show me if he really exists and imy promise that I will serve him if he is really God and not a history fiction. The following uneartly Joy and Peace I have received as a Gift from God while being in that desperated state I would not forget my whole life. In that very moments back in the distant 2006 I still remember I was amazed on the difference of being with God feeling his presence in your soul and the emptiness of feeling alone in a cold and dark universe that doesn't care. The moment I received the grace of God not because of me but because of his great mercy was a moment of immerse joy that was consuming all the earthly suffering and cares. The "feeling" if it at all can be named a feeling was exactly like you have been death in spirit all your life or at least a big part of your life and suddenly you come to live and have breath.

It took me a harsh battle to find out where is Christ's Church and if really there is a Church as described in the Holy Bible (Jesus Christ promised a Church) and I was not aware where this Christ Church is even though I have been blessed to have live in a Eastern Orthodox country. During 2006 – 2007 I have to read many many books and have the chance to meet many people in Varna's Spiritual Educational Center Saint Archangel Michail and the key person Borislav Avramov who played and continues to play a main role for the existence of the center. I've the chance to meet many other good people who already have been Christians for many days and lived in the Church,as well as many other dedicated Christians who were orthodox but did not fully lived according to Church teaching. A key role in my development as a realized Christian played the monks from Pomorie Monastery Saint Great Martyr George who I have the chance by God's providence to visit many times. They have corrected many of my erronical understanding of Christianity which has been there due to my only source for Christian living examples was books and Internet. My knowledge and understanding on Christianity, Mysterious and Truths revealed by Christ hence was chaotical mixed up (as i had red too many books without any systematics, including many non-canonical books like the The Ethiopian Book of Enoch and many non-canonical books and ancient writtings which included a lot misfacts and heretisms. This all has led me to choose to become an Eastern Orthodox Christian being convinced by the historical facts about the Church which are still being lived to this very date in the Mystery life of the One Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.

Sarcophagus-of-Jonah-Lazarus_resurrection-engraved-3rd-4th-century

The Resurrection of Lazarus is described in the Holy Bible's Gospel of John Book

Chapter 11

Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

1. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

²(It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

³Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.

⁴When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

⁵Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

⁶When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.

⁷Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.

⁸His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?

⁹Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.

¹⁰But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

¹¹These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

¹²Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.

¹³Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.

¹⁴Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

¹⁵And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

¹⁶Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

¹⁷Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

¹⁸Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:

¹⁹And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

²⁰Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

²¹Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

²²But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

²³Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

²⁴Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

²⁵Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

²⁶And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

²⁷She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

²⁸And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

²⁹As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.

³⁰Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him.

³¹The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

³²Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

³³When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.

³⁴And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.

³⁵Jesus wept.

³⁶Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

³⁷And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

³⁸Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

³⁹Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

⁴⁰Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

⁴¹Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

⁴²And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

⁴³And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

⁴⁴And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

⁴⁵Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

⁴⁶But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

⁴⁷Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

⁴⁸If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

⁴⁹And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

⁵⁰Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

⁵¹And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

⁵²And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

⁵³Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.

⁵⁴Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

⁵⁵And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

⁵⁶Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?

⁵⁷Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.

Saint Lazarus original Burial Place in Tomb Bethany Israel (The Tomb of Saint Lazarus in Bethany and the House of Martha and Mary is a famous pilgrimage location for Christians even day)

The_Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

The Resurrection of the Righteous Lazarus by Christ in the home of Simon the Lepper.
Fresco of homilies of saint Gregory The Theologian of Nazianzus (Nizianzin)

Chapter 12
1. Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

²There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

³Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Resurrection_of_Lazarus_Ravenna_Sant_Apollinare_Nuovo_2016

Sixth Century icon of Resurrection of Lazarus Sant Apollina Nuovo Ravenna

By raising Lazarus from the Death in such a manner in a public before the crowd of hundreds or hundred of thousands of people's eyes. Jesus clearly show he is the Master of Death and Life and the Only Begotten son.
Which was the ultimate proof for the Jews that Christ is the true expected Messiah described in old testament prophetic books.
According to Jewish tradition the death bodies were lade in stone engraved tombs to preserve the bodies, as Jews (The Pharisees) the larger part of Jews has hold the believe for the Ultimate resurrection of the Death where they will be resurrected to live an ever lasting life with God the creator of all things. To preserve the body and keep it in a good shape s special oilment ritual has been conducted by every jew, more pompose for the rich and very simple for the poor pretty much like the funerals we organize today. Except that we Christians lay the death body in the ground and not in a tomb but in same way we believe in the Mass coming resurrection of the death (even though most of us has forgotten that).

Even today as we are in the situation of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemicsm, still jews continue the tradition to have multile attended funerals this year 2021 in February there was a big scandal in the news about all famous Jewish ultra orthodox Rabbi Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik whose funeral was attended by estimated 10000.

So it is no strange if Lazarus funeral has been attended by many thousands as well especially if we consider the fact that at the time of Resurrection of Lazarus Jesus was so famous that everywhere he goes he was followed by large crowds of people waiting for a healing a word a blessing to see the Messiah.

Earliest_known_Image-of-the-Resurrection-of-Lazarus_catacomb_of_Giordani

The apostolic nature of Lazarus' appointment was given by the Church tradition, which says the bishop's omophorion was presented to Lazarus by the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. Such apostolic connections were central to the claims to autocephaly made by the bishops of Kition – subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem – during the period 325 – 431. The church of Kition was declared self-governing in 431 AD at the Third Ecumenical Council.

