Posts Tagged ‘course’

Reinstall all Debian packages with a copy of apt deb package list from another working Debian Linux installation

Wednesday, July 29th, 2020

Reinstall-all-Debian-packages-with-copy-of-apt-packages-list-from-another-working-Debian-Linux-installation

Few days ago, in the hurry in the small hours of the night, I've done something extremely stupid. Wanting to move out a .tar.gz binary copy of qmail installation to /var/lib/qmail with all the dependent qmail items instead of extracting to admin user /root directory (/root), I've extracted it to the main Operating system root / directrory.
Not noticing this, I've quickly executed rm -rf var with the idea to delete all directory tree under /root/var just 3 seconds later, I've realized I'm issuing the rm -rf var with the wrong location WITH a root user !!!! Being scared on what I've done, I've quickly pressed CTRL+C to immedately cancel the deletion operation of my /var.

wrong-system-var-rm-linux-dont-do-that-ever-or-your-system-will-end-up-irreversably-damaged

But as you can guess, since the machine has an Slid State Drive drive and SSD memory drive are much more faster in I/O operations than the classical ATA / SATA disks. I was not quick enough to cancel the operation and I've noticed already some part of my /var have been R.I.P-pped in the heaven of directories.

This was ofcourse upsetting so for a while I rethinked the situation to get some ideas on what I can do to recover my system ASAP!!! and I had the idea of course to try to reinstall All my installed .deb debian packages to restore system closest to the normal, before my stupid mistake.

Guess my unpleasent suprise when I have realized dpkg and respectively apt-get apt and aptitude package management tools cannot anymore handle packages as Debian Linux's package dependency database has been damaged due to missing dpkg directory 

 

/var/lib/dpkg 

 

Oh man that was unpleasent, especially since I've installed plenty of stuff that is custom on my Mate based desktop and, generally reinstalling it updating the sytem to the latest Debian security updates etc. will be time consuming and painful process I wanted to omit.

So of course the logical thing to do here was to try to somehow recover somehow a database copy of /var/lib/dpkg  if that was possible, that of course led me to the idea to lookup for a way to recover my /var/lib/dpkg from backup but since I did not maintained any backup copy of my OS anywhere that was not really possible, so anyways I wondered whether dpkg does not keep some kind of database backups somewhere in case if something goes wrong with its database.
This led me to this nice Ubuntu thred which has pointed me to the part of my root rm -rf dpkg db disaster recovery solution.
Luckily .deb package management creators has thought about situation similar to mine and to give the user a restore point for /var/lib/dpkg damaged database

/var/lib/dpkg is periodically backed up in /var/backups

A typical /var/lib/dpkg on Ubuntu and Debian Linux looks like so:
 

hipo@jeremiah:/var/backups$ ls -l /var/lib/dpkg
total 12572
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 26 03:22 alternatives
-rw-r–r– 1 root root      11 Oct 14  2017 arch
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2199402 Jul 25 20:04 available
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2199402 Oct 19  2017 available-old
-rw-r–r– 1 root root       8 Sep  6  2012 cmethopt
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1337 Jul 26 01:39 diversions
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1223 Jul 26 01:39 diversions-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  679936 Jul 28 14:17 info
-rw-r—– 1 root root       0 Jul 28 14:17 lock
-rw-r—– 1 root root       0 Jul 26 03:00 lock-frontend
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Sep 17  2012 parts
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    1011 Jul 25 23:59 statoverride
-rw-r–r– 1 root root     965 Jul 25 23:59 statoverride-old
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3873710 Jul 28 14:17 status
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3873712 Jul 28 14:17 status-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 26 03:22 triggers
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul 28 14:17 updates

Before proceeding with this radical stuff to move out /var/lib/dpkg/info from another machine to /var mistakenyl removed oned. I have tried to recover with the well known:

  • extundelete
  • foremost
  • recover
  • ext4magic
  • ext3grep
  • gddrescue
  • ddrescue
  • myrescue
  • testdisk
  • photorec

Linux file deletion recovery tools from a USB stick loaded with a Number of LiveCD distributions, i.e. tested recovery with:

  • Debian LiveCD
  • Ubuntu LiveCD
  • KNOPPIX
  • SystemRescueCD
  • Trinity Rescue Kit
  • Ultimate Boot CD


but unfortunately none of them couldn't recover the deleted files … 

The reason why the standard file recovery tools could not recover ?

My assumptions is after I've done by rm -rf var; from sysroot,  issued the sync (- if you haven't used it check out man sync) command – that synchronizes cached writes to persistent storage and did a restart from the poweroff PC button, this should have worked, as I've recovered like that in the past) in a normal Sys V System with a normal old fashioned blocks filesystem as EXT2 . or any other of the filesystems without a journal, however as the machine run a EXT4 filesystem with a journald and journald, this did not work perhaps because something was not updated properly in /lib/systemd/systemd-journal, that led to the situation all recently deleted files were totally unrecoverable.

