Posts Tagged ‘between’

17th of May Saint Martyr Nikolay Sofiiski (Nikolas of Sofia) – Bulgarian Martyr Confessor saint from the XV century

Friday, May 21st, 2021

Saint Confessor Nikolay Sofijski (Nikolay of Sofia) Short Biography

 

saint_Nikolay-of-Sofia-icon-on-the-entrance-of-his-Church-in-capital-of-Bulgaria-Sofia

St. Nikolay (Nicolas) of Sofia has been born in Ioannina (city now in territory of Greece). He was a pious and with his honorable craft of shoemaking going through the stormy sea of life. When he arrived in Sofia (Serdica / Sredetz), one of the main cities of the Ottoman Empire of that time, a long remain of the glorious past when even the righteous emperor Constantine The great was considering to set as a capital of the Eastern empire either Constantinople today's Istanbul in Turkey or Sofia (Fortress of Serdika).

When Nikolay came to Sofia, he was immediately recognized by the Turkish authorities and rich people of the city  and to have him part of their "nobel" turkish society and enrich the city ruleship, the Turkish tried to push Nikolay to accept Islam. 
Once a time Turkish invited Nikolay, put a somniferous herb in his offered drink and once he fall asleep without his knowledge they have circumcised him according to Islamic tradition observance. 
Once awaken Nikolay realised what has been done to him and fall in a deep regret and mourned over the abuse of his body which according the Christian faith is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Once he started appearing on the streets of Sofia, Turkish immediately invited him to attend the mosque considering him already a muslim due to the circumcision ritual commited on him. 
He firmly rejected the offer publicly, considering himself a Christian as he never publicly resigned his Christian faith and never ever wanted to be muslim and never ever has attended another temple apart from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church he belonged to.
Facing the rejection, the powerful of the day turks cannot believe their eyes as they already thought Nikolay accepted the fact he is already a muslim, not understanding that for a Christian the temporary flesh is nothing but a temporary hut and the Spiritual and Eternal Soul and The Spirit of God which enlightens it as well as the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven is everything. The turks thouhgt over it fleshly, thinking that having a sign of circumcision already puts a person belonging to his faith, not knowing that the the first desciples of Christ, the most holy apostles as belonging to the Jewish faith had their circumcision themselves, and this circumcision never ever hindered their faith in the Resurrected Messiah Jesus Christ.

Immediately facing the rejecting the Turks, arrested him as a traitor of their faith and put him into a harsh torments.

Saint_Nikolay_Sofijski-living-and-martyrdom-scenes-icon-painting

Saint_Nikolay_Sofijski-martyrdom-scenes-icon-painting

Combined icon with the living of saint Nikolay of Sofia

Putting him on trial In the local court, the judge announced his opinion that Nikolay doesn't hold a fault, neither against Islam neither against the claimants.
Nevertheless the crowd put Nikolay outside of Sofia (in a similar way the Jews resurrected Christ outside of the city of Jerusalem) in Sofia's near region called "Yuch Bunar", translated from Turkish as the  ("The Tree Wells"), there they stoned to death on 17th of May year 1555 A.D., (the stoning a transgressor of the Islamic law, tradition is still followed by some countries even today, for example I heard similar cases do happen still in Saudi Arabia for sinners against islamic law).

Saint_Bulgarian_Christian_martyr_Nikolay-Sofiiski-year-1555AD-commemorated-17-th-of-May

Saint Nikolay icon in his traditional Bulgarian clothes wear (Nosia)
holding his shoemaking instrument

His holy body has been moved to the graveyear called (Търница) Térnitza and has been burned – and the dust has been scattered through the four directions of the world North, East, South, West following islamic tradition and in attempt to completely irradicate the memory of the saint in the relatives and the living Christians of that time.  Even though due to the request of Matey Gramatik (Mathew the Gramatik – translated as Chronicler / Annalist), a boy managed to collect little burned part remains of the relics and a pious christian, secretly made a burial prayer for his Soul (Опело – called Opelo in the Slavonic Eastern Orthodox Church) according to the Christian tradition and buried him with honor.