According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, worried by the sight of unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hell. The only exception was, when he saw someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: "the clay steals the clay."

In 890, a tomb was found in Larnaca bearing the inscription "Lazarus the friend of Christ". Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium had Lazarus' remains transferred to Constantinople in 898. The transfer was apostrophized by Arethas, bishop of Caesarea, and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church each year on October 17.

Lazarus_Tomb_in_St_Lazarus_Church_in_Larnaca,_Cyprus

In recompense to Larnaca, Emperor Leo had the Church of St. Lazarus, which still exists today, erected over Lazarus' tomb. The marble sarcophagus can be seen inside the church under the Holy of Holies.

After the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Crusaders carried the saint's relics to Marseille, France as part of the booty of war. From there, "later on, they disappeared and up to the present day they have not been traced."

In the 16th century, a Russian monk from the Monastery of Pskov visited St. Lazarus's tomb in Larnaca and took with him a small piece of the relics. Perhaps that piece led to the erection of the St. Lazarus chapel at the Pskov Monastery (Spaso-Eleazar Monastery, Pskov),where it is kept today.

On November 23, 1972, human remains in a marble sarcophagus were discovered under the altar, during renovation works in the church of Church of St. Lazarus at Larnaka, and were identified as part of the saint's relics.

In June 2012 the Church of Cyprus gave a part of the holy relics of St. Lazarus to a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, after a four-day visit to Cyprus. The relics were brought to Moscow and were given to Archbishop Arseniy of Istra, who took them to the Zachatievsky monastery (Conception Convent), where they were put up for veneration.

Let by the Holy Prayers of Saint Lazarus God have mercy on the world and us the sinners and grant us salvation and grace to live out trough this temporary life!

Tags: about, AD, after, again, ALL, alone, and, another, ANY, are, art, BACK, bed, Behold, being, bible, day, Lazarus, Mass Coming Resurrection, proof

Tags: about, AD, after, again, ALL, alone, and, another, ANY, are, art, BACK, bed, Behold, being, bible, day, Lazarus, Mass Coming Resurrection, proof
Posted in Christianity | No Comments »

The Great Canon of of Saint Andrew of Crete important repentance landmark in the Great Lent Church time

Monday, April 19th, 2021

The Great Canon and Great example of Repentance

Every year the Great Lent, in the Orhodox Church an important part of the Fasting time and Church faithful meeting for the Services is the reading of the so called "Great Canon" .
Canon of Repentance was composed in the distant seventh century by a notable saint in the Church saint Andrew of Crete (Greek: Ἀνδρέας Κρήτης, c. 650 – July 4, 712 or 726 or 740), also known as Andrew of Jerusalem.
He was an 8th-century bishop, theologian, homilist, and hymnographer. He is highly venerated in our One Holy Eastern Orthodox and considered in saint in the Catholic Church as well.

His life's most important work The Great Canon prayed in singing form during every Great Lent period in the Church since then and is example for Christians for how a repentance's set stone should be set and which are the main positive and negative personages we know from the holy bible scriptures. The Great Canon is known well and sung often by dedicated Christians even in their home in or outside of the great lent period.
The canon expresses the overall understanding of the Church through times for good and bad examples of how a man should live, if he wants to have a good life in Christ and what he should abstain and not do if he wants to accept in deed and "utilize" so to say the Salvation given by Christ on the Cross.

The Great Canon was composed by saint Adnrew in the Seventh Century ! And preserved its preserved its form and content up to this very day.
It is lenghtly one as it is a Church services that lasts sometimes from 1 hour 50 minutes hour or even up to 2 hours 50 hours if performed with a Bishop or a Metropolitan. The Saint Andrews Canon is red every day in the First week during first of Great Lent divided by IV parts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Great Canon Content

Great Canon text consists of four parts, each divided into nine odes like any other regular church canon.
There are slight differences between the odes of the two compositions. In the Great Canon, there is a greater number of troparia (songs sung in honour of a Biblical major event, a saint veneration song or other song with content to glorify the miracles of Christ).
A common remembering part of the Canon heard is the begging "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,
At the refrain "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me," a full prostration (a bow to the ground). is performed Also, some of the odes have additional refrains and troparia to the author of the canon, St. Andrew of Crete, and Saint Mary of Egypt who spend 47 years hermit life in the desert and is one of the greatest models of repentance in Christian history.

A basic distinguishing feature of the Great Canon is its extremely broad use of images and subjects taken both from the Old and New Testaments. As the Canon progresses, the congregation encounters many biblical examples of sin and repentance. The Bible (and therefore, the Canon) speaks of some individuals in history in a positive light, and about others in a negative one—the penitents are expected to emulate the positive examples of sanctity and repentance, and to learn from and avoid the negative examples of sin, fallen nature and pride. However, one of the most notable aspects of the Canon is that it attempts to potray the Biblical images in a very personal way to every penitent: the Canon is written in such form that the faithful identify themselves with many people and events found in the Bible.
Great-Canon-of-Saint-Andrew-Crete-manuscript-XII-century-Moscow

The earliest manuscript we know of attesting to the Great Canon (with a slightly different order of troparia and a shorter composition) is the Studite Triodion of the middle of the second half of the ninth century, stored in the library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
This manuscript has the Canon in hits original place in the services of Great Lent – at Matins of Thursday in the fifth week (when the life of St. Mary of Egypt is read).
Only later does it also appear at Compline of the first four days of the first week.