1. First step was to restore the directory skele of /var/lib/dpkg

# mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg/{alternatives,info,parts,triggers,updates}

 

2. Recover missing /var/lib/dpkg/status  file

The main file that gives information to dpkg of the existing packages and their statuses on a Debian based systems is /var/lib/dpkg/status

# cp /var/backups/dpkg.status.0 /var/lib/dpkg/status

 

3. Reinstall dpkg package manager to make package management working again

Say a warm prayer to the Merciful God ! and do:

# apt-get download dpkg
# dpkg -i dpkg*.deb

 

4. Reinstall base-files .deb package which provides basis of a Debian system

Hopefully everything will be okay and your dpkg / apt pair will be in normal working state, next step is to:

# apt-get download base-files
# dpkg -i base-files*.deb

 

5. Do a package sanity and consistency check and try to update OS package list

Check whether packages have been installed only partially on your system or that have missing, wrong or obsolete control  data  or  files.  dpkg  should suggest what to do with them to get them fixed.

# dpkg –audit

Then resynchronize (fetch) the package index files from their sources described in /etc/apt/sources.list

# apt-get update


Do apt db constistency check:

#  apt-get check


check is a diagnostic tool; it updates the package cache and checks for broken dependencies.
 

Take a deep breath ! …

Do :

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg
and compare with the above list. If some -old file is not present don't worry it will be there tomorrow.

Next time don't forget to do a regular backup with simple rsync backup script or something like Bacula / Amanda / Time Vault or Clonezilla.
 

6. Copy dpkg database from another Linux system that has a working dpkg / apt Database

Well this was however not the end of the story … There were still many things missing from my /var/ and luckily I had another Debian 10 Buster install on another properly working machine with a similar set of .deb packages installed. Therefore to make most of my programs still working again I have copied over /var from the other similar set of package installed machine to my messed up machine with the missing deleted /var.

To do so …
On Functioning Debian 10 Machine (Working Host in a local network with IP 192.168.0.50), I've archived content of /var:

linux:~# tar -czvf var_backup_debian10.tar.gz /var

Then sftped from Working Host towards the /var deleted broken one in my case this machine's hostname is jericho and luckily still had SSHD and SFTP running processes loaded in memory:

jericho:~# sftp root@192.168.0.50
sftp> get var_backup_debian10.tar.gz

Now Before extracting the archive it is a good idea to make backup of old /var remains somewhere for example somewhere in /root 
just in case if we need to have a copy of the dpkg backup dir /var/backups

jericho:~# cp -rpfv /var /root/var_backup_damaged

 
jericho:~# tar -zxvf /root/var_backup_debian10.tar.gz 
jericho:/# mv /root/var/ /

Then to make my /var/lib/dpkg contain the list of packages from my my broken Linux install I have ovewritten /var/lib/dpkg with the files earlier backupped before  .tar.gz was extracted.

jericho:~# cp -rpfv /var /root/var_backup_damaged/lib/dpkg/ /var/lib/

 

7. Reinstall All Debian  Packages completely scripts

 

I then tried to reinstall each and every package first using aptitude with aptitude this is done with

# aptitude reinstall '~i'

However as this failed, tried using a simple shell loop like below:

for i in $(dpkg -l |awk '{ print $2 }'); do echo apt-get install –reinstall –yes $i; done

Alternatively, all .deb package reninstall is also possible with dpkg –get-selections and with awk with below cmds:

dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall | awk '{print $1}' > list.log;
awk '$1=$1' ORS=' ' list.log > newlist.log
;
apt-get install –reinstall $(cat newlist.log)

It can also be run as one liner for simplicity:

dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall | awk '{print $1}' > list.log; awk '$1=$1' ORS=' ' list.log > newlist.log; apt-get install –reinstall $(cat newlist.log)

This produced a lot of warning messages, reporting "package has no files currently installed" (virtually for all installed packages), indicating a severe packages problem below is sample output produced after each and every package reinstall … :

dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'iproute' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'brscan-skey' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libapache2-mod-php7.4' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libexpat1:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libexpat1:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'php5.6-readline' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'linux-headers-4.19.0-5-amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libgraphite2-3:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libgraphite2-3:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libbonoboui2-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libxcb-dri3-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libxcb-dri3-0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblcms2-2:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblcms2-2:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpixman-1-0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpixman-1-0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'gksu' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'liblogging-stdlog0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mesa-vdpau-drivers:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mesa-vdpau-drivers:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libzvbi0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libzvbi0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libcdparanoia0:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libcdparanoia0:i386' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'python-gconf' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'php5.6-cli' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libpaper1:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'mixer.app' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed

After some attempts I found a way to be able to work around the warning message, for each package by simply reinstalling the package reporting the issue with

apt –reinstall $package_name


Though reinstallation started well and many packages got reinstalled, unfortunately some packages such as apache2-mod-php5.6 and other php related ones  started failing during reinstall ending up in unfixable states right after installation of binaries from packages was successfully placed in its expected locations on disk. The failures occured during the package setup stage ( dpkg –configure $packagename) …

The logical thing to do is a recovery attempt with something like the usual well known by any Debian admin:

apt-get install –fix-missing

As well as Manual requesting to reconfigure (issue re-setup) of all installed packages also did not produced a positive result

dpkg –configure -a

But many packages were still failing due to dpkg inability to execute some post installation scripts from respective .deb files.
To work around that and continue installing the rest of packages I had to manually delete all files related to the failing package located under directory 

/var/lib/dpkg/info#

For example to omit the post installation failure of libapache2-mod-php5.6 and have a succesful install of the package next time I tried reinstall, I had to delete all /var/lib/dpkg/info/libapache2-mod-php5.6.postrm, /var/lib/dpkg/info/libapache2-mod-php5.6.postinst scripts and even sometimes everything like libapache2-mod-php5.6* that were present in /var/lib/dpkg/info dir.

