Posts Tagged ‘difference’

Debug and Fix QMAIL Mail Server qmail-inject: fatal: qq temporary problem (#4.3.0) and ‘reformime[1648048]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fea608bef28 sp 00007fff3c8d4bc0 error 4’ errors after update from Debian 11 to Debian 12

Monday, September 2nd, 2024

finding-qmail-install-problems-common-reasons-for-unworking-qmail-debugging-qmail

For a legacy reasons and lack of time and fact once Qmail is run on a server it works almost forever if you don't do very major upgrades and you still to the same version I have few Qmail SMTP servers that are nowadays are there for historical reasons.

After the last major version upgrade from Debian 11 to Debian 12, I've got the qmail smtpd not completely running fine and I have to follow some of my previous blog notes on how to recover in that situations as well as some common logic to resolve it.

After the upgrade I started getting every few minutes a repeating really annoying error due to reformime crashing in /var/log/messages as well as in qmail logs, the exact error was as so

Sep  1 22:15:34 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [366799.585663] Code: eb e1 48 8d 15 31 96 13 00 e9 04 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 41 55 49 89 d5 41 54 49 89 f4 55 53 48 89 fb 48 83 ec 08 48 85 ff 74 58 <80> 3b 00 74 46 4c 89 e6 48 89 df e8 58 61 f8 ff 48 8d 2c 03 80 7d
Sep  1 22:17:50 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [366935.524185] reformime[1647438]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f0b9beeff28 sp 00007fff4ffd5850 error 4 in libc.so.6[7f0b9be76000+155000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
Sep  1 22:17:50 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [366935.524207] Code: eb e1 48 8d 15 31 96 13 00 e9 04 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 41 55 49 89 d5 41 54 49 89 f4 55 53 48 89 fb 48 83 ec 08 48 85 ff 74 58 <80> 3b 00 74 46 4c 89 e6 48 89 df e8 58 61 f8 ff 48 8d 2c 03 80 7d
Sep  1 22:18:44 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [366989.796532] reformime[1647577]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fe8e14bef28 sp 00007ffc000e9040 error 4 in libc.so.6[7fe8e1445000+155000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
Sep  1 22:18:44 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [366989.796554] Code: eb e1 48 8d 15 31 96 13 00 e9 04 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 41 55 49 89 d5 41 54 49 89 f4 55 53 48 89 fb 48 83 ec 08 48 85 ff 74 58 <80> 3b 00 74 46 4c 89 e6 48 89 df e8 58 61 f8 ff 48 8d 2c 03 80 7d
Sep  1 22:20:08 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [367072.889786] reformime[1647888]: segfault at 0 ip 00007efcaa6bef28 sp 00007ffdfe793560 error 4 in libc.so.6[7efcaa645000+155000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
Sep  1 22:20:08 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [367072.889809] Code: eb e1 48 8d 15 31 96 13 00 e9 04 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 41 55 49 89 d5 41 54 49 89 f4 55 53 48 89 fb 48 83 ec 08 48 85 ff 74 58 <80> 3b 00 74 46 4c 89 e6 48 89 df e8 58 61 f8 ff 48 8d 2c 03 80 7d
Sep  1 22:21:14 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [367139.010116] reformime[1648048]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fea608bef28 sp 00007fff3c8d4bc0 error 4 in libc.so.6[7fea60845000+155000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
Sep  1 22:21:14 pcfr_hware_local_ip kernel: [367139.010139] Code: eb e1 48 8d 15 31 96 13 00 e9 04 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 41 55 49 89 d5 41 54 49 89 f4 55 53 48 89 fb 48 83 ec 08 48 85 ff 74 58 <80> 3b 00 74 46 4c 89 e6 48 89 df e8 58 61 f8 ff 48 8d 2c 03 80 7d
Sep  1 22:22:43 pcfr_hware_local_ip rsyslogd: — MARK —

To debug more concretely what exactly was happening with reformime and why it was crashing with the libc segfault error, I've used the journalctl log with this cmd:

# journalctl -p 3 -xb

сеп 01 22:10:27 pcfrxen qmail-scanner-queue.pl[2170438]: X-Qmail-Scanner-2.10st:[pcfrxen17252178278122170438] d_m: output spotted from /usr/bin/reformime  -x/var/spool/qscan/tmp/pcfrxen17252178278122170438/ (Segmentation fau>
                                                            ) – that shouldn't happen!
сеп 01 22:11:11 pcfrxen qmail-scanner-queue.pl[2170631]: X-Qmail-Scanner-2.10st:[pcfrxen17252178718122170631] d_m: output spotted from /usr/bin/reformime  -x/var/spool/qscan/tmp/pcfrxen17252178718122170631/ (Segmentation fau>
                                                            ) – that shouldn't happen!
сеп 01 22:15:32 pcfrxen qmail-scanner-queue.pl[2171777]: X-Qmail-Scanner-2.10st:[pcfrxen17252181328122171777] d_m: output spotted from /usr/bin/reformime  -x/var/spool/qscan/tmp/pcfrxen17252181328122171777/ (Segmentation fau>
                                                            ) – that shouldn't happen!
сеп 01 22:15:35 pcfrxen qmail-scanner-queue.pl[2171793]: X-Qmail-Scanner-2.10st:[pcfrxen17252181358122171793] d_m: output spotted from /usr/bin/reformime  -x/var/spool/qscan/tmp/pcfrxen17252181358122171793/ (Segmentation fau>
                                                            ) – that shouldn't happen!
сеп 01 22:21:21 pcfrxen qmail-scanner-queue.pl[2173427]: X-Qmail-Scanner-2.10st:[pcfrxen17252184788122173427] d_m: output spotted from /usr/bin/reformime  -x/var/spool/qscan/tmp/pcfrxen17252184788122173427/ (Segmentation fau>
                                                            ) – that shouldn't happen!