The Canon is a soul-piercing, heartfelt lament of the righteous for his sins. The very beginning: “Where shall I begin to weep for the action of my wretched life? What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, in this my lamentation? (Ode 1)—attunes the soul for mourning and repentance, for the “wounding of the heart.”

The author of the Canon laments not only for himself, but for all mankind that has sinned. He recalls every transgression, every fall, from Adam to the New Testament. The majority of the Canon—eight odes—consists of Old Testament examples. St. Andrew doesn’t just recall the sins of the forefathers, but he experiences them as his own: “I have rivaled in transgression Adam the first-formed man, and I have found myself stripped naked of God” (Ode 1).

The transgressions of the forefathers become prototypes of the passions that torment a man: “Instead of the visible Eve, I have the Eve of the mind: the passionate thought in my flesh” (Ode 1). Or another example: “To whom shall I liken thee, O soul of many sins? Alas! To Cain and to Lamech. For thou hast stoned thy body to death with thine evil deeds, and killed thy mind with thy disordered longings (Ode 2: “See now, see”). Here St. Andrew follows St. Maximus the Confessor, for whom Cain is “the acquisition, the law of the flesh,” rising up against Abel, that is, the mind, according to the symbolic interpretation, and killing him. This is what St. Maximus writes: “Had Abel kept guard over himself and had he not gone out with Cain into the field, that is, into the plain of natural contemplation, before attaining dispassion, then Cain, who is and is called the law of the flesh would not have risen up and killed him” (Ad Thalassium 49).

If in the Canon St. Andrew recalls examples of Old Testament and New Testament righteousness, then it is first of all in order to reproach his soul for sloth and for sinfulness and to call it to imitation, for example: “O miserable and wicked soul, imitate the righteous and pure mind of Joseph; and do not live in wantonness, sinfully indulging thy disordered desires” (Ode 5).

The Canon is a broad historical panorama outlining the history of human sin and human righteousness, of the rejection and acceptance of God. The contents of the Canon are deeply Christ-centered, with heartfelt appeals to Christ in every ode, for example: “May the Blood from Thy side be to me a cleansing fount, and may the water that flows with it be a drink of forgiveness. May I be purified by both, O Word, anointed and refreshed, having as chrism and drink Thy words of life” (Ode 4). The only way of purification for St. Andrew is in Christ, through sobriety, feat (podvig), and all time giving and living all for God.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew is, undoubtedly, based on a robust Patristic foundation, with quotes from St. Meletius of Sardis, St. Ephraim of Syria, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Maximus the Confessor. And the merit of St. Andrew of Crete is that he was able to synthesize their experience and imprint it into the Canon.

What is given to us in the Canon of Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete is the Biblical, ecclesiastical, truly universal experience of repentance, of the stinging of the heart, of the excruciating removal of the old, dead man and the putting on of the New Adam, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to Whom glory is unto the ages of ages.

Tags: about, action, AD, against, ALL, and, another, ANY, are, first, Great Canon Content, Great Lent, Great Lent Church, hermit life, mind, performed, saint, soul, Thursday, thy

Tags: about, action, AD, against, ALL, and, another, ANY, are, first, Great Canon Content, Great Lent, Great Lent Church, hermit life, mind, performed, saint, soul, Thursday, thy
Posted in Christianity, Everyday Life | No Comments »

Fix “init: Id “ad” respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes” – Reload /etc/inittab changes in memory apply without rebooting Linux server

Thursday, April 15th, 2021

During my daily sysadmin tasks I've been contacted by a colleague, reporting issues with missing logs in rsyslog on a very old Redhat Server release 5.11.
Exact version is:

root@linux-server:~# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.11 (Tikanga)

After checking the logs, I have confirmed his finding that in reality since about more than a year logs were not produced and al I could find multiple messages in /var/log/messages reading like:

init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
…

I've checked the status of rsyslog which seemed to be fine

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid 13709) is running…

The redhat version on the system was

root@linux-server:~# rpm -qa |grep -i rsyslog
rsyslog-3.22.1-7.el5

root@linux-server:~# tail -n 16 /var/log/messages
Apr 15 17:21:25 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:26:26 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:31:27 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:36:28 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:41:29 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:46:30 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:51:31 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:56:32 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:01:33 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:06:34 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:11:35 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:16:38 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:21:39 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid 13709) is running…

Since the system is so old and I've seen this message and experienced this "respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" myself in the past on some old Redhat 6.0 before RHEL was born as well as on Slackware Linux. The /etc/inittab which is nowadays obsoleted in newer Linux distributions was used to keep respawing a processes which have the chance to die out for some reason.

For those unfamiliar with inittab there is a short extract from man inittab to get idea what it is.

NAME
inittab – format of the inittab file used by the sysv-compatible init
process

DESCRIPTION
The inittab file describes which processes are started at bootup and
during normal operation (e.g. /etc/init.d/boot, /etc/init.d/rc, get-
tys…). Init(8) distinguishes multiple runlevels, each of which can
have its own set of processes that are started. Valid runlevels are
0-6 plus A, B, and C for ondemand entries. An entry in the inittab
file has the following format:

id:runlevels:action:process

So for example the use of /etc/inittab was very handy to configure a separate TTY12 (physical console) in the text environment of Linux to log all your messages. Another good use if you had a bash / perl / python script that you wanted to respawn (resurrect itself if it does out) on OS level without adding additional software like Dan Bernstein's all famous daemontools inittab was the right thing to use. It is a pity nowadays inittab is obsoleted in modern Linux OSes but the most likely reason to remove it is if you put some broken script that overeats CPU or memory if it runs multiple times you can easily get into a hung system.