The problem with this solution, however was the package reporting to install properly, but the post install script hooks were still not in placed and important things as setting permissions of binaries after install or applying some configuration changes right after install was missing leading to programs failing to  fully behave properly or even breaking up even though showing as finely installed …

The final solution to this problem was radical.
I've used /var/lib/dpkg database (directory) from ther other working Linux machine with dpkg DB OK found in var_backup_debian10.tar.gz (linux:~# host with a working dpkg database) and then based on the dpkg package list correct database responding on jericho:~# to reinstall each and every package on the system using Debian System Reinstaller script taken from the internet.
Debian System Reinstaller works but to reinstall many packages, I've been prompted again and again whether to overwrite configuration or keep the present one of packages.
To Omit the annoying [Y / N ] text prompts I had made a slight modification to the script so it finally looked like this:
 

#!/bin/bash
# Debian System Reinstaller
# Copyright (C) 2015 Albert Huang
# Copyright (C) 2018 Andreas Fendt

# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.

# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.

# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

# —
# This script assumes you are using a Debian based system
# (Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, #!), and have sudo installed. If you don't
# have sudo installed, replace "sudo" with "su -c" instead.

pkgs=`dpkg –get-selections | grep -w 'install$' | cut -f 1 |  egrep -v '(dpkg|apt)'`

for pkg in $pkgs; do
    echo -e "\033[1m   * Reinstalling:\033[0m $pkg"    

    apt-get –reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confold" -y install $pkg || {
        echo "ERROR: Reinstallation failed. See reinstall.log for details."
        exit 1
    }
done

 

 debian-all-packages-reinstall.sh working modified version of Albert Huang and Andreas Fendt script  can be also downloaded here.

Note ! Omitting the text confirmation prompts to install newest config or keep maintainer configuration is handled by the argument:

 

-o Dpkg::Options::="–force-confold


I however still got few NCurses Console selection prompts during the reinstall of about 3200+ .deb packages, so even with this mod the reinstall was not completely automatic.

Note !  During the reinstall few of the packages from the list failed due to being some old unsupported packages this was ejabberd, ircd-hybrid and a 2 / 3 more.
This failure was easily solved by completely purging those packages with the usual

# dpkg –purge $packagename

and reruninng  debian-all-packages-reinstall.sh on each of the failing packages.

Note ! The failing packages were just old ones left over from Debian 8 and Debian 9 before the apt-get dist-upgrade towards 10 Duster.
Eventually I got a success by God's grance, after few hours of pains and trials, ending up in a working state package database and a complete set of freshly reinstalled packages.

The only thing I had to do finally is 2 hours of tampering why GNOME did not automatically booted after the system reboot due to failing gdm
until I fixed that I've temprary used ligthdm (x-display-manager), to do I've

dpkg –reconfigure gdm3

lightdm-x-display-manager-screenshot-gdm3-reconfige

 to work around this I had to also reinstall few libraries, reinstall the xorg-server, reinstall gdm and reinstall the meta package for GNOME, using below set of commands:
 

apt-get install –reinstall libglw1-mesa libglx-mesa0
apt-get install –reinstall libglu1-mesa-dev
apt install –reinstallgsettings-desktop-schemas
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg
apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-core
apt-get install –reinstall task-desktop
apt-get install –reinstall task-gnome-desktop

 

As some packages did not ended re-instaled on system because on the original host from where /var/lib/dpkg db was copied did not have it I had to eventually manually trigger reinstall for those too:

 

apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes thunderbird
apt-get install –reinstall –yes audacity
apt-get install –reinstall –yes gajim
apt-get install –reinstall –yes slack remmina
apt-get install –yes k3b
pt-get install –yes gbgoffice
pt-get install –reinstall –yes skypeforlinux
apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes libcurl3-gnutls libcurl3-nss
apt-get install –yes virtualbox-5.2
apt-get install –reinstall –yes vlc
apt-get install –reinstall –yes alsa-tools-gui
apt-get install –reinstall –yes gftp
apt install ./teamviewer_15.3.2682_amd64.deb –yes

 

Note that some of above packages requires a properly configured third party repositories, other people might have other packages that are missing from the dpkg list and needs to be reinstalled so just decide according to your own case of left aside working system present binaries that doesn't belong to any dpkg installed package.

After a bit of struggle everything is back to normal Thanks God! 🙂 !
 

 

Linux: Howto Disable logging for all VirtualHosts on Apache and NGINX Webservers one liner

Wednesday, July 1st, 2020

disable-apache-nginx-logging-for-all-virtualhosts
Did you happen to administer Apache Webservers or NGINX webservers whose logs start to grow so rapidly that are flooding the disk too quickly?
Well this happens sometimes and it also happens that sometimes you just want to stop logging especially, to offload disk writting.

There is an easy way to disable logging for requests and errors (access_log and error_log usually residing under /var/log/httpd or /var/log/nginx ) for  all configured Virtual Domains with a short one liner, here is how.