As you can see this showed that the problem is with reformime's passing on -x argument, and some temporary directory, thus to make sure the crash is not a cause of some mixed permissions, I've had to check the /var/spool/qscan permissions, and clamd permissions and few other permissions of the qmail install, and the wrong permissions (perhaps after the update of clamav after the Debian Linux migration was with /var/lib/clamav which was incorrectly owned by user clamav group clamav instead of the qscand / qscand user group, thus to resolve, I've run:

chown qscand:qscand /var/lib/clamav/ -R


Another thing I've had to correct was the /var/log/qmail permissions which was too permissive (perhaps due to some old install time hurry up stupidity done), so to correct, them:

# chmod 750 /var/log/qmail/


First thing i tried to resolve is of course to reinstall maildrop debian package that provides /usr/bin/reformime binary. 

root@pcfreak:/usr/local/bin# dpkg -l |grep -i maildrop
rc  courier-maildrop                      0.68.2-1                                                                   amd64        Courier mail server – mail delivery agent
ii  maildrop                              2.9.3-2.1                                                                  amd64        mail delivery agent with filtering abilities (set-GID=mail)

In an old post of mine on a similar error Fixing Qmail 451 qq temporary problem (#4.3.0) / @4000000050587780174c60dc status: qmail-todo stop processing asap / status: exiting, part of the solution was to reinstall maildrop, so tried this one:

root@pcfreak:/usr/local/bin# apt install –reinstall maildrop


Of course to try it out restarted qmail with the usual 

# qmailctl restart

Sadly enough this doesn't solve it, so I had to look up for other solutions and spend about 3 / 4 hours reading online just to convince myself that finding any meaningful in the classical human way, is becoming pretty much impossible task. As the content of information on the Internet has grown tremendously over the last years, it seems the quality of posts and commited data is exponentially detereorating. So the only way to solve crashes of binaries is either to stick to a debugger such as gdb or simply try rebuild the .deb binary from scratch and see whether a recompile from source might makes a difference.

After even more digging up online, found out some Gentoo forums threads, where people described thethe issue was also connected to the failing reformime libc use bug, with an applied C patch, found threads on Ubuntu and Debian users complaining about mysterious errors with libc with maildrop and even a bug report that this is some kind of libc bug, related to the precompiled version of maildrop shipped by default deb based repos.

Hence, My approach to resolve it was to recompile maildrop from source code, which even though looking a tedious task came with plenty of dependencies, I had to install plenty of developlment libraries and tools, compilers etc. as well as the following libs.

# apt install pcre2-utils
# apt install libpcre2-dev
# apt install libidn11
# apt install libidn2-dev
# apt install libcourier-unicode-dev
# apt install libcourier-unicode4

Then had to download and install from source the latest available versions of courier-authlib and its dependencies courier-unicode and once having those two recompiled with

# links https://sourceforge.net/projects/courier/files/courier/1.3.12/courier-1.3.12.tar.bz2/download
# links https://sourceforge.net/projects/courier/files/maildrop/3.1.8/maildrop-3.1.8.tar.bz2/download
# links https://sourceforge.net/projects/courier/files/authlib/0.72.3/courier-authlib-0.72.3.tar.bz2/download
# links https://sourceforge.net/projects/courier/files/courier-unicode/2.3.1/courier-unicode-2.3.1.tar.bz2/download

# tar -jxvf courier-unicode-2.3.1.tar.bz2
# tar -jxvvf courier-authlib-0.72.3.tar.bz2
# tar -jxvvf maildrop-3.1.8.tar.bz2

# cd courier-unicode-2.0/
# ./configure && make && make install

# cd ..
# cd courier-authlib-0.72.3
​# ./configure && make && make install
# cd ..

# cd maildrop-3.1.8/
​# ./configure && make && make install

I've took the time to also preinstall a bunch of perl modules deb packages which rawly are the ones found in file, i've built with the binaries perl-modules-for-qmail-needed.txt

To reinstall the binaries, run a small shell loop:

# for i in $(cat perl-modules-for-qmail-needed.txt); do apt install –reinstall $i –yes; done


Have to say also identified an issue with /var/qmail/bin/qmail-scanner-queue.pl with qmail-inject failing after testing qmail-scanner-queue installation with:

# /downloads/qmail-scanner-2.11st/contrib/test_installation.sh -doit
 

# ./test_installation.sh -doit

Sending standard test message – no viruses… 1/4
qmail-inject: fatal: qq temporary problem (#4.3.0)
Bad error. qmail-inject died


Anyone who ever administrated Qmail Mail server knows pretty well, about the Terrible error:

qmail-inject: fatal: qq temporary problem (#4.3.0)


and that it could be mostly anything, thus anyways to find out what might be the cause I've continued to Debug.

# ldd qmail-inject
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffc43f5a000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fcc2099b000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fcc20ba1000)


To succed debug the QMAIL issues with qmail I found as very useful something from another old post of mine on debugging qmail errors – Testing Qmail installation for problems: Common reasons for unworking qmail / How to debug Qmail mail server failing to delivery or send emails, the following log debug loop:

# for i in $(ls -d /var/log/qmail/*qmail*/); do tail -n 10 $i/current|tai64nlocal; sleep 5; done


Finally the last step