Thus the logical thing to do is to check /etc/inittab content for any strange issues with less /etc/inittab and near the end of file found the problematic process which was triggering a never ending error messages to rsyslog and the module to protect from such messages in rsyslog by values $SystemLogRateLimitInterval and $SystemLogRateLimitBurst

# configure rsyslog rate limiting
# Rate-limiting
$SystemLogRateLimitInterval 5
$SystemLogRateLimitBurst 50000

The problem causing respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Was an old version of TivSM IBM Tivoli Service Manager /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc, set in the past in /etc/inittab it seems some colleague after updating to a more recent version has either changed the location of dsmc binary either the architecture of old tsm itself required a record in /etc/inittab in case if for some reasons or bugs the dsmc during backup creation was dying.

root@linux-server:~# tail -8 /etc/inittab
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

#ad:2345:respawn:/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc sched >/dev/null 2>&1

root@linux-server:~# rpm -qa |grep -i tivsm
TIVsm-API-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-stagent-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-BA-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-API64-5.3.4-0

The logical thing to do was to check whether this binary exist at all here is the result:

root@linux-server:~$ ls -al /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc
ls: /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc: No such file or directory

Obviously someone decided to comment out the inittab support for /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc as the binary was not present and the dsmc backup was executed via a separate one time cron job or the service itself was configured to run continue, but forgot to reread its configuration so in the kernel memory inittab was still having the instruction to loop over the dsmc binary, since the Linux machine was not rebooted ages (1472 days) or 4.8 years time.

root@linux-server:~# uname -a; echo; uptime
Linux linux-server2.6.18-419.el5 #1 SMP Wed Feb 22 22:40:57 EST 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

19:04:34 up 1472 days, 5:20, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.07, 0.06

So what really happens is <b>inittab</b> is trying to kind of re-run all the time dsmc process in a similar way like it would in a bash never ending loop;

while [ 1 ]; do
/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc sched
done

Since the $PATH location to the binary returns 'No such file or directory' message this message floods up the rsyslog every second which triggers the LimitBurst protection of rsyslog causing rsyslog to disable completely logging for 5 minutes. The next 5 minutes when the time expires for blocking out logging due to reached limit burst.
dsmc binary sends again few ten thousand of messages for few seconds which are already waiting in a queue of rsyslog and the LimitBurst anti DDoS protection activates again. The reason for the LimitBurst is simply because if it logging is not disabled quickly the repeating message is going to fill the hard drive of the system and noone will be able to login. So rsyslog activated the good protection.

It seems noone from support colleagues, never ever noticed this init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes in /var/log/messages. So since the syslog was continuesly blocked by overflow of non-sense messages, systems normal logging was interruped and respectively prevented any other meaningful error messages and warnings from the system to get properly logged and perhaps flooed the remote rsyslog logging servers @logging-servers:514 in /etc/rsyslog.conf …

Fix to respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Very simply make /etc/inittab get reloaded in memory with:

root@linux-server:~# /sbin/init q

or with the linked telnet, which was so much used by us sys admins in the past

root@linux-server:~# /sbin/telinit q

To make the rsyslog suspension disabled of course we need to restart it again.

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog restart

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid 13710) is running…

And Voila logs from services are being delivered normally via configured stuff in /etc/rsyslog.conf, to make sure this is so:

root@linux-server:~# tail -8 /var/log/messages
Apr 15 14:36:29 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:41:37 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:51:22 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:56:30 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 15:01:38 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 15:06:45 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:21:49 linux-server init: Re-reading inittab
Apr 15 18:21:54 linux-server kernel: imklog 3.22.1, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Apr 15 18:21:54 linux-server rsyslogd: [origin software=”rsyslogd” swVersion=”3.22.1″ x-pid=”13709″ x-info=”http://www.rsyslog.com”] (re)start
Apr 15 18:41:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:01:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:21:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:41:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 20:01:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —

Tags: about, action, AD, adding, Admins, after, again, ALL, amp, and, another, anti, ANY, architecture, are, being, inittab, linux?, memory, without

Tags: about, action, AD, adding, Admins, after, again, ALL, amp, and, another, anti, ANY, architecture, are, being, inittab, linux?, memory, without
Posted in System Administration | No Comments »

Saint Martyr Antepas of Pergamum mentioned in the Book of Revelation of saint John the Apostle – 4th Sunday of Great Lent saint John the Climacus

Sunday, April 11th, 2021

Saint Antepas of Pergamum

Saint Martyr Antepas commemoration in the One Holy Eastern Orthodox Church is on 11 of April. The veneration of this saint in the past centuries was great in both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Church (The Roman Catholic Church), especially before the great schism in 1054. Saint Antepas was well known among people in the medieval times for being a saint invoked in troubles with a toothache and all kind of teech diseases which were a true plague in the prior ages as people did not have much knowledge on how to heal or recover teeths and usually in case when someone got a tooth ache the ultimate solution to remove the teeth.