Before you start  Create backup of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled / or /etc/nginx to be able to revert back to original config.

# cp -rpf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ ~/

# cp -rpf /etc/nginx/ ~/


1. Disable Logging for All  Virtual Domains configured for Apache Webserver

First lets print what the command will do to make sure we don't mess something

# find /home/hipo/sites-enabled/* -exec echo sed -i 's/#*[Cc]ustom[Ll]og/#CustomLog/g' {} \;


You will get some output like

find /home/hipo//sites-enabled/* -exec echo sed -i 's/#*[Cc]ustom[Ll]og/#CustomLog/g' {} \;

find /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/* -exec sed -i 's/#*[Cc]ustom[Ll]og/#CustomLog/g' {} \;
find /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/* -exec sed -i 's/#*[Ee]rror[Ll]og/#ErrorLog/g' {} \;

2. Disable Logging for All configured Virtual Domains for NGINX Webserver
 

find /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/* -exec sed -i 's/#*access_log/#access_log/g' {} \;
find /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/* -exec sed -i 's/#*error_log/#error_log/g' {} \;

f course above substituations that will comment out with '#' occurances from file configs of only default set access_log and error_log / access.log, error.log 
for machines where there is no certain convention on file naming and there are multiple domains in custom produced named log files this won't work.

This one liner was inspired from a friend's daily Martin Petrov. Martin blogged initially about this nice tip for those reading Cyrillic check out mpetrov.net, so. Thanks Marto ! 🙂

Must have software on freshly installed windows – Essential Software after fresh Windows install

Friday, March 18th, 2016

Install-update-multiple-programs-applications-at-once-using-ninite

If you're into IT industry even if you don't like installing frequently Windows or you're completely Linux / BSD user, you will certainly have a lot of friends which will want help from you to re-install or fix their Windows 7 / 8 / 10 OS. At least this is the case with me every year, I'm kinda of obliged to install fresh windowses on new bought friends or relatives notebooks / desktop PCs.

Of course according to for whom the new Windows OS installed the preferrences of necessery software varies, however more or less there is sort of standard list of Windows Software which is used daily by most of Avarage Computer user, such as:
 

I tend to install on New Windows installs and thus I have more or less systematized the process.

I try to usually stick to free software where possible for each of the above categories as a Free Software enthusiast and luckily nowadays there is a lot of non-priprietary or at least free as in beer software available out there.

For Windows sysadmins or College and other public institutions networks including multiple of Windows Computers which are not inside a domain and also for people in computer repair shops where daily dozens of windows pre-installs or a set of software Automatic updates are  necessery make sure to take a look at Ninite

ninite-automate-windows-program-deploy-and-update-on-new-windows-os-openoffice-screenshot

As official website introduces Ninite:

Ninite – Install and Update All Your Programs at Once

Of course as Ninite is used by organizations as NASA, Harvard Medical School etc. it is likely the tool might reports your installed list of Windows software and various other Win PC statistical data to Ninite developers and most likely NSA, but this probably doesn't much matter as this is probably by the moment you choose to have installed a Windows OS on your PC.

ninite-choises-to-build-an-install-package-with-useful-essential-windows-software-screenshot
 

For Windows System Administrators managing small and middle sized network PCs that are not inside a Domain Controller, Ninite could definitely save hours and at cases even days of boring install and maintainance work. HP Enterprise or HP Inc. Employees or ex-employees would definitely love Ninite, because what Ninite does is pretty much like the well known HP Internal Tool PC COE.

Ninite could also prepare an installer containing multiple applications based on the choice on Ninite's website, so that's also a great thing especially if you need to deploy a different type of Users PCs (Scientific / Gamers / Working etc.)

Perhaps there are also other useful things to install on a new fresh Windows installations, if you're using something I'm missing let me know in comments.

Command to get CPU server load in % percentage using bash and /proc/stat on Linux

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

Command-to-get-CPU-server-load-in-percentage-using-bash-shell-script-and-linux-proc-stat

Getting load avarage is easy with uptime command, however since nowadays Linux servers are running on multiple CPU machines and Dual cores, returned load avarage shows only information concerning a single processor. Of course seeing overall CPU server load is possible with TOP / TLoad command  / HTOP and a bunch of other monitoring commands, but how you can get a CPU percentage server load using just  /proc/stat and bash scripting? Here is hwo:
 

:;sleep=1;CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);PREV_TOTAL=0;for VALUE in "${CPU[@]}”; do let “PREV_TOTAL=$PREV_TOTAL+$VALUE”;done;PREV_IDLE=${CPU[4]};sleep $sleep; CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);unset CPU[0];IDLE=${CPU[4]};TOTAL=0; for VALUE in “${CPU[@]}"; do let "TOTAL=$TOTAL+$VALUE"; done;echo $(echo "scale=2; ((($sleep*1000)*(($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL)-($IDLE-$PREV_IDLE))/($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL))/10)" | bc -l );

52.45

As you can see command output shows CPU is loaded on 52.45%, so this server will soon have to be replaced with better hardware, because it gets CPU loaded over 50%

It is useful to use above bash shell command one liner together with little for loop to refresh output every few seconds and see how the CPU is loaded in percentage over time.

 

for i in $(seq 0 10); do :;sleep=1;CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);PREV_TOTAL=0;for VALUE in "${CPU[@]}”; do let “PREV_TOTAL=$PREV_TOTAL+$VALUE”;done;PREV_IDLE=${CPU[4]};sleep $sleep; CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);unset CPU[0];IDLE=${CPU[4]};TOTAL=0; for VALUE in “${CPU[@]}"; do let "TOTAL=$TOTAL+$VALUE"; done;echo $(echo "scale=2; ((($sleep*1000)*(($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL)-($IDLE-$PREV_IDLE))/($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL))/10)" | bc -l ); done

47.50

13.86
27.36
82.67
77.18

To monitor "forever" output from all server processor overall load use:
 

while [ 1 ]; do :;sleep=1;CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);PREV_TOTAL=0;for VALUE in “${CPU[@]}”; do let “PREV_TOTAL=$PREV_TOTAL+$VALUE”;done;PREV_IDLE=${CPU[4]};sleep $sleep; CPU=(`cat /proc/stat | head -n 1`);unset CPU[0];IDLE=${CPU[4]};TOTAL=0; for VALUE in “${CPU[@]}"; do let "TOTAL=$TOTAL+$VALUE"; done;echo $(echo "scale=2; ((($sleep*1000)*(($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL)-($IDLE-$PREV_IDLE))/($TOTAL-$PREV_TOTAL))/10)" | bc -l ); done

 

 

Can you swim after communion? – What is better not to do after receiving the holy sacraments

Tuesday, July 29th, 2014

is-it-allowed-to-swim-after-holy-communion
I took the sacraments this Sunday, and as we're on a holiday and we go to swimming daily. I never swim eucharist in my wife, so a logical came is it allowed to swim after receiving the holy sacraments?

I've googled around to see for an answer but it seems from what I find there is no official plain answer telling whether swimming is allowed or not after communion.

As there is no official church position on this question, this question is solved privately with your priest (spiritual father), if you have such, if not you can do it according to your own conscious.

I've red there are some priests who say, the best practice is not to swim after communion at least 9 hours after holy communion.

For monks the question to swim or not after receiving the holy sacraments is clearly answered as monks are not allowed to go to a beach / undress or wear a swimwear. The reason for that swimming could turn to pleasing the flesh and even a passion in some cases.

otec_Georgi_Jeglarci_communion_chalice_holy-potir

For layman swimming is allowed, but it is dangerous to swim for the only reason, one can hurt himself during swimming and there might be bleeding and it is well known rule to try to follow not to have bleeding or open wounds during communion. Of course in some cases for old people who believe and take the holy blood and flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ with permanent open wounds this rule cannot be observed and with such there might be exceptions. But the general rule for healthy people to follow is to preserve themselves from bleeding after receiving holy communion.
Also an interesting thing that is good to observe after communion is not to take haircut on the same day, cut nails and even it is recommended to not take shower the same day.
The reason to generally try to not wash the body is because the blessing and renewal of the body by the holy spirit which is received in form of Christ's blood and flesh is bathing us and we don't want to wash out this blessing.

Christ-giving-holy-sacraments-to-holy-apostle-Paul

Of course to shower or not after communion is a personal decision. Also the one of the reasons not to haircut on same day as holy communion is it is usual to get a shower after haircut and it is better not to do that. No bleeding on the same day as communion is because we physically receive holy Christ's body and flesh and his holy gifts run through all our body including in the blood and we don't want to have to waste and "spill" this grace through bleeding.
Also on day of receiving holy sacraments it is church rule not to kiss, not to spit and walking barefoot (for the danger that you can hurt yourself and have a blood spill).

lastsupper-holy-orthodox-icon-what-to-do-after-holy-communion

If for some reason you fall and bleed the proper way to deal with the situation is to burn the tissue with the blood.

The number 9 hours to wait is significant in that it reminds us of the hours our Lord Jesus Christ spent to pay our debts with his holy blood and thus grant us salvation. This is the way of the cross starting from 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM, the trial, crucifixion, death, and laying in the tomb took a total of 9 hours.
Also trying consedering not to spit, not chew chewing gum, wash, take shower and kiss is important as it is a mean of watchfulness and as Christians we have to be watchful, at least some minor time after being allowed to re-join the Holy Body of Christ through the holy sacraments gifts in Church.

If you're bringing to communion your kids it is a different story and you can be less vigilent to obseve all this, as it is impossible to know what a kid could do.
It should be known except spitting, right after receiving the holy communion all is not a must observe rules but it is good ones to follow.

Most of the information of this post is based on Coptic Oriental Orthodox forum with questions and answers on wha it is better not to do after communion, anyways as we Eastern Orthodox Chrsitians are so close in faith to Copts, the answers there are true for us too.

Color Trick Microsoft and Google use to keep their users loyal and happy unwalfully

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Color mind influence has been longly researched. It is researched and there are some findingings on how we people react on colors. This researches are not much known and most of them are not put on the internet (??) One model claiming to have explained how colors influence is called HBDIHerrmann Brain Dominance Instruments.

In the picture beginning of this post, I have presented a quick "Personal Profile" of HBDI on how one think in order to determine in "which colors" one tends to think more ___

In short HBDI model claims to explain how people think in another model.
My personal view of it is it is like most science nowdays more based on faith than on a clearly conducted scientific research and facts. We know pretty well many people tried to explain how brain operates and many people give models to explain it however none of the models could grasp in completeness the complexity of human brain. Hence Businessman people who use this model in their daily life and they push it to us has put the model in action not that they know it is working but rather they believe it does .., Saying this few words as introduction I will contninue onwards to explain you about HBDI as in the business world it is considered as a "Strategic Asset" for a company success. Hence the use of richest companies of the model has a serious impact on us the common people and unknowing (uninformed) computer users.

Some of the companies who integrated the HBDI to their models we all know are of course not strangely Microsoft and Google
;;;

Below I present you a picture showing the HBDI The Whole Brain Model |||

HBDI The whole brain model

Next I show you Microsoft Windows OS worldly "infamous" flag |||

Microsoft Windows OS Flag

You can see for yourself the basic color from HBDI WHOLE brain model are integrated in the Microsoft flag, only the order of colors present and the color gamma is different;;;;

The basic colors in HBDI model to explain how human brain works is separated in 4 segments as you can see from above screenshot. There are a number of tests one can do to determine what is his exact HBDI profile, and in abstract terms in which kind of colors he prefers to think.

There are a whole "army" of people involved into this sect like philosophy (I call it philosophy as surely every model that tries to explain everything is doomed to fail it is the nature in which God created the universe so complex and he put us be part of it and not controllers of it that any Universal model trying to explain it has never succeeded so far. The HBDI has some fruits for the only reason it is believed to work well by the people with money.

As you see in the colors HBDI claims there are 4 segments corresponding to four basic colors

  • BLUE
  • YELLOW
  • GREEN
  • RED

Each of the colors is an indicator on how the person tends to think the BLUE people as HBDI practicioners (believers) calls them are —

Analytical, Fact Based, Logal, Quantitative

The YELLOW oriented people are claimed to be —

Holistic, Intuitive, Integrating, Synthesizing

The GREEN ones in model terms are interested in —

Organizing, Sequentiality, Planning, Detailizing facts

Finally the RED Ones are said to be —

Interpersonal, Feeling based, Kinesthetic, Emotional

Now as you can understand this model though it looks like promising is based on a philosophy which rejects the existing of spirit realm God Angels or good or evil. It claims everything we're are or we want to be can be achieved following the HBDI to develop your own brain.

This model as every human made model however does reject the fact that besides internal factors and brains we're put into external environment most of which we cannot control and therefore even if we try our best to have certain goals and complete them the external uncontrolled facts can be a reason to stop us to complete our goals.

Now back to my point, that Google, Microsoft and probably many other products and physical goods are heavily using the HBDI color scheme ;;;
Here is the Google Inc. Logo the color trait of HBDI is there:

Google Search Engine Logo and HBDI 4 colors embedded

For those doubting that Google Inc. and Microsoft Inc. are along the false believers of HBDI color scheme brain ideology I present below the Logo of Google Web Browser =- Google Chrome

Google Web Chrome Browser Logo 4 colors HBDI microsoft flag

It is evident 4 colors used as a main ones in the HBDI tool are present in Google Chrome just like in Microsoft Windows logo flag, the only difference is in the order of colors.
Also it is interesting the name Chrome that Google Chrome took is most likely taken from Aldous Huxley's – Brave New World (A book depicting a short future highly conditioned society) , the book story line goes around a society programmed to do the things they do.

I assume it is very likely that Google's founders Sergey Brin or some of their subordinate working for Google are very much into the idea of conditioning people just like in the book and this is most likely the reason they choose the Chrome as a title for Google's browser ,,,

The 4 Colors from HBDI yellow, green, blue, red are embedded also in the google .ico file (the little icon showing in browser URL bar), below is a screenshot of a tab where google is opened showing the .ico image:

Google Icon 4 colors Linux Debian Epiphany Browser tab screenshot

Do you remember the good old Windows XP start button, have you noticed the Windows flag embedded in it, if not let me show you;;;

Microsoft Windows XP Start Button and HBDI 4 colors scheme

But wait the Windows flag placed on the left bottom of Ms Windows-es is not only on XP it is also on Windows 3.11 cover, Winblows 98, Vista, Windows 2003, Windows 2007 and actually all the M$ operating systems ever produced since the very early days M$ become a top OS producer :::

Windows 3.11 Operating system logo flag

Microsoft Windows 95 4 colors flag and blue sky

Here is also the 4 colored (a bit like Nazi like looking) flag on M$ Win-doze 7 |||

MS Windows 7 start Menu m$ windows well known flag

Also the Microsoft Flag is positioned on the bottom left screen on purpose. It is well known fact that most of the world (except Arabic) are used to read the text from Left to Right

, therefore it is natural for our eyesight to look for the text on the left side. I just wonder why they placed the START on the bottom and not on top. It is natural we read text and books from the most top to the most bottom ,,,.,

Even Apple Computers nowdays Macs has most likely used the HBDI as the main 4 colors and some gamma from rainbow colors are present on their Classical Apple Computer logo

Old Apple Computer/s logo colors of rainbow 4 hbdi colors are there

Makes me wonder if Jobs employed the HBDI model in his company. Well what is the reason for people loving so much this rainbow colors combination. If we think for a second outside of HBDI's brainwashing ideology for what each color would stand for. Well it is simple is comes from our young years most of the people between age 2 and 50 years has been more or less exposed to the so colorful Kids Cartoons, which are all so colorfully painted. Since our very early age we've placed in us a love for colorfulness outlook (well again not all of us for example I prefer less colors, I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't like the heavy colors we see in almost everywhere around us).

The problem with this 4 colors use on purpose and all this unnatural color placing everywhere is that it is unnatural and not in good synergy with our surrounding natural environment. Therefore I personally think using a colorful color paintings on everywhere in both computer programs and the physical world plays us a bad joke and is one of the reasons so many people are on the virge to get crazy nowdays and many have already had already cracked out.

It is my firm believe more and more people should be educated on the harm of HBDI and the fact that, we're forced to 'live it' unwilfully every day by using even as "simple things" as computers and daily technology or buying food in the super market ,,,

SWITCH OFF your Mobile Phone and TV at night to save energy!!!

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE AT NIGHT to SAVE ENERGY and MONEY

We’re constantly being said to reduce energy consupmtion, they sell us new bulbs to save energy, new TVs with energy saving. The newer the computer equipment microwaves or whatever home electrical equipment we buy the more it is said to be saving energy.

So far so good it is true we can reduce energy consumption by producing gadgets which consume less. However there are also another approach to the “green problem” which we never are said about.

It is rather simply instead of saving energy on technology base, we can save energy on physical base. One simple thing to do to save energy with no need to spend money on latest advacement gadgets is to simply make it the old school way.

a -= Learn to switch off your lamps and home equipment whenever its not necessery

If you’re about to go to sleep, you can simply switch off the mobile and use a mechanical clock to wake you up on the morning, this way you have 3 benefits.

1; Less energy will be discharged by the mobile in the time you’re not awake, so you don’t need to charge so frequently the battery and therefore you will draw less energy from the Electrical network hence saving energy.

2; You will not be radiated with a bit less radiation produced by the Mobile phone in order to stay connected to the GSM local located cell.

Though the good this does will not be dramatical it for sure will be better for your health than if the mobile is switched on the whole night.

3; You will not be awakened in morning by some crazy person who just decided to call you early in the morning.
Often this morning unexpected and desired phone calls make you jump off the bed rapidly and hence giving a large dose of stress to your organizm.

-=- Of course switching off the mobile has some disadvantages if you can receive a crucial phone calls during all time of day or night you can’t afford to simply switch off the mobile, this is however not true for most people who work in an OFF-ICE.People working in offices can simply wake up at a scheduled time, get a shower do their morning hygiene and jump to a car or bus to the office so the need for having the mobile switched ON at night is not really needed.

Of course thinking in the same direction, it is logical that switching off the computer earlier when not needed, the wireless home router or the TV is another place from where a huge energy savings can be achieved.

If large amount of people re-learn their energy in-efficient habits to be more energy cautios a HUGE amounts of energy can be saved. This of course can have a positive impact on the monthly energy bills and hence can save you money in monthly expenses.

The TV is surely another big energy draining source, many people have the habit to sleep with a Television switched on. Besides this has a negative impact on the conscious since vast amounts of information are being stored and processed by the conscious and unconscious mind, also the lights emitted from the TV screen prevents the persons body to not have a pieceful rest.

Its rather stupid that companies are constantly ranting on how they improve their products to be energy friendly but they don’t invest even a penny to educate the masses that energy saving does not only depend on how good the technology is produced to save energy but also on how much the people are educated how to use the technology with energy saving in mind.Probably there are plenty of other ways a households can change their habits to save energy. I’ll be glad to hear some other suggestions ,,,

Barcodes are dangerous for human freedom! Technology not trustable!

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

This post will be short as I'm starting to think long posts are mostly non-sense. Have you people all wondered of barcoding?
All world stores around the world have now barcoding. Barcode numbers regulations are being orchestrated by certain bodies, we people have no control over. Barcoding makes us dependent on technology as only technology can be used to read and store barcodes. It is technology that issues the barcodes. We have come to a point, where we humans trust more technology than our physical fellows. Trusting technology more than the close people to us is very dangerous. What if technology is not working as we expect it to?
What if there are hidden ways to control technology that we're not aware of?

Technology concepts are getting more and more crazy and abstract.
Thinks about the virtualization for a while. Virtualuzation is being praised loudly these days and everyone is turnning to it thinking it is cheap and realiable? The facts I've seen and the little of experience I had with it were way less than convicable.
Who came with this stupid idea, oh yes I remember IBM came with this insane idea some about 40 years ago … We had sanity for a while not massively adopting IBM's virtualization bulk ideas and now people got crazy again to use a number of virtualization technologies.
If you think for a while Virtualization is unreality (unexistence) of matter over another unreality. The programs that makes computers "runs" are not existent in practice, they only exist in some electricity form. Its just a sort of electric field if you think on it on a conceptual level …
As we trust all our lives nowdays on technology, how do we know this technological stored information is not altered by other fields, how we can be sure it always acts as we think it does and should? Was it tested for at least 40 years before adoption as any new advancement should be.
Well Of course not! Everything new is just placed in our society without too much thinking. Someone gives the money for production, someone else buys it and installs it and its ready to go. Or at least that's how the consumers thinks and we have become all consumers. This is a big LIE we're constantly being convinced in!
It is not ready to work, it is not tested and we don't know what the consequence of it will be!
Technology and Genetically Modified Food are not so different in this that they both can produce unexpected results in our lives. And they're already producing the bad fruits as you should have surely seen.
You can see more and more people are getting sick, more people go to doctor more people have to live daily with medication to live a miserable dishealthy I wouldn't say live but "poor" existence …
Next time they tell you new technology is good for you and will make your life better, Don't believe them! This is not necessery true.
Though todays technology can do you good, In my view the harm seriously exceeds the good.

How to set up Qmail auto reply (Out of the Office), vacation message manually using .qmail message processing file

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

Qmail Logo Auto reply message / how to setup qmail auto reply out of the office vacation message

I had to setup a QMAIL auto reply (Out of the Office) message on 5 email addresses and since I haven't done it for a long time it took me a couple 20 minutes to consult Qmail (Life With Qmail http://lifewithqmail.org (great website!) documentation and read a couple of online forum threads until I finally remembered, how I used to be setting up a vacation message manually via qmail's .qmail file.

Of course Setting qmail auto reply can always be done via QmailAdmin or VQadmin ..Qmail Vpopmail web frontends however on many Qmail mail servers Qmailadmin or/and VQadmin is absent due to some reason or even on a big mail servers the server doesn't run Apache at all. Hence it is good to know how to set qmail vacation message directly via plain SSH terminal connection and this is why how this article got born.

So here is how I enable qmail auto reply "manually", through .qmail for my email address info@my-email-domain.com:

1. Set a /var/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail file with the following content:

| /usr/bin/autorespond 86400 3 /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation

2. Create /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation directory

linux:~# mkdir -p /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/

3. Create /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message file with auto reply message

First create the message file with touch command:

linux:~# touch /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message

Then put with vim or mcedit etc. an auto-reply vacation message similar to the sample below:

From: info@cadiainsurance.com
Subject: We have received your message. Thank you!

Dear Customer, we thank you for the interest in our services.
A member of our team will reply promptly to your enquiry shortly.

4. Set proper permissions for vacation/message and .qmail files

/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message and /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail files has to be owned by user/group vpopmail:vchkpw, e.g.:

linux:~# chown -R vpopmail:vchkpw /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation
linux:~# chown vpopmail:vchkpw /home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail

If you are a qmail administration with the requirement to create auto reply message for employees going on a holiday often (in a middle sized company office), setting up the out of the office auto reply manually one by one is a time consuming, annoying task and "crazy" task. Therefore some time ago while still I was employed in a Bulgarian mid-sized company called Design.BG, I've written a tiny shell script which creates qmail email users vacation messages by passing few arguments.

Here is my create_vpopmail_vacation.sh shell script
Note that this script might have a lot of bugs and is not much tested, so read it carefully and test it before you put it for daily use 😉
Happy Hacking! 😉

Abe’s Amazing Adventure, A Dangerous Dave 2 like GNU Linux / FreeBSD Arcade Game substitute

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Abe's Amazing Adventure Game menu screenshot, A Dangerous Dave like Linux arcade game
While looking over the installable packages in System -> Administration -> Software Center on my my Debian powered notebook, I’ve accidently rolled over a game called Abe’s Amazing Adventure , as a big oldschool arcade game fan, I’ve immediately clicked on Install being impatient to see the overall game atmosphere and gameplay as well as storyline.

Abe’s Amazing Adventure is available under the debian package name abe and can be installed by issuing:

debian:~# apt-get install abe I was pleasently surprised to find out the gameplay and the overall game feels like the golden classical arcade game Dangerous Dave

For youngsters who never played the amazing absolute killing arcade ! as well as for people who feel nostalgic about Dangerous Dave 2 here is a nice gameplay screenshot:

Dangerous Dave 2 screenshot

Here is also a screenshot of Abe’s Amazing Adventure gameplay:

Abes Amazing Adventure Dangerous Dave like Linux / BSD Arcade Game like screenshot

You can see the great resemblense between the two games even by the screenshot; In both games you have to collect keys to open doors and diamonds which gives you points. Of course there are some differences as you can see Abe’s Amazing Adventure ‘s graphics has some additional items like Baloons with which your main character can fly over distances (for a limited time). There is also more diversity in the enemy types you face on the road to unlock the different doors. The game has also a red stars which while taken saves the game so if you quit the game on next game load up starting the game automatically starts you from the last save point.

Abes Amazing Adventure Star gameplay Screenshot on Debian

The ( 6 ) baloons seen in the screenshot on the left upper corner can be used occasionally to fly some distance by pressing Enter .
There are health recovery kits one can take to recover, some health damaged by hitting obstacles on the way.
The game story is short but entertaining, just like the general game feel:

Abes amazing adventure game storyThe game music is relaxing and more or less in the spirit of arcade games, the keyboard interactivety is pretty good as well.One thing I see can be improved to make the game better are the graphics, they’re a bit childish and too cubical, where sometimes some more general characters and obstacles animation will give the game a better look. Anyways for the year 2003 and for a free software arcade the game is not bad. For children and growing kids the game is just perfect, even for big kids like me its good to spend an hour of jump and run fun 😉