saint_Nikolay-new-of-Sofia-sv_nikolay_novi
 

Soon after the martyrdom of saint Nikolay the New, the Metropolitan of Sredetz Iakov (Jacob), announced the canonization of st. Nikolay on a specially summoned for the consideration of saintship of St. Nikolay, a Local Church Metropolitan Council. Jacob received parts from holy relics (parts of the skull and the bones) of st. Nikolay, that has been secretly kept by a faithful Christians till then and placed the new received saint relics and placed them together in the ark (coffin) with the incorruptable holy relics of Saint King Stephan Milutin at that time located in Church of St. Archangel Michaelsee my previous article pilgrimage to the incorruptable Holy relics of Saint Stephan Milutin in Cathedral Saint Nedelya, Sofia Bulgaria. Later parts of the holy relics has been housed in in a Wood maden Church.

 

The grave of saint Nikolay of Sofia is one of the few known graves of Bulgarian saints. Today, it is situated in the city center of Sofia capital city of Bulgaria in the district "Три кладенци" / "The Three Wells". Three hundred meters from there (in the tiny park like garden between the streets of "Pirotska" and "Opalchenska") lays a Beatiful Majestic Church, dedicated to the Holy Martyr st. Nikolay Sofijski. The Church of Saint Nicolas of Sofia is one of the biggest Cathedral Churches in Bulgaria (it is second by size in city of Sofia). The Temple has been rised following a project of architecture created by Anton Tornyov after the Liberation of Bulgarian following the Russian/Bulgarian-Turkish war on 3-rd of December 1900. Church saint Nikolay Sofijski has been consecrated by Metropolitan Partenij (Parthenius of Sofia was a senior Bulgarian clergyman and church figure, Metropolitan of Sofia from 1892 to 1918. Metropolitan Parthenius is an exceptional clergyman who has left a lasting mark in the history of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.).

Church-of-Saint_Nikolay-Sofijski-Cyrkva_Sv_Nikolaj_Sofijski

Church of Saint Nikolay of Sofia in Sofia Bulgaria (corner of street "Opalchenska" and "Pirotska").


Church-of-saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-internal-view-Church-icons-and-architecture-decoration

Church Nikolay Sofijski view to Iconostasis Church interior

Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-Church-dome-Christ

Church dome paintings of St. Nikolay Sofijski

Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-Church-Iconostasis-icons

Iconostasis of the Church (notice the beatiful flower forms curved wood)

In the beginning of XXth century in 1870s on the exact place of the grave of the saint has been built a small chapel in his memoriam. It is situated in a small yard on today's Street of "Tzar Simeon / King Simeon" it is opened for pilgrim visitors everyday in the early afternoon every working day. 
Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-1
The Chapel entrance door 

Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-2

A Heavenly beauty roman like chapel

Chapel_paraklis_sv_Nikolaj_Sofijski_novi

The Chapel on the grave of Saint Nikolas of Sofia, built on the place called "Terniza" (Tzar Simeon Street), where on 17-th of May, year 1555 A.D. where remains of the saint has been burned by turks – photo by Martin Mitov (C) 

Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-3

The Grave of Saint Nikolay of Sofia (View to Alter dedicated to the matryr saint)


The holy relics of Saint Nikolay the new are now preserved in his Church  and are brought for veneration by believers and pilgrims on each 16 and 17 of May and sometimes in a Church feasts of a higher importance.

Each 17-th of May in Sofia it is a tradition for clirics (clergy) to gather together with pilgrims and layman for a Lithia with the holy relics of saint Nikolay from the Church to the chapel, and for the following two days 18, 19th of May his holy relics are publicly displayed for veneration.

Sofia's mediaval historian and clergyman deacon Matey Gramatik (upmentioned), was a comtemporary of the saint and eyewitness of his martyrdom and death, soon after wrote his Church service and Biography (Saint Living). Today the original manuscript is preserved in the the Library of the church "St. Martyr Nikolai Novi Sofiyski" in Sofia.

Let by the holy prayers of Saint Nikolay Sofijski our homeland Bulgaria is given peace prosperity in The Hope, Faith and Love and every Good and firmness in the True faith given by Christ the Holy Eastern Orthodox faith. Let by his Holy prayers God gives peace and love to everyone in the world and grant, repentance for us the lost and spiritually poor and "fatherless" children of the 21st century.

How to do Diff (compare files) over SSH between local and remote servers on Linux

Monday, December 16th, 2019

how-to-diff-files-between-remote-servers-and-local-machines-on-linux

In system administration often we need to compare files located on a different servers, copying the files from Server A to Server B is easy to do but is time consuming as you have use some console ftp or sftp client scp or sftp to copy the files from server A to server B and then use diff command on one of the both systems.

Thanksfully there are other ways to do so by using simply one liner of diff + ssh or rsync + ssh and even for the vim lovers there is vimdiff.
In this short article I'll give few examples on quick ways to compare files between 2 Servers via SSH Protocol.

 

1.  Compare files for differences on 2 Linux servers via SSH protocol

 

Assuming you're logged on first server where certain config is located and you want to compare with a remote server via ssh.

 

 diff local-file <(ssh myServer 'cat remote-file')

 

If you're on a server and you want to compare file configurations between 2 remote servers both running ssh, generally you need something like:

 

diff <(ssh myServer1 'cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config') <(ssh myServer2 'cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config')​

 

To compare multiple files in directories with diff
 

diff <(/usr/bin/ssh user1@192.168.122.1 'ls /opt/lib/') <(/usr/bin/ssh user2@192.168.122.1 'ls /tmp/') | grep -i ">" | sed 's/> //g'

 

2. Interactively check 2 or more config files and show differences in a vim text editor style

 

vimdiff package is not installed across all Linux distributions so on paranoid Security tightened Linux environments, but on most servers should be either there or could be installed with apt / yum whatever package manager. You will need vimdiff installed only on one of the Nth servers you want to check config.

Here is how to compare 3 Linux servers, running OpenSSHD services existing files in vimdiff

vimdiff /path/to/file scp://remotehost//path/to/file scp://remotehost2//path/to/file


vimdiff-with-3-servers-comparing-sshd-config-file

Note here that the double slash – // syntax is mandatory without it vimdiff will return files. Also be aware that the files you want to check should be present on each of the server directory locations, otherwise you will end up with weird errors.

vimdiff is the Mercedes of comparison especially for VIM UNIX addicts and due to its nice coloring makes reading, the difference between server files very easy.

3. File comparison with diff or vimdiff via SSHFS mount

mkdir remote_path
sshfs user@hostname:/dir/ remote_path
diff -r local_path/file remote_path/file

4. Comparing files with diff by printing local and remote server files with diff

Most servers doesn't have sshfs by default and for servers following PCI High Security standards, there are other means to compare files on both or more hosts in a minimalistic way, here is idea how:
 

diff <(ssh remote-host-server find /var/www -printf '"%8s %P\n"') \
     <(find /var/www -printf '%8s %P\n')

5. Comparing files content on local and remote server directory with rsync

The best UNIX tool to compare mutliple files and directory across Local remote servers and a mixture of both is our lovely rsync 
together wtih SSH, ssh compes with the –-dry-run (-n) – test what rsync will do option.

To compare files over SSH protocol with rsync on local and remote server

rsync -rvnc root@10.10.10.50:/var/www/html/phpcode /var/www/html/phpcode


To compare 2 remote hosts:

rsync -rvnc root@187.50.200.73:/var/www/html/phpcode/ root@192.168.5.50:/var/www/html/phpcode 


To compare more hosts even a mixture of local and remote servers do.

rsync -rvnc root@187.50.200.73:/var/www/html/phpcode/  \
root@192.168.5.50:/var/www/html/phpcode  \
root@192.168.5.70:/var/www/html/phpcode \
./var/www/html/phpcode

The rsync options given are as so:

r=recursive,
v=verbose,
n= dry-run,
c=checksum

How to Share virtual terminal SSH between mutliple logged in users with screen / Create multi user sessions with GNU screen

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

How to share bash shell between multiple users with gnu screen - share virtual terminal via ssh through multiple users screen

GNU Screen is great utility with a number of helpful features. Maybe there is no UNIX / (GNU / Linux),  admin which doesn't use screen or some similar terminal emulator prog. daily basis.

Little might know however abut a kewl functionality allowing, a few logged in users via ssh to share one terminal.

Sharing a virtual terminal with another person, is very helpful if you want to teach someone a bit of Linux / UNIX basics, showing him how certain commands works on a system etc. etc.

Shared terminal session is very helpful in case of need for remote system administration or support, whether instead of explaining someone over the phone for 20 minutes or an hour a bunch of commands he has to run to achieve something,  you can login share terminal with screen and do whatever necessary  in front of his eyes.

Shared screen session, can actually in theory allow unlimited people to watch what a certain one is doing in a his virtual terminal. This is very helpful for example in Computer Laboratories for Teachers to teach students FreeBSD, Linux, bash, csh shell scripting, perl or whatever programming language taught.

Allowing two or more logged in users with same user credentialsto use screen can be done pretty easy, one primary user (creating the initial screen terminal session), should just launch GNU screen:

test@noah:~$ screen

The second, third, 4th, 5th and the rest of users should login via SSH session with same user, lets say test and launch screen -x

test@noah:~$ screen -list
There is a screen on:
    20147.pts-5.noah    ( 1.11.2012 18,27,50)    (Attached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-hipo.

 

test@noah:~$ screen -x

I'm not sure if screen has some kind of limitation on how many users maximum can connect to a screen session, but I guess it should be high enough for dozen of people –  at least 512 or 1024 people to connect and share one shell simultaneously.

In some Linux distributions (versions) RHEL, CentOS it is possible screen -x not to work out of the box, because screen binary is not set to be SUID.
On latest Debian versions and deb derivatives thanksfully, screen bin is by default installed as SUID so screen -x works fine.

hipo@noah:~$ ls -al /usr/bin/screen
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root utmp 364088 29 юли  2009 /usr/bin/screen

Enabling mutiuser screen login via a running screen session is possible by pressing:

CTRL + a + : and typing in prompt  multiuser on

In case you want to have a system user which by default allows a multiple logged in users to share shell you can use a little 'hack' just change in /etc/passwd the field recordfor user shell (/bin/bash) with (/usr/bin/screen)

Lets say you want to allow the user test support multiple logged in users share one shell the record for test in /etc/passwd should look smth. like:

test:x:1003:1004:,,,:/home/test:/bin/bash

Change it with your favourite text editor to:

test:x:1003:1004:,,,:/home/test:/usr/bin/screen

If you have some problems running screen, check permissions and eventually exec as superuser:

chmod u+s /usr/bin/screen


Enable write “write” command between logged in users on Debian GNU / Linux

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

efault Debian GNU / Linux install does not permit messaging between ssh logged in users. Messages are disabled like this for security reasons as if they are on by default it is quite easy to flood one’s terminal with messages using a little loop like for instance:


while [ 1 ]; do
echo "You're flooded" | mesg username
done

Hence smartly, all users between write is switched off, i.e. mesg n

For those unfamiliar with mesg I suggest you check man mesg – which is one of the shortest UNIX manual written 🙂

Mesg head manual description is:


mesg - control write access to your terminal

Options mesg can accept are either yes or no ( y / n ).
To check on current logged in user if write username messaging is turned on, on any logged in user shell use:


# mesg
mesg is n

While mesg is set to no by default, if you try to message a random logged in system user you will get a message like:


$ write testuser
write: write: you have write permission turned off.

It is actually, quite handy to have messages switched on especially if you have a Linux host with user accounts which are friends of yours and
it is not very likely mesg is used for bad.

To change the default mesg n to mesg y you need to edit /etc/bash.bashscr (in case if all users are configured to use bash) or even better to set mesg y for all existing users add a new line on top or at the end of /etc/profile file:


echo 'mesg y' >> /etc/profile

On next login via ssh or physical tty, messaging will be on. To check re-login and type:


$ mesg
is y

One note to make here, is even though if you set messaging to yes for all users via /etc/profile, still for some reason the root user m
essaging keeps set to NO.


$ mesg
is y

One note to make here, is even though if you set messaging to yes for all users via /etc/profile, still for some reason the root user m
essaging keeps set to NO.


root@debian:~# mesg
is n

I have no clue, like this happens, but if you need to enable mesg to root as well add mesg y to /root/.bashrc

Well that’s all, I hope this helps someone 🙂 Cheers.