His Vitae (Living) is mostly interesting as he is a saint according to Orthodox Church tradition that was one of the spiritual titans in the first century, where the church was mainly troubled by persecusion by the jews who refused Christ as Messiah, by the pagan crowds and starting from second part of I-st century officially persecuted by the Roman Empire authorities. In this bloody century for the Church where martyrs lay down the foundation of the Church many saints become a victims of jewish fanatism and pagans atrocities. Saint Antepas is one of those saints who at that time was a bishop of the Church of Pergamum mentioned in the Prophetic boof The Book of Reveletaion (the last book) of the Holy Bible book cannon that is included in every (protestant, anglican, orthodox, catholic Holy Bible). Saint John the Apostle the author of Book Revalation has been exiled on mount Paphos (today Cyprus) at time of Martyrdom of Saint Antepas. St. John the Apostle while being in the cave exiled, received in a vision by Christ the revelation of the furute things to come before the end of the world and antichrists false messiah appearance. Before his revelation it is not known whether saint John knew physically his brethren in Christ antipas but this hypothesis is little likely as appearance the book of Revelation has been revealed to John in a single vision by The son of God Jesus Christ where in mystical vision in which the merits and the deficiency of the Church has been presented of the 7 Churches of Asia Minor present at the first century in the world. The Church of Pergamum was one of the Seven Churches of which the Revelation speaks which surrounded by all kind of uncleanness, idolatry and satanic deeds of the Pergamum people and this diseases partially started even plaguing members of the Church who with time had fallen away from faith due to their sinful deeds and undesire for repentance. The book of Revelation mentions the martyrdom of Antepas as a truthful witness of Christ who steadily kept the faith in the Risen Christ enduring martyrdom. "I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.". Book of Revelations 2:13.
The spiritual State of the Church of Pergamum is described as follows,

"I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth." Rev. 2:13

Saint-Antepas-of-Pergam-mentioned-on-Book-of-Relevation-by-saint_John-the-apostle

Saint Antepas was a missionary bishop who lived in time of Roman Emperor Domition II-nd, By the Revelations book we found out that in the 1st century the Pergamum Church Bishop has been a pious saintly man firm in his faith. The Church tradition's memory give us a little more details on the Martyrdom of Antepas.

According to tradition and history. The citizens of Pergamum (Pergam) were fanatic admirers of their pagan idols and spend their life in all kind of wickedness. Those who observed their lives got the impression that among them really lives satan himself. Among such uncleanness Antepas has been a true headlight in the dark night or like a rose among prickles, showing path to salvation through the three Christian main viritues of Faith, Pope and Love. Even though Antepas witnessed people ungodliness, he did not embarass from the malice of pagans, but on the contrary good heartedly and with a diligence performed his Christian obligations of a shepherd and preacher, revealing deceptions of idolatries and advised them to turn better for their good to the Truthful one God the creator and Ruler of Universe who has send his Only Begotten son to Cross on Golgotha to suffer for the sins of man and return the fallen man to the Holy Trinity God the Father the Son and the Holy spirit and by his suffering showing us the narrow but straight way to heaven of the Suffering by accepting one's personal Cross uniting and nailing it to Christ's cross by handing over all one's life to Christ.

St. Antepas preaching turned quickly many of the pagns to Christ's Church. The pagans lost many of their faithful admirers, worshippers of the idols decreased highly and the toll for the idols as well (monetary funds for the shamans) in Pagan temple decreases. Antipas was blamed for his missionary work and revealing the truth to the blind by envious and hard-hearted, greedy idolatries.

In the same time Domitian being loyal to the Roman gods also proclaimed a persecution announcing christians as enemies of the empire. Attaining bravery by that the pagan priests catched Antepas and brought him before the city ruler, blaming him that he become a reason for the gods to become angry and as a reason for the so-called idols (thought to be gods) to stop caring about Pergamon in which they no longer received the high honor for their service to the idols.

– Is that true? asked the ruler of Pergamon – that you have been not giving veneration to the gods, and you teach the others to despire the gods and not give them honour?
This is why our city is suffering because the gods has been offended and no longer have mercy and take care about this place and our well being.
Leave out Christianity repent and give obbey our law. If you do not give honor to the idols and continue to despise the gods, we will torture you according to roman law.

Antipas replied:

– I AM CHRISTIAN ! And the unwise king's orded i cannot perform and to the false gods i will not obey.
To give you a concreate and clear answer I tell you, the so called gods are not gods and they have no power to protect the city.
Leave your delusions, repent for the wickedness and believe in Christ, who embodied from Heaven to save all humans.
He is the only true God and he is about to come again in the end of ages to Judge everyone according to their deeds – everyone will either receive a gift or punishment.

– What is that new teaching shouted enraged the city ruler. You do obey to some new invented by your own law and reject the ancient worships, given us by the fathers. Leave the new faith and stop venerating for God a man who was crucified shamefully as a villain in times of Pilates.
Obey the king order and live in peacefully. We'll help you everything, we'll love you as our sons, because your advanced age requires it – that we all love you and venerate you as a father.

Antepas replied:
– Nomatter what you tell me – I am not that reckless (foolish) for being lived until the old age and being near end of my earthly days, to leave the true faith and to retreat to the salvational faith. You will not deceive my mind because it is enlightened by the wisdom of the Divine books. If you do not repent and do not stop worshipping your idols and you do not believe in the True God you will perish (both physically and spiritually).

Maddened by raged, the pagans crow did not wanted to hear any more the words of the pious elder – bishop. They captured him and drag him to the pagan temple. There was an idol: a big bull, forged by copper. Heating him up till it become red and they throw in the Bishop Antipas. He did not feared but with joy made the Sigh of the Cross and reverently cry out in prayer:

– Oh God,m who have revealed the secret mystery of our our Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for all the good deeds to me in my life. Thank you, you have granted me in that hour to be written in the list of the martyrs for your teaching. Receive my departering from temporary life my soul and engift it with your Grace.

Enduring peacefully and with firmness the terrible torturs, saint Antepas prayed for his enemies and for the whole world. Gradually his bodily powers weakened and he quitly passed to Christ.
Christians with great honor and according to Church tradition buried the body of the saint martyr.
His Holy relics were saved and God has engifted them with the healing power.

Saint-Martyr-Antipas-of_Pergamum

Fourth Sunday of The Great Lent Sunday of Saint John the Climacus.
Saint John Lestvichnik and his Book a Spiritual Ladder to Heaven (Lestvica)

Saint-John-The-Scholastic-Lestvichnik-writting-the-Ladder-guide-book-for-ascending-spiritually-to-heaven

Fourth Sunday of the Great Lent – Saint John Lestvichnik / John the Climacus and his Ladder to Heaven

This year the second year of the "Coronavirus pandemy" 2021 the 4th Sunday of the Great Lent which every year commemorates the glorious Holy father and "a commander" of the Monks Saint John the Climacus / Saint John The Sinaites / John the Scholastic that lived in the 6th-7th century. He is mostly known in Bulgaria / Russia and the Slavonic Churches as Saint John Lestvichnik. Saint John was ascetic monk on the mount of Sinai born circa 579 and passed away to Christ year. 649 A.D. He is revered a saint in both Eastern Orthodox Church as well as the Roman Catholic Church and the rest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, though he is lesser known in the in the Western world .e.g in Roman Catholic Church. Saint John eagered for a higher spiritual life and thus has spend 20 years in the desert in hermitage, studying and practicing the writtings of the holy fathers to advance his spiritual life and attain spiritual perfection by overcoming all the main passions that are a stopper for a man to become fully spiritually enlightened and reach "in the flesh" the kingdom of heaven and become a victor against the evil passions.

A lot can be said about saint John Lestvichnik and his world famous book Lestvica (Ladder ) Κλῖμαξ known in Latin world as Scala Paradisi a ladder of divince ascent.

In Lestvica the later chosen Abbot of Raitha Monastery st. John Lesvichnik describes to brethren monks on how to overcome different temptations and the attached moving passions and is well known in his life time for being a light beam for good truthtful spiritual lifesaint John Lestvichnik. Even Pope Gregory the Great wrote to him recommend himself to his prayers, and sent him a sum of money for the hospital of Sinai, in which the pilgrims were wont to lodge.

In the Book Ladder that should be tabletop book for all Christians,we hear of the ascetic practice of carrying a small notebook to record the thoughts of the monk during contemplation. Some parts of the books sounds scary and completely strange for the modern readers as we're all sunken in comfort and excessness of things.
Κλῖμαξ is mostly known in the Eastern Orthodox Church and highly estimated by anyone who actiively practices orthodoxy for being the best guide for a person to check his current spiritual life.

The Ladder describes how to raise one's soul and body to God through the acquisition of ascetic virtues. Climacus uses the analogy of Jacob's Ladder as the framework for his spiritual teaching. Each chapter is referred to as a "step", and deals with a separate spiritual subject. There are thirty Steps of the ladder, which correspond to the age of Jesus at his baptism and the beginning of his earthly ministry. Within the general framework of a 'ladder', Climacus book falls into three sections. The first seven Steps concern general virtues necessary for the ascetic life, while the next nineteen (Steps 8–26) give instruction on overcoming vices and building their corresponding virtues. The final four Steps concern the higher virtues toward which the ascetic life aims. The final rung of the ladder – beyond prayer (προσευχή), stillness (ἡσυχία), and even dispassion (ἀπάθεια) – is love (ἀγάπη).

Let by the prayers of Saint Antepas, Saint John Lesvichnik and Saint John The Apostle, the All Merciful God to have mercy on our Souls and veliver us from temptations and all evils in present and coming and grant peace and relief to all suffering for the truth and enlighten man to turn back in repentance to Christ !
Amen

Tags: about, again, against, age, aims, ALL, and, angry, Apostle, ascetic, during, eastern orthodox church, Monks, mount, passed, passions, roman catholic church, Saint John Lestvichnik, spiritual life, years

6 of April Short Living and Death of Saint Methodius a brother of Constantin Cyril – Christian Enlighteners of the Bulgarian and Slavonic Lands

Wednesday, April 7th, 2021

Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius_Bulgarian_Enlighteners_Icon_by_Avram_Dichov,_1892

Saint Methodius was the bigger child of the two brothers enlighteners of Bulgarian Lands and the Slavonic nations Saint Cyril (known as The Philosopher) and Saint Methodius born in Thessaloniki
a region of the Byzantine empire. Thessaloniki and its regions according to manuscripts has been mostly inhabited by Slavs at IX century.

In his young age he has chosen to be a Byzantine army man. For 10 years he has been assigned to govern a region of Slavonic lands part of Byzantine Eastern Empire.
Even though he had been a successful in his worldly career and has been taking a respectful service for the Byzantine Emperor he felt the calling of God, gave up his high position in
aristocracy and entered one of the many monasteries of the empire in mount of Olympus Asia Minor region. Soon after to the same monastery came his younger brother Constantine
Since that moment the two brothers never departed until death of Cyril who died in Rome. And even in his death has been highly venerated by the Pope and considered saint even in
time of his burial at the famous Basillica Church San Clemente where they reside for veneration by Slavs even to this day.

San_clemente_fresco_Saint_Cyril-And-Methodius-in-Rome.

The receiving of Saint Cyril and Methodius in Rome with the Relics of Saint Clement 4th Pope of Rome

The two God chosen man also achieved a glorious deed which was not achieved by anyone before. The creation of the Glagolic Alphabet which become the foundation of the Cyrillic alphabet
currently used of about 300 000 000 people worldwide including by us Bulgarians. The new language was developed to be able to share the high truths of Christ the Gospel and his Church services and books and
most impotantly the eternal salvation prepared by God The Holy Trinity The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit for all those who love him and servce him.

The_Grave-of-Saint-Cyril-in-San-Clemente

The Holy relics of Saint Cyril in San Clemente Crypt

As knowing the truth about Heaven and Hell and the Heavenly
kingdom they were highly conserned for the high see of Slavs in the Empire who still have been in darkness of idolatry and paganism. Inspired by God they soon creating an Alphabet in which translated the whole Holy Bible (The Gospel of Christ the Epistle books and Old Testament book and Church service books translating the Eastern Orthodox Holy Liturgy of Saint John The Crysostom and Saint John The Basil.
in language understandable for the Slavs. The glagolic alphabet has been soon translated to the Cyrillic Alphabet by the 7 pupils of Saint Cyril and Methodius and has been spread in Bulgarian lands first then in Serbia, Kiev
and rest of Slavonic nations.

Saint_Methodius-Archibishop-of-Moravia-and_Pannonia

In Great Moravia a region today situated in Chech Republic the two saint brothers teached and baptized the local Slavs , teaching them the Eternal heavenly truths of the Gospel.
The German clergy envied the two apostle equal mans mission great success and tried to rebaptize and teach the already baptized according to a Roman Rite and spread their own influence pushed by a lust for power.
Hence Methodius (also called by Western histographs Method) has been chased away from Moravia by the German clergy to the nearby Pannonia, where king Kocel who appreciated St. Methodius great deeds for his people and
not understanding why the German-clergy is chasing such a saintly man has moved him to Rome to Pope Adrian II-nd with an enquiry to ordain him a Bishop. The Pope ordained him almost immediately and accepted St. Methodius
and St Cyrilus with all his clergy in honour, because the 2 saints were bringing a highly esteemed gift the Holy Relics who were attained by them earlier in their Baptizmal Mission to The Hazars (an assignment given to them by the Eastern Byzantine Emperor
and successfully achieved).
During their travel in Herzon the two saints has found the Holy Relics of Saint Clement Ist the 4th Pope of Rome who has been exiled and passed away to Christ as a martyr in Herzon (Today's Crimea) in the distant 2nd century.
After his consecration in Rome saint Metho has been raised from a simple Gospel preacher to the high clergy rank of Archibishop for Pannonia and Moravia, a region who has been under the rule of the Bishop of Rome.

The fight against the clean life of the saint continued with full power even after his raise to the throne of archibishopship. The envious pseudo spiritual missioners sent by the Pope hungering not for Christ but for earthly power slandered
frequently against Method. to the local prince. because Methodius was publicly rebuke their unclean life being filled with the power of Christ spirit who detests all uncleanness in man. At other times suggested to the pope that Methodius is
against the Western Church and eagers to cut Moravia and Pannonia from the diocese of Rome and give it to the Byzantines. In parallel the German "clergy" was frequetnly sending letters slandering against Methodius accusing him in inobedience to the Eastern Christian Emperor
and the The Great Church of Byzantium the homechurch of st. Cyril and Method. and to whom they were obedient still …
Methodius being already in advanced age had to go everywhere by person and rebuke and testify about himself that all this is a far away from truth. His enemies succeeded eventually and for 2 years and a half he has been thrown in prison without the knowledge of the pope.
Finding out about this ungodly deed of his inobedient power-lust german clergy Pope John VIII issued a special order bulla for the immediate liberation of his archibishop.

Saints-Cyril-Methodius-Zahari-Zograph-1848.

Icon of Saint Cyril and Methodius painting from 1848 y.

Even in this hardships saint Methodius never stopped to preach the Gospel to the Slavs and spread the Good news of Jesus Christ The Son of God enbodiment, life, Crucifix for the sins of all mankind anf Glorious Resurrection through which all those who believe are saved if they persist in the good deeds of Christ and stick to the trutfullness of the Church of Christ which at the time of St. Cyrilus was before the Great Schism in year 1054, when the Roman Catholics has fallen away from the One Church who kept and preserved the head of the Church Jesus Christ teaching the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.
Being even in prison Saint Methodius continued to translate The Holy books from Greek to the new language invented and adjusted for the Slavs talk.
He left us as a heritage the Translation Copy of All Books of Holy Bible except the book of Maccabees which is today only present in the Orthodox Bible and considered one of the non-canonical but God inspired books, as well as the Nomocanon (the book with rules and Church laws of the Church and the clergy).
Nomocanon comes from .(Greek: Νομοκανών, Nomokanōn; from the Greek nomos – law and kanon – a rule). It is a collection of ecclesiastical law, consisting of the elements from both the Civil law and the Canon law.
Nomocanons even today forms part of the canon law of the Eastern Catholic Churches (through the Eastern Catholic canon law) and of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Sveti_Sveti-Saints_Kyril-i-Metodij

Saint Methodius the Slav-Bulgarian enlighter passed silently to Christ full of God''s Grace in saintship on 6th of April year 885 A.D. His burial was in Velegrad Chech Republic, and according to the Church tradition about his living he "lays in the Great Moravian Church in the left side of the wall behind the alter dedicated to the Mother of God the Holy Theotokos Virgin Maria". A church service dedicated to him is still presented in the Bulgarian Church's manuscripts and a copies of it in preservation museums in Russia.

The deeds of Saint Methodius and Saint Cyrilus has a mark on the whole world's events. Even to this day as in Bulgaria, we have a translation of the Bible based on the Cyrillic language named after saint Cyrilus the brother of Methodius based on his started work to translate Glagolic alphabet to Cyrillic, continued by his pupils and fully completed by Saint Clement (Kliment) of Ohrid, who was warmly accepted by Saint Apostle equal King Boris I of Bulgaria. Thanks to him the deeds of Saint Methodius and their pupils and we have the cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian Orthodox Church and spirituality even today. The deeds of Saint Cyrilus and the Cyrillic are recognizable worldwide in the face of the strange for the Western and the Asians Cyrillic language used by Russians.

Two Saints Cyril and Methodius has were officially proclaimed as a protectors of Europe recently by Pope John Paul II, for a reason as the ex-Pope has seen and experienced the powerness of prayers of the two saints while he was a cardinal in Bulgaria before his raise to the Roman Popeship throne about little know nowadays.

The Memory and veneration of Saint Methodius and Cyrilus logically are mostly observed in Bulgaria logically as Bulgaria was the first Empire country historically to accept the spiritual fruits the new language. Many Schools and institutions, streets are named after the two saints.
The official Church veneration of St. St. Cyril and Methodius is on 11 in Church and May in secular tradition. The Bulgarian Orthodox church has established a number of feasts connected to the two saints as they''re the prime patron saints thanks to whose prayers the Bulgarian Church has been established survived through centuries and conitnues its triumphal march towards the kingdom of heaven.

Let by the two saints Methodius and Cyril Bulgaria and Europe have Peace, Faith and Love and Enlightenment about the true teaching of Christ the Holy Orthodoxy!

Tags: about, after, against, age, ALL, and, Apostle, are, Army, army man, assignment, based, being, bible, bishop, bishop of rome, books, brother, Bulgarian, two

Tags: about, after, against, age, ALL, and, Apostle, are, Army, army man, assignment, based, being, bible, bishop, bishop of rome, books, brother, Bulgarian, two
Posted in Christianity, Everyday Life | No Comments »

How to calculate connections from IP address with shell script and log to Zabbix graphic

Thursday, March 11th, 2021

We had to test the number of connections incoming IP sorted by its TCP / IP connection state.

For example:

TIME_WAIT, ESTABLISHED, LISTEN etc.

The reason behind is sometimes the IP address '192.168.0.1' does create more than 200 connections, a Cisco firewall gets triggered and the connection for that IP is filtered out. To be able to know in advance that this problem is upcoming. a Small userparameter script is set on the Linux servers, that does print out all connections from IP by its STATES sorted out.

The script is calc_total_ip_match_zabbix.sh is below:

#!/bin/bash
# check ESTIMATED / FIN_WAIT etc. netstat output for IPs and calculate total
# UserParameter=count.connections,(/usr/local/bin/calc_total_ip_match_zabbix.sh)
CHECK_IP='192.168.0.1';
f=0;

for i in $(netstat -nat | grep "$CHECK_IP" | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n); do

echo -n "$i ";
f=$((f+i));
done;
echo
echo "Total: $f"

root@pcfreak:/bashscripts# ./calc_total_ip_match_zabbix.sh
1 TIME_WAIT 2 ESTABLISHED 3 LISTEN

Total: 6

root@pcfreak:/bashscripts# ./calc_total_ip_match_zabbix.sh
2 ESTABLISHED 3 LISTEN
Total: 5

images/zabbix-webgui-connection-check1

To make process with Zabbix it is necessery to have an Item created and a Depedent Item.

webguiconnection-check1

webgui-connection-check2-item

images/webguiconnection-check1

Finally create a trigger to trigger alarm if you have more than or eqaul to 100 Total overall connections.

images/zabbix-webgui-connection-check-trigger

The Zabbix userparameter script should be as this:

[root@host: ~]# cat /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d/userparameter_webgui_conn.conf
UserParameter=count.connections,(/usr/local/bin/webgui_conn_track.sh)

Some collleagues suggested more efficient shell script solution for suming the overall number of connections, below is less time consuming version of script, that can be used for the calculation.

#!/bin/bash -x
# show FIN_WAIT2 / ESTIMATED etc. and calcuate total
count=$(netstat -n | grep "192.168.0.1" | awk ' { print $6 } ' | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -nr)
total=$((${count// /+}))
echo "$count"
echo "Total:" "$total"

2 ESTABLISHED
1 TIME_WAIT
Total: 3

Below is the graph built with Zabbix showing all the fluctuations from connections from monitored IP. ebgui-check_ip_graph

Tags: ALL, and, awk, Below, bin, calculation, cat, check, cisco, conf, connection, connections, consuming, count, create, created, Done, How to, log, shell script

Tags: ALL, and, awk, Below, bin, calculation, cat, check, cisco, conf, connection, connections, consuming, count, create, created, Done, How to, log, shell script
Posted in Linux, Various, Web and CMS, Zabbix | 2 Comments »

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