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Apache disable requests to not log to access.log Logfile through SetEnvIf and dontlog httpd variables

Monday, October 11th, 2021

apache-disable-certain-strings-from-logging-to-access-log-logo

Logging to Apache access.log is mostly useful as this is a great way to keep log on who visited your website and generate periodic statistics with tools such as Webalizer or Astats to keep track on your visitors and generate various statistics as well as see the number of new visitors as well most visited web pages (the pages which mostly are attracting your web visitors), once the log analysis tool generates its statistics, it can help you understand better which Web spiders visit your website the most (as spiders has a predefined) IP addresses, which can give you insight on various web spider site indexation statistics on Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. . Sometimes however either due to bugs in web spiders algorithms or inconsistencies in your website structure, some of the web pages gets double visited records inside the logs, this could happen for example if your website uses to include iframes.

Having web pages accessed once but logged to be accessed twice hence is erroneous and unwanted, and though that usually have to be fixed by the website programmers, if such approach is not easily doable in the moment and the website is running on critical production system, the double logging of request can be omitted thanks to a small Apache log hack with SetEnvIf Apache config directive. Even if there is no double logging inside Apache log happening it could be that some cron job or automated monitoring scripts or tool such as monit is making periodic requests to Apache and this is garbling your Log Statistics results.

In this short article hence I'll explain how to do remove certain strings to not get logged inside /var/log/httpd/access.log.

1. Check SetEnvIf is Loaded on the Webserver
 

On CentOS / RHEL Linux:

# /sbin/apachectl -M |grep -i setenvif
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using localhost.localdomain. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
 setenvif_module (shared)


On Debian / Ubuntu Linux:

# /usr/sbin/apache2ctl -M |grep -i setenvif
AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:1
 setenvif_module (shared)


2. Using SetEnvIf to omit certain string to get logged inside apache access.log


SetEnvIf could be used either in some certain domain VirtualHost configuration (if website is configured so), or it can be set as a global Apache rule from the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf 

To use SetEnvIf  you have to place it inside a <Directory …></Directory> configuration block, if it has to be enabled only for a Certain Apache configured directory, otherwise you have to place it in the global apache config section.

To be able to use SetEnvIf, only in a certain directories and subdirectories via .htaccess, you will have defined in <Directory>

AllowOverride FileInfo


The general syntax to omit a certain Apache repeating string from keep logging with SetEnvIf is as follows:
 

SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/WebSiteStructureDirectory/ACCESS_LOG_STRING_TO_REMOVE$" dontlog


General syntax for SetEnvIf is as follows:

SetEnvIf attribute regex env-variable

SetEnvIf attribute regex [!]env-variable[=value] [[!]env-variable[=value]] …

Below is the overall possible attributes to pass as described in mod_setenvif official documentation.
 

  • Host
  • User-Agent
  • Referer
  • Accept-Language
  • Remote_Host: the hostname (if available) of the client making the request.
  • Remote_Addr: the IP address of the client making the request.
  • Server_Addr: the IP address of the server on which the request was received (only with versions later than 2.0.43).
  • Request_Method: the name of the method being used (GET, POST, etc.).
  • Request_Protocol: the name and version of the protocol with which the request was made (e.g., "HTTP/0.9", "HTTP/1.1", etc.).
  • Request_URI: the resource requested on the HTTP request line – generally the portion of the URL following the scheme and host portion without the query string.

Next locate inside the configuration the line:

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined


To enable filtering of included strings, you'll have to append env=!dontlog to the end of line.

 

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

 

You might be using something as cronolog for log rotation to prevent your WebServer logs to become too big in size and hard to manage, you can append env=!dontlog to it in same way.

If you haven't used cronolog is it is perhaps best to show you the package description.

server:~# apt-cache show cronolog|grep -i description -A10 -B5
Version: 1.6.2+rpk-2
Installed-Size: 63
Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages@qa.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Depends: perl:any, libc6 (>= 2.4)
Description-en: Logfile rotator for web servers
 A simple program that reads log messages from its input and writes
 them to a set of output files, the names of which are constructed
 using template and the current date and time.  The template uses the
 same format specifiers as the Unix date command (which are the same
 as the standard C strftime library function).
 .
 It intended to be used in conjunction with a Web server, such as
 Apache, to split the access log into daily or monthly logs:
 .
   TransferLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog /var/log/apache/%Y/access.%Y.%m.%d.log"
 .
 A cronosplit script is also included, to convert existing
 traditionally-rotated logs into this rotation format.
Description-md5: 4d5734e5e38bc768dcbffccd2547922f
Homepage: http://www.cronolog.org/
Tag: admin::logging, devel::lang:perl, devel::library, implemented-in::c,
 implemented-in::perl, interface::commandline, role::devel-lib,
 role::program, scope::utility, suite::apache, use::organizing,
 works-with::logfile
Section: web
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/c/cronolog/cronolog_1.6.2+rpk-2_amd64.deb
Size: 27912
MD5sum: 215a86766cc8d4434cd52432fd4f8fe7

If you're using cronolog to daily rotate the access.log and you need to filter out the strings out of the logs, you might use something like in httpd.conf:

 

CustomLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog –symlink=/var/log/httpd/access.log /var/log/httpd/access.log_%Y_%m_%d" combined env=!dontlog


 

3. Disable Apache logging access.log from certain USERAGENT browser
 

You can do much more with SetEnvIf for example you might want to omit logging requests from a UserAgent (browser) to end up in /dev/null (nowhere), e.g. prevent any Website requests originating from Internet Explorer (MSIE) to not be logged.

SetEnvIf User_Agent "(MSIE)" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


4. Disable Apache logging from requests coming from certain FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) localhost 127.0.0.1 or concrete IP / IPv6 address

SetEnvIf Remote_Host "dns.server.com$" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


Of course for this to work, your website should have a functioning DNS servers and Apache should be configured to be able to resolve remote IPs to back resolve to their respective DNS defined Hostnames.

SetEnvIf recognized also perl PCRE Regular Expressions, if you want to filter out of Apache access log requests incoming from multiple subdomains starting with a certain domain hostname.

 

SetEnvIf Remote_Host "^example" dontlog

– To not log anything coming from localhost.localdomain address ( 127.0.0.1 ) as well as from some concrete IP address :

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "127\.0\.0\.1" dontlog

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "192\.168\.1\.180" dontlog

– To disable IPv6 requests that be coming at the log even though you don't happen to use IPv6 at all

SetEnvIf Request_Addr "::1" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog


– Note here it is obligatory to escape the dots '.'


5. Disable robots.txt Web Crawlers requests from being logged in access.log

SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/robots\.txt$" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

Using SetEnvIfNoCase to read incoming useragent / Host / file requests case insensitve

The SetEnvIfNoCase is to be used if you want to threat incoming originators strings as case insensitive, this is useful to omit extraordinary regular expression SetEnvIf rules for lower upper case symbols.

SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Slurp/cat" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Ask Jeeves/Teoma" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "Googlebot" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase User-Agent "bingbot" dontlog
SetEnvIFNoCase Remote_Host "fastsearch.net$" dontlog

Omit from access.log logging some standard web files .css , .js .ico, .gif , .png and Referrals from own domain

Sometimes your own site scripts do refer to stuff on your own domain that just generates junks in the access.log to keep it off.

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "\.(gif)|(jpg)|(png)|(css)|(js)|(ico)|(eot)$" dontlog

 

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "www\.myowndomain\.com" dontlog

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog

 

6. Disable Apache requests in access.log and error.log completely


Sometimes at rare cases the produced Apache logs and error log is really big and you already have the requests logged in another F5 Load Balancer or Haproxy in front of Apache WebServer or alternatively the logging is not interesting at all as the Web Application served written in ( Perl / Python / Ruby ) does handle the logging itself. 
I've earlier described how this is done in a good amount of details in previous article Disable Apache access.log and error.log logging on Debian Linux and FreeBSD

To disable it you will have to comment out CustomLog or set it to together with ErrorLog to /dev/null in apache2.conf / httpd.conf (depending on the distro)
 

CustomLog /dev/null
ErrorLog /dev/null


7. Restart Apache WebServer to load settings
 

An important to mention is in case you have Webserver with multiple complex configurations and there is a specific log patterns to omit from logs it might be a very good idea to:

a. Create /etc/httpd/conf/dontlog.conf / etc/apache2/dontlog.conf
add inside all your custom dontlog configurations
b. Include dontlog.conf from /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf / /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Finally to make the changes take affect, of course you will need to restart Apache webserver depending on the distro and if it is with systemd or System V:

For systemd RPM based distro:

systemctl restart httpd

or for Deb based Debian etc.

systemctl apache2 restart

On old System V scripts systems:

On RedHat / CentOS etc. restart Apache with:
 

/etc/init.d/httpd restart


On Deb based SystemV:
 

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart


What we learned ?
 

We have learned about SetEnvIf how it can be used to prevent certain requests strings getting logged into access.log through dontlog, how to completely stop certain browser based on a useragent from logging to the access.log as well as how to omit from logging certain requests incoming from certain IP addresses / IPv6 or FQDNs and how to stop robots.txt from being logged to httpd log.


Finally we have learned how to completely disable Apache logging if logging is handled by other external application.
 

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Posted in Linux, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Install and enable Sysstats IO / DIsk / CPU / Network monitoring console suite on Redhat 8.3, Few sar useful command examples

Tuesday, September 28th, 2021

linux-sysstat-monitoring-logo

 

Why to monitoring CPU, Memory, Hard Disk, Network usage etc. with sysstats tools?
 

Using system monitoring tools such as Zabbix, Nagios Monit is a good approach, however sometimes due to zabbix server interruptions you might not be able to track certain aspects of system performance on time. Thus it is always a good idea to 
Gain more insights on system peroformance from command line. Of course there is cmd tools such as iostat and top, free, vnstat that provides plenty of useful info on system performance issues or bottlenecks. However from my experience to have a better historical data that is systimized and all the time accessible from console it is a great thing to have sysstat package at place. Since many years mostly on every server I administer, I've been using sysstats to monitor what is going on servers over a short time frames and I'm quite happy with it. In current company we're using Redhats and CentOS-es and I had to install sysstats on Redhat 8.3. I've earlier done it multiple times on Debian / Ubuntu Linux and while I've faced on some .deb distributions complications of making sysstat collect statistics I've come with an article on Howto fix sysstat Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa no such file or directory” on Debian / Ubuntu Linux
 

Sysstat contains the following tools related to collecting I/O and CPU statistics:
iostat
Displays an overview of CPU utilization, along with I/O statistics for one or more disk drives.
mpstat
Displays more in-depth CPU statistics.
Sysstat also contains tools that collect system resource utilization data and create daily reports based on that data. These tools are:
sadc
Known as the system activity data collector, sadc collects system resource utilization information and writes it to a file.
sar
Producing reports from the files created by sadc, sar reports can be generated interactively or written to a file for more intensive analysis.

My experience with CentOS 7 and Fedora to install sysstat it was pretty straight forward, I just had to install it via yum install sysstat wait for some time and use sar (System Activity Reporter) tool to report collected system activity info stats over time.
Unfortunately it seems on RedHat 8.3 as well as on CentOS 8.XX instaling sysstats does not work out of the box.

To complete a successful installation of it on RHEL 8.3, I had to:

[root@server ~]# yum install -y sysstat


To make sysstat enabled on the system and make it run, I've enabled it in sysstat

[root@server ~]# systemctl enable sysstat


Running immediately sar command, I've faced the shitty error:


“Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa18:
No such file or directory. Please check if data collecting is enabled”
 

Once installed I've waited for about 5 minutes hoping, that somehow automatically sysstat would manage it but it didn't.

To solve it, I've had to create additionally file /etc/cron.d/sysstat (weirdly RPM's post install instructions does not tell it to automatically create it)

[root@server ~]# vim /etc/cron.d/sysstat

# run system activity accounting tool every 10 minutes
0 * * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 60 59 &
# generate a daily summary of process accounting at 23:53
53 23 * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa2 -A &

 

  • /usr/local/lib/sa1 is a shell script that we can use for scheduling cron which will create daily binary log file.
  • /usr/local/lib/sa2 is a shell script will change binary log file to human-readable form.

 

[root@server ~]# chmod 600 /etc/cron.d/sysstat

[root@server ~]# systemctl restart sysstat


In a while if sysstat is working correctly you should get produced its data history logs inside /var/log/sa

[root@server ~]# ls -al /var/log/sa 


Note that the standard sysstat history files on Debian and other modern .deb based distros such as Debian 10 (in  y.2021) is stored under /var/log/sysstat

Here is few useful uses of sysstat cmds


1. Check with sysstat machine history SWAP and RAM Memory use


To lets say check last 10 minutes SWAP memory use:

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $ sar -W  |last -n 10
 

Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

12:00:00 AM  pswpin/s pswpout/s
12:00:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:01:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:02:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:03:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:04:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:05:01 AM      0.00      0.00
12:06:01 AM      0.00      0.00

[root@ccnrlb01 ~]# sar -r | tail -n 10
14:00:01        93008   1788832     95.06         0   1357700    725740      9.02    795168    683484        32
14:10:01        78756   1803084     95.81         0   1358780    725740      9.02    827660    652248        16
14:20:01        92844   1788996     95.07         0   1344332    725740      9.02    813912    651620        28
14:30:01        92408   1789432     95.09         0   1344612    725740      9.02    816392    649544        24
14:40:01        91740   1790100     95.12         0   1344876    725740      9.02    816948    649436        36
14:50:01        91688   1790152     95.13         0   1345144    725740      9.02    817136    649448        36
15:00:02        91544   1790296     95.14         0   1345448    725740      9.02    817472    649448        36
15:10:01        91108   1790732     95.16         0   1345724    725740      9.02    817732    649340        36
15:20:01        90844   1790996     95.17         0   1346000    725740      9.02    818016    649332        28
Average:        93473   1788367     95.03         0   1369583    725074      9.02    800965    671266        29

 

2. Check system load? Are my processes waiting too long to run on the CPU?

[root@server ~ ]# sar -q |head -n 10
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

12:00:00 AM   runq-sz  plist-sz   ldavg-1   ldavg-5  ldavg-15   blocked
12:00:01 AM         0       272      0.00      0.02      0.00         0
12:01:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.02      0.00         0
12:02:01 AM         0       268      0.00      0.01      0.00         0
12:03:01 AM         0       268      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:04:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:05:01 AM         1       271      0.00      0.00      0.00         0
12:06:01 AM         1       265      0.00      0.00      0.00         0


3. Show various CPU statistics per CPU use
 

On a multiprocessor, multi core server sometimes for scripting it is useful to fetch processor per use historic data, 
this can be attained with:

 

[hipo@server ~ ] $ mpstat -P ALL
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/28/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

06:08:38 PM  CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest  %gnice   %idle
06:08:38 PM  all    0.17    0.02    0.25    0.00    0.05    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.49
06:08:38 PM    0    0.22    0.02    0.28    0.00    0.06    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.39
06:08:38 PM    1    0.28    0.02    0.36    0.00    0.08    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.23
06:08:38 PM    2    0.27    0.02    0.31    0.00    0.06    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.33
06:08:38 PM    3    0.15    0.02    0.22    0.00    0.03    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.57
06:08:38 PM    4    0.13    0.02    0.20    0.01    0.03    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.60
06:08:38 PM    5    0.14    0.02    0.27    0.00    0.04    0.06    0.01    0.00    0.00   99.47
06:08:38 PM    6    0.10    0.02    0.17    0.00    0.04    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.65
06:08:38 PM    7    0.09    0.02    0.15    0.00    0.02    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.70


 

sar-sysstat-cpu-statistics-screenshot

Monitor processes and threads currently being managed by the Linux kernel.

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat

pidstat-various-random-process-statistics

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -d 2


pidstat-show-processes-with-most-io-activities-linux-screenshot

This report tells us that there is few processes with heave I/O use Filesystem system journalling daemon jbd2, apache, mysqld and supervise, in 3rd column you see their respective PID IDs.

To show threads used inside a process (like if you press SHIFT + H) inside Linux top command:

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -t -p 10765 1 3

Linux 4.19.0-14-amd64 (server)     28.09.2021     _x86_64_    (10 CPU)

21:41:22      UID      TGID       TID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  Command
21:41:23      108     10765         –    1,98    0,99    0,00    0,00    2,97     1  mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10765    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     1  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10768    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     0  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10771    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     5  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10784    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     7  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10785    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     6  |__mysqld
21:41:23      108         –     10786    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00    0,00     2  |__mysqld
…

10765 – is the Process ID whose threads you would like to list

With pidstat, you can further monitor processes for memory leaks with:

[hipo@server ~ ] $ pidstat -r 2

 

4. Report paging statistics for some old period

 

[root@server ~ ]# sar -B -f /var/log/sa/sa27 |head -n 10
Linux 4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64 (server)       09/27/2021      _x86_64_        (8 CPU)

15:42:26     LINUX RESTART      (8 CPU)

15:55:30     LINUX RESTART      (8 CPU)

04:00:01 PM  pgpgin/s pgpgout/s   fault/s  majflt/s  pgfree/s pgscank/s pgscand/s pgsteal/s    %vmeff
04:01:01 PM      0.00     14.47    629.17      0.00    502.53      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
04:02:01 PM      0.00     13.07    553.75      0.00    419.98      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
04:03:01 PM      0.00     11.67    548.13      0.00    411.80      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

 

5.  Monitor Received RX and Transmitted TX network traffic perl Network interface real time
 

To print out Received and Send traffic per network interface 4 times in a raw

sar-sysstats-network-traffic-statistics-screenshot
 

[hipo@server ~ ] $ sar -n DEV 1 4


To continusly monitor all network interfaces I/O traffic

[hipo@server ~ ] $ sar -n DEV 1


To only monitor a certain network interface lets say loopback interface (127.0.0.1) received / transmitted bytes

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $  sar -n DEV 1 2|grep -i lo
06:29:53 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
06:29:54 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
Average:           lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00


6. Monitor block devices use
 

To check block devices use 3 times in a raw
 

[hipo@server yum.repos.d] $ sar -d 1 3


sar-sysstats-blockdevice-statistics-screenshot
 

7. Output server monitoring data in CSV database structured format


For preparing a nice graphs with Excel from CSV strucuted file format, you can dump the collected data as so:

 [root@server yum.repos.d]# sadf -d /var/log/sa/sa27 — -n DEV | grep -v lo|head -n 10
server-name-fqdn;-1;2021-09-27 13:42:26 UTC;LINUX-RESTART    (8 CPU)
# hostname;interval;timestamp;IFACE;rxpck/s;txpck/s;rxkB/s;txkB/s;rxcmp/s;txcmp/s;rxmcst/s;%ifutil
server-name-fqdn;-1;2021-09-27 13:55:30 UTC;LINUX-RESTART    (8 CPU)
# hostname;interval;timestamp;IFACE;rxpck/s;txpck/s;rxkB/s;txkB/s;rxcmp/s;txcmp/s;rxmcst/s;%ifutil
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth1;19.42;16.12;1.94;1.68;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth0;7.18;9.65;0.55;0.78;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:01:01 UTC;eth2;5.65;5.13;0.42;0.39;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth1;18.90;15.55;1.89;1.60;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth0;7.15;9.63;0.55;0.74;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
server-name-fqdn;60;2021-09-27 14:02:01 UTC;eth2;5.67;5.15;0.42;0.39;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00
…

To graph the output data you can use Excel / LibreOffice's Excel equivalent Calc or if you need to dump a CSV sar output and generate it on the fly from a script  use gnuplot 


What we've learned?


How to install and enable on cron sysstats on Redhat and CentOS 8 Linux ? 
How to continuously monitor CPU / Disk and Network, block devices, paging use and processes and threads used by the kernel per process ?  
As well as how to export previously collected data to CSV to import to database or for later use inrder to generate graphic presentation of data.
Cheers ! 🙂

 

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Posted in Linux, Monitoring, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Remove “Windows 7 PC is out of Support” annoying reoccuring warning popup alert

Friday, September 10th, 2021

Windows-7-End-of-life-pc-is-out-of-support-removal-rip-win-7

Since January 15th 2020, Windows 7 which reached its End of Life (EOL)  and is no longer Supported. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, and Professional installations will display the message


"Your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

The use of Windows 7, since 2020 is steadily declining but some hard core maniacs, who refuse to be in tune with latest fashion do still roll Windows 7 on dedicated VPS Servers (running on Xen / VMWare etc.).
With the reach of End of Support, people who still run Windows 7 have no longer the usual Operating system provided.

  • No security updates
  • No software updates
  • No tech support

Even though running End of Support system is quite dangerous and you might get hacked easily by autometed bot, still for some custom uses and if the Windows 7 Runs behind a solid firewall it could be considered relatively safe.

Microsoft hence made their Windows (remote controlled system) to have an annoying pop up window with the "YOUR WINDOWS 7 PC IS OUT OF SUPPORT" as shown in below screenshot:

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-annoying-message-screenshot.

For those who don't plan to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10, this message becomes quickly very annoying especially if you happen to access remotely your Windows 7 VPS and use it for simple things as browsing a few news websites or you're a marketer and you use the Windows for accessing Amazon / Ebay from a different country as many Marketers do to access General Webstores emulating access from a remote location. 


Disable "Your Windows 7 PC is out of support" popup alert
 

Luckily it is possible to disable this annoying Your Windows 7 pop-up alert by setting a value key in Windows Registry
DiscontinueEOS to 1.

To do so launch from Administrator command  line cmd.exe prompt (or start it from Windows start menu):

regedit

1. Open Windows Registry Editor and navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify.

 You will need to set the DWORD DiscontinueEOS value to 1 in the Windows Registry
 

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-eosnotify-dword-registry-03-600x366

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontinueEOS-registry-modify

–  In case EOSNotify key is not available, right-click the CurrentVersion key and select New > Key and name it EOSNotify.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-EOSNotify-create-new-key-600x367

2. Right click anywhere in the right pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DiscontinueEOS.

3. Set Value data to 1 and click OK.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-edit-dword-32-bit-value-regedit-screenshot.

4. When the new value has been set, Restart the Windows7 computer / Virtual machine, to make sure registry setting take effect.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontninueEOS-reg-dword-0x000000001-600x248

 

To automate the procedure in large environments, you can create a small script using the reg  command load the Registry key or use Windows GPO (Group Policy Object) to enforce the setting across all Active Directory PC members.
 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify]
"DiscontinueEOS"=dword:00000001
custom GPO in Active Directory.

To avoid potential issues using a non supported OS, you should start planning to upgrade your Windows 7 clients to Windows 10.

That's it ! Out of support Windows 7  alert should no longer bug you 🙂

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Posted in Hacks, Windows | No Comments »

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.

saint-Georgi-Sofijski-noveishij-icon

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.

Sveti_Georgi_Novi-Sofijski-wall-painting-icon-st-George-Sofia
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.

saint-Georgi-Sofijski-newest-icon-painting

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!

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Posted in Christianity, Curious Facts, Everyday Life | No Comments »

Adding custom user based host IP aliases load custom prepared /etc/hosts from non root user on Linux – Script to allow define IPs that doesn’t have DNS records to user preferred hostname

Wednesday, April 14th, 2021

adding-custom-user-based-host-aliases-etc-hosts-logo-linux

Say you have access to a remote Linux / UNIX / BSD server, i.e. a jump host and you have to remotely access via ssh a bunch of other servers
who have existing IP addresses but the DNS resolver recognized hostnames from /etc/resolv.conf are long and hard to remember by the jump host in /etc/resolv.conf and you do not have a way to include a new alias to /etc/hosts because you don't have superuser admin previleges on the hop station.
To make your life easier you would hence want to add a simplistic host alias to be able to easily do telnet, ssh, curl to some aliased name like s1, s2, s3 … etc.


The question comes then, how can you define the IPs to be resolvable by easily rememberable by using a custom User specific /etc/hosts like definition file? 

Expanding /etc/hosts predefined host resolvable records is pretty simple as most as most UNIX / Linux has the HOSTALIASES environment variable
Hostaliases uses the common technique for translating host names into IP addresses using either getaddrinfo(3) or the obsolete gethostbyname(3). As mentioned in hostname(7), you can set the HOSTALIASES environment variable to point to an alias file, and you've got per-user aliases

create ~/.hosts file

linux:~# vim ~/.hosts

with some content like:
 

g google.com
localhostg 127.0.0.1
s1 server-with-long-host1.fqdn-whatever.com 
s2 server5-with-long-host1.fqdn-whatever.com
s3 server18-with-long-host5.fqdn-whatever.com
…

linux:~# export HOSTALIASES=$PWD/.hosts

The caveat of hostaliases you should know is this will only works for resolvable IP hostnames.
So if you want to be able to access unresolvable hostnames.
You can use a normal alias for the hostname you want in ~/.bashrc with records like:

alias server-hostname="ssh username@10.10.10.18 -v -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null"
alias server-hostname1="ssh username@10.10.10.19 -v -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null"
alias server-hostname2="ssh username@10.10.10.20 -v -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null"
…

then to access server-hostname1 simply type it in terminal.

The more elegant solution is to use a bash script like below:

# include below code to your ~/.bashrc
function resolve {
        hostfile=~/.hosts
        if [[ -f “$hostfile” ]]; then
                for arg in $(seq 1 $#); do
                        if [[ “${!arg:0:1}” != “-” ]]; then
                                ip=$(sed -n -e "/^\s*\(\#.*\|\)$/d" -e "/\<${!arg}\>/{s;^\s*\(\S*\)\s*.*$;\1;p;q}" "$hostfile")
                                if [[ -n “$ip” ]]; then
                                        command "${FUNCNAME[1]}" "${@:1:$(($arg-1))}" "$ip" "${@:$(($arg+1)):$#}"
                                        return
                                fi
                        fi
                done
        fi
        command "${FUNCNAME[1]}" "$@"
}

function ping {
        resolve "$@"
}

function traceroute {
        resolve "$@"
}

function ssh {
        resolve "$@"
}

function telnet {
        resolve "$@"
}

function curl {
        resolve "$@"
}

function wget {
        resolve "$@"
}

 

Now after reloading bash login session $HOME/.bashrc with:

linux:~# source ~/.bashrc

ssh / curl / wget / telnet / traceroute and ping will be possible to the defined ~/.hosts IP addresses just like if it have been defined global wide on System in /etc/hosts.

Enjoy
 

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Posted in Educational, Hacks, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Listing installed RPMs by vendor installed on CentOS / RedHat Linux

Friday, January 8th, 2021

Listing installed RPMs by vendor installed on CentOS / RedHat Linux

Listing installed RPMs by vendor is useful sysadmin stuff if you have third party software installed that is not part of official CentOS / RedHat Linux and you want to only list this packages, here is how this is done

 

[root@redhat ~]# rpm -qa –qf '%{NAME} %{VENDOR} %{PACKAGER} \n' | grep -v 'CentOS' | sort

criu Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
gskcrypt64 IBM IBM
gskssl64 IBM IBM
ipxe-roms-qemu Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libevent (none) (none)
libguestfs-appliance Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libguestfs-tools-c Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libguestfs Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlcommon Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlsdk-python Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlsdk Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlxmlmodel Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libtcmu Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvcmmd Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-client Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-config-nwfilter Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-interface Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-network Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-nodedev Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-nwfilter Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-core Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-storage Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-kvm Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-libs Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-python Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvzctl Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvzevent Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
openvz-logos Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
p7zip-plugins Fedora Project Fedora Project
ploop-lib Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
ploop Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prlctl Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prl-disk-tool Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prl-disp-service Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
python2-lockfile Fedora Project Fedora Project
python2-psutil Fedora Project Fedora Project
python-daemon Fedora Project Fedora Project
python-subprocess32 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-img-vz Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-kvm-common-vz Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-kvm-vz Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qt Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
rkhunter Fedora Project Fedora Project
seabios-bin Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
seavgabios-bin Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
spfs Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
TIVsm-API64 IBM (none)
TIVsm-APIcit IBM (none)
TIVsm-BAcit IBM (none)
TIVsm-BA IBM (none)
vcmmd Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vmauth Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzctl Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzkernel Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzkernel Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt_checker Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt_checker Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt-lib Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
zabbix-agent (none) (none)

 


That instructs rpm to output each package's name and vendor, then we exclude those from "Red Hat, Inc." (which is the exact string Red Hat conveniently uses in the "vendor" field of all RPMs they pacakge).

By default, rpm -qa uses the format '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}', and it's nice to see version and release, and on 64-bit systems, it's also nice to see the architecture since both 32- and 64-bit packages are often installed. Here's how I did that:

[root@redhat ~]# rpm -qa –qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH} %{VENDOR} %{PACKAGER} \n' | grep -v 'CentOS' | sort

criu-3.10.0.23-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
gskcrypt64-8.0-55.17.x86_64 IBM IBM
gskssl64-8.0-55.17.x86_64 IBM IBM
ipxe-roms-qemu-20170123-1.git4e85b27.1.vz7.5.noarch Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libevent-2.0.22-1.rhel7.x86_64 (none) (none)
libguestfs-1.36.10-6.2.vz7.12.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libguestfs-appliance-1.36.10-6.2.vz7.12.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libguestfs-tools-c-1.36.10-6.2.vz7.12.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlcommon-7.0.162-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlsdk-7.0.226-2.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlsdk-python-7.0.226-2.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libprlxmlmodel-7.0.80-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libtcmu-1.2.0-16.2.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvcmmd-7.0.22-3.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-client-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-config-nwfilter-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-interface-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-network-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-nodedev-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-nwfilter-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-core-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-daemon-kvm-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-libs-3.9.0-14.vz7.38.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvirt-python-3.9.0-1.vz7.1.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvzctl-7.0.506-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
libvzevent-7.0.7-5.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
openvz-logos-70.0.13-1.vz7.noarch Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
p7zip-plugins-16.02-10.el7.x86_64 Fedora Project Fedora Project
ploop-7.0.137-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
ploop-lib-7.0.137-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prlctl-7.0.164-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prl-disk-tool-7.0.43-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
prl-disp-service-7.0.925-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
python2-lockfile-0.11.0-17.el7.noarch Fedora Project Fedora Project
python2-psutil-5.6.7-1.el7.x86_64 Fedora Project Fedora Project
python-daemon-1.6-4.el7.noarch Fedora Project Fedora Project
python-subprocess32-3.2.7-1.vz7.5.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-img-vz-2.10.0-21.7.vz7.67.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-kvm-common-vz-2.10.0-21.7.vz7.67.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qemu-kvm-vz-2.10.0-21.7.vz7.67.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
qt-4.8.7-2.vz7.2.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
rkhunter-1.4.6-2.el7.noarch Fedora Project Fedora Project
seabios-bin-1.10.2-3.1.vz7.3.noarch Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
seavgabios-bin-1.10.2-3.1.vz7.3.noarch Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
spfs-0.09.0010-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
TIVsm-API64-8.1.11-0.x86_64 IBM (none)
TIVsm-APIcit-8.1.11-0.x86_64 IBM (none)
TIVsm-BA-8.1.11-0.x86_64 IBM (none)
TIVsm-BAcit-8.1.11-0.x86_64 IBM (none)
vcmmd-7.0.160-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vmauth-7.0.10-2.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzctl-7.0.194-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzkernel-3.10.0-862.11.6.vz7.64.7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vzkernel-3.10.0-862.20.2.vz7.73.29.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt-7.0.63-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt_checker-7.0.2-1.vz7.i686 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt_checker-7.0.2-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
vztt-lib-7.0.63-1.vz7.x86_64 Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (http://www.virtuozzo.com/support/)
zabbix-agent-3.2.11-1.el7.x86_64 (none) (none)

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How to redirect / forward all postfix emails to one external email address?

Thursday, October 29th, 2020

Postfix_mailserver-logo-howto-forward-email-with-regular-expression-or-maildrop

Lets say you're  a sysadmin doing email migration of a Clustered SMTP and due to that you want to capture for a while all incoming email traffic and redirect it (forward it) towards another single mailbox, where you can review the mail traffic that is flowing for a few hours and analyze it more deeper. This aproach is useful if you have a small or middle sized mail servers and won't be so useful on a mail server that handels few  hundreds of mails hourly. In below article I'll show you how.

How to redirect all postfix mail for a specific domain to single external email address?

There are different ways but if you don't want to just intercept the traffic and a create a copy of email traffic using the always_bcc integrated postfix option (as pointed in my previous article postfix copy every email to a central mailbox).  You can do a copy of email flow via some custom written dispatcher script set to be run by the MTA on each mail arriva, or use maildrop filtering functionality below is very simple example with maildrop in case if you want to filter out and deliver to external email address only email targetted to specific domain.

If you use maildrop as local delivery agent to copy email targetted to specifidc domain to another defined email use rule like:

if ( /^From:.*domain\.com/:h ) {
  cc "!someothermail@domain2.com"
}


To use maildrop to just forward email incoming from a specific sender towards local existing email address on the postfix to an external email address  use something like:

if ( /^From: .*linus@mail.example.com.*/ )
{
        dotlock "forward.lock" {
          log "Forward mail"
          to "|/usr/sbin/sendmail linuxbox@collector.example.com"
        }
}

Then to make the filter active assuming the user has a physical unix mailbox, paste above to local user's  $HOME/.mailfilter.

What to do if your mail delivered via your Email-Server.com are sent from a monitoring and alarming scripts that are sending towards many mailboxes that no longer exist after the migration?

To achive capturing all normal attempted to be sent traffic via the mail server, we can forward all served mails towards a single external mail address you can use the nice capability of postfix to understand PCRE perl compatible regular expressions. Regular expressions in postfix of course has its specific I recommend you take a look to the postfix regexp table documentation here, as well as check the Postfix Regex / Tester / Debugger online tool – useful to validate a regexp you want to implement.

How to use postfix regular expression to do a redirect of all sent emails via your postfix mail relayhost towards external mail servers?

 

In main.cf /etc/postfix/main.cf include this line near bottom or as a last line:

virtual_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual, regexp:/etc/postfix/virtual-regexp

One defines the virtual file which can be used to define any of your virtual domains you want to simulate as present on the local postfix, the regexp: does load the file which is read by postfix where you can type the regular expression applied to every incoming email via SMTP port 25 or encrypted MTA ports 385 / 995 etc.

So how to redirect all postfix mail to one external email address for later analysis?

Create file /etc/postfix/virtual-regexp

/.+@.+/ external-forward-email@gmail.com

Next build the mapfile (this will generate /etc/postfix/virtual-regexp.db )
 

# postmap /etc/postfix/virtual-regexp

This also requires a virtual.db to exist. If it doesn't create an empty file called virtual and run again postmap postfix .db generator

# touch /etc/postfix/virtual && postmap /etc/postfix/virtual


Note in /etc/postfix/virtual you can add your postfix mail domains for which you want the MTA to accept mail as a local mail.

In case you need to view all postfix defined virtual domains configured to accept mail locally on the mail server.
 

$ postconf -n | grep virtual
virtual_alias_domains = mydomain.com myanotherdomain.com
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual


The regexp /.+@.+/ external-forward-email@gmail.com applied will start forwarding mails immediately after you reload the MTA with:

# systemctl restart postfix


If you want to exclude target mail domains to not be captured by above regexp, in /etc/postfix/virtual-regexp place:

/.+@exclude-domain1.com/ @exclude-domain1.com
/.+@exclude-domain2.com/ @exclude-domain2.com

Time for a test. Send a test email


Next step is to Test it mail forwarding works as expected
 

# echo -e "Tseting body" | mail -s "testing subject" -r "testing@test.com" whatevertest-user@mail-recipient-domain.com

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Posted in Postfix, System Administration | No Comments »

Postfix copy every email to a central mailbox (send a copy of every mail sent via mail server to a given email)

Wednesday, October 28th, 2020

Postfix-logo-always-bcc-email-option-send-all-emails-to-a-single-address-with-postfix.svg

Say you need to do a mail server migration, where you have a local configured Postfix on a number of Linux hosts named:

Linux-host1
Linux-host2
Linux-host3

etc.


all configured to send email via old Email send host (MailServerHostOld.com) in each linux box's postfix configuration's /etc/postfix/main.cf.
Now due to some infrastructure change in the topology of network or anything else, you need to relay Mails sent via another asumably properly configured Linux host relay (MailServerNewHost.com).

Usually such a migrations has always a risk that some of the old sent emails originating from local running scripts on Linux-host1, Linux-Host2 … or some application or anything else set to send via them might not properly deliver emails to some external Internet based Mailboxes via the new relayhost MailServerNewHost.com.

E.g. in /etc/postfix/main.cf Linux-Host* machines, you have below config after the migration:

relayhost = [MailServerNewHost.com]

Lets say that you want to make sure, that you don't end up with lost emails as you can't be sure whether the new email server will deliver correctly to the old repicient emails. What to do then?

To make sure will not end up in undelivered state and get lost forever after a week or so (depending on the mail queue configuration retention period made on Linux sent MTAs and mailrelay MailServerNewHost.com, it is a very good approach to temprorary set all email communication that will be sent via MailServerNewHost.com a BCC emaills (A Blind Carbon Copy) of each sent mail via relay that is set on your local configured Postfix-es on Linux-Host*.

In postfix to achieve that it is very easy all you have to do is set on your MailServerNewHost.com a postfix config variable always_bcc smartly included by postfix Mail Transfer Agent developers for cases exactly like this.

To forward all passed emails via the mail server just place in the end of /etc/postfix/mail.conf after login via ssh on MailServerNewHost.com

always_bcc=All-Emails@your-diresired-redirect-email-address.com


Now all left is to reload the postfix to force the new configuration to get loaded on systemd based hosts as it is usually today do:

# systemctl reload postfix


Finally to make sure all works as expected and mail is sent do from do a testing via local MTAs. 
 

Linux-Host:~# echo -e "Testing body" | mail -s "testing subject" -r "testing@test.com" georgi.stoyanov@remote-user-email-whatever-address.com

Linux-Host:~# echo -e "Testing body" | mail -s "testing subject" -r "testing@test.com" georgi.stoyanov@sample-destination-address.com


As you can see I'm using the -r to simulate a sender address, this is a feature of mailx and is not available on older Linux Os hosts that are bundled with mail only command.
Now go to and open the All-Emails@your-diresired-redirect-email-address.com in Outlook (if it is M$ Office 365 MX Shared mailbox), Thunderbird or whatever email fetching software that supports POP3 or IMAP (in case if you configured the common all email mailbox to be on some other Postfix / Sendmail / Qmail MTA). and check whether you started receiving a lot of emails 🙂

That's all folks enjoy ! 🙂

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Posted in Linux, Postfix, System Administration | No Comments »

Cracking zip protected password files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

crack-zip-freebsd

Its not very common, but sometimes it happens you have to crack some downloaded file from thepiratebay.com or some other big torrent tracker. An example scenario would be downloading a huge words dictionary (a rainbow tables) dictionary etc., which was protected by the author with a password and zipped.

Fortunately Mark Lehmann developed a software called fcrackzip which is capable of brute forcing zip protected file passwords straight on UNIX like operating systems (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD).

fcrackzip is available from package repositories on Debian and Ubuntu Linuces to install via apt:

linux:~# apt-get install frackzip
...

fcrackzip is also available on FreeBSD via the ports tree and can be installed with:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/security/fcrackzip
freebsd# make install cleam

On Debian it's worthy to have a quick look on the README file:

linux:~# cat /usr/share/doc/fcrackzip/READMESee fcrackzip.txt (which is derived from the manpage), or fcrackzip.html

There is a web page with more information at
http://lehmann.home.ml.org/fcrackzip.html or
http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/fcrackzip.html

A sample password-protected .zip file is included as "noradi.zip". It's
password has 6 lower case characters, and fcrackzip will find it (and a
number of false positives) with

fcrackzip -b -c a -p aaaaaa ./noradi.zip

which will take between one and thirty minutes on typical machines.

To find out which of these passwords is the right one either try them out
or use the –use-unzip option.

Marc

Cracking the noradi.zip password protected sample file on my dual core 1.8 ghz box with 2gb, it took 30 seconds.

linux:~# time fcrackzip -u -b -c a -p aaaaaa noradi.zip

PASSWORD FOUND!!!!: pw == noradi

real 0m29.627s
user 0m29.530s
sys 0m0.064s

Of course the sample set password for noradi.zip is pretty trivial and with more complex passwords, sometimes cracking the password can take up to 30 minutes or an hour and it all depends on the specific case, but at least now we the free software users have a new tool in the growing arsenal of free software programs 😉

Here are the options passed on to the above fcrackzip command:

-u – Try to decompress with the detected possible archive passwords using unzip (This is necessery to precisely find the archive password, otherwise it will just print out a number of possible matching archive passwords and you have to try each of the passwords one by one. Note that this option depends on a working unzip version installed.)

-c a – include all charsets to be tried with the generated passwords

-b – Select brute force mode – Tries all possible combinations of letters specified

-p aaaaaa – init-password string (Look up for a password between the password length 6 characters long)

FCrackZip is partly written in assembler and thus is generally works fast, to reduce the CPU load fcrackzip will put on the processor its also capable of using external words dictionary file by passing it the option:

-D – The file should be in a format one word per line and be preliminary alphabetically sorted with let's say sort

Also fcrackzip supports parallel file brute force, for example if you have 10 zip files protected with passwords it can paralelly try to brute force the pwds.

As of time of writting frackzip reached version 1.0 and seems to be pretty stable. Happy cracking.
Just to make sure fcrackzip's source is not lost somewhere in the line in the long future to come, I've created a fcrackzip download mirror here

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Posted in Computer Security, Hacks, System Administration | 1 Comment »

Preparing your Linux to work with the Cloud providers – Installing aws , gcloud, az, oc, cf CLI Cloud access command interfaces

Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

howto Install-Cloud-access-tools-for-google-aws-azure-openshift-cloud-foundryCloud_computing-explained-on-linux.svg

If you're a sysadmin / developer whose boss requires a migration of Stored Data, Database structures or Web Objects to Amazon Web Services / Google Clourd or you happen to be a DevOps Engineer you will certainly need to have installed as a minimumum amazon AWS and Google Clouds clients to do daily routines and script stuff in managing cloud resources without tampering to use the Web GUI interface.

Here is how to install the aws, gcloud, oc, az and cf next to your kubernetes client (kubectl) on your Linux Desktop.
 

1. Install Google Cloud  gcloud (to manage Google Cloud platform resources and developer workflow
 

google-cloud-logo

Here is few cmds to run to install  gcloud, gcloud alpha, gcloud beta, gsutil, and bq commands to manage your Google Cloud from CLI

a.) On Debian / Ubuntu / Mint or any other deb based distro

# Create environment variable for correct distribution
export CLOUD_SDK_REPO="cloud-sdk-$(lsb_release -c -s)"

 

# Add the Cloud SDK distribution URI as a package source
# echo "deb http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt $CLOUD_SDK_REPO main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list

 

# Import the Google Cloud Platform public key
$ sudo curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add –

 

# Update the package list and install the Cloud SDK
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-cloud-sdk


b) On CentOS, RHEL, Fedora Linux and other rpm based ones
 

$ sudo tee -a /etc/yum.repos.d/google-cloud-sdk.repo << EOM
[google-cloud-sdk]
name=Google Cloud SDK
baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/cloud-sdk-el7-x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg
       https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
EOM

# yum install google-cloud-sdk

 

That's all now the text client to talk to Google Cloud's API gcloud is installed under
/usr/bin/gcloud

Latest install instructions of Google Cloud SDK are here.


2. Install AWS Cloud command line interface tool for managing AWS (Amazon Web Services)
 

AmazonWebservices_Logo.svg

AWS client is dependent on Python PIP so before you proceed you will have to install python-pip deb package if on Debian / Ubuntu Linux use apt:

 

# apt-get install –yes python-pip

 

It is also possible to install newest version of PIP a tiny shell script provided by Amazon get-pip.py

 

# curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
# python get-pip.py –user

 

# pip install awscli –upgrade –user

 

3. Install Azure Cloud Console access CLI command interface
 

Microsoft_Azure_Cloud-Logo.svg

On Debian / Ubuntu or any other deb based distro:

# AZ_REPO=$(lsb_release -cs)
# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $AZ_REPO main" | \
$ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list
# curl -L https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add –
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https azure-cli

 

Finaly to check that Azure CLI is properly installed run simple login with:

 

$ az login

 


$ sudo rpm –import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc
$ sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[azure-cli]\nname=Azure CLI\nbaseurl=https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/azure-cli\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc" > /etc/yum.repos.d/azure-cli.repo'
$ sudo yum install azure-cli

$ az login


For Latest install instructions check Amazon's documentation here

4. Install OpenShift OC CLI tool to access OpenShift Open Source Cloud

 

OpenShift-Redhat-cloud-platform

Even thought OpenShift has its original Redhat produced package binaries, if you're not on RPM distro it is probably
best to install using official latest version from openshift github repo.


As of time of writting this article this is done with:

 

# wget https://github.com/openshift/origin/releases/download/v1.5.1/openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit.tar.gz
tar –xvf openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit.tar.gz

 

# # mv openshift-origin-client-tools-v1.5.1-7b451fc-linux-64bit oc-tool

 

# cd oc-tool
# echo'export PATH=$HOME/oc-tool:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

 

To test openshift, try to login to OpenShift cloud:

 

$ oc login
Server [https://localhost:8443]: https://128.XX.XX.XX:8443


Latest install instructions on OC here

5. Install Cloud Foundry cf CLI Cloud access tool

cloud-foundry-cloud-logo

a) On Debian / Ubuntu Linux based distributions, do run:

 

$ wget -q -O – https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/debian/cli.cloudfoundry.org.key | sudo apt-key add –
$ echo "deb https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cloudfoundry-cli.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cf-cli

 

b) On RHEL Enterprise Linux / CentOS and Fedoras

 

$ sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/cloudfoundry-cli.repo https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/fedora/cloudfoundry-cli.repo
$ sudo yum install cf-cli


For latest install insructions on cf cli check Cloud Foundry's install site

There plenty of other Cloud providers with the number exponentially growing and most have their own custom cli tools to access but as there use is not so common as the 5 ones mentioned below, I've omited 'em. If you're interested to know the complete list of Cloud Providers providing Cloud Services check here.

6. Install Ruby GEMs RHC tools collection

If you have to work with Redhat Cloud Storage / OpenShift you will perhaps want to install also (RHC) Redhat Collection Tools.

Assuming that the Linux system is running an up2date version of ruby programming language do run:

 

 

root@jeremiah:~# gem install rhc
Fetching: net-ssh-5.0.2.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-5.0.2
Fetching: net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Fetching: net-ssh-multi-1.2.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Fetching: minitar-0.7.gem (100%)
The `minitar` executable is no longer bundled with `minitar`. If you are
expecting this executable, make sure you also install `minitar-cli`.
Successfully installed minitar-0.7
Fetching: hashie-3.6.0.gem (100%)
Successfully installed hashie-3.6.0
Fetching: powerbar-1.0.18.gem (100%)
Successfully installed powerbar-1.0.18
Fetching: minitar-cli-0.7.gem (100%)
Successfully installed minitar-cli-0.7
Fetching: archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1.gem (100%)
'archive-tar-minitar' has been deprecated; just install 'minitar'.
Successfully installed archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Fetching: highline-1.6.21.gem (100%)
Successfully installed highline-1.6.21
Fetching: commander-4.2.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed commander-4.2.1
Fetching: httpclient-2.6.0.1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed httpclient-2.6.0.1
Fetching: open4-1.3.4.gem (100%)
Successfully installed open4-1.3.4
Fetching: rhc-1.38.7.gem (100%)
===========================================================================

 

If this is your first time installing the RHC tools, please run 'rhc setup'

===========================================================================
Successfully installed rhc-1.38.7
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-5.0.2
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-5.0.2
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-gateway-2.0.0
Parsing documentation for net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-multi-1.2.1
Parsing documentation for minitar-0.7
Installing ri documentation for minitar-0.7
Parsing documentation for hashie-3.6.0
Installing ri documentation for hashie-3.6.0
Parsing documentation for powerbar-1.0.18
Installing ri documentation for powerbar-1.0.18
Parsing documentation for minitar-cli-0.7
Installing ri documentation for minitar-cli-0.7
Parsing documentation for archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Installing ri documentation for archive-tar-minitar-0.6.1
Parsing documentation for highline-1.6.21
Installing ri documentation for highline-1.6.21
Parsing documentation for commander-4.2.1
Installing ri documentation for commander-4.2.1
Parsing documentation for httpclient-2.6.0.1
Installing ri documentation for httpclient-2.6.0.1
Parsing documentation for open4-1.3.4
Installing ri documentation for open4-1.3.4
Parsing documentation for rhc-1.38.7
Installing ri documentation for rhc-1.38.7
Done installing documentation for net-ssh, net-ssh-gateway, net-ssh-multi, minitar, hashie, powerbar, minitar-cli, archive-tar-minitar, highline, commander, httpclient, open4, rhc after 10 seconds
13 gems installed
root@jeremiah:~#

To start with rhc next do:
 

rhc setup
rhc app create my-app diy-0.1


and play with it to install software create services on the Redhat cloud.

 

 

Closure

This are just of the few of the numerous tools available and I definitely understand there is much more to be said on the topic.
If you can remember other tools tor interesting cloud starting up tips about stuff to do on a fresh installed Linux PC to make life easier with Cloud / PaaS / SaaS / DevOps engineer please drop a comment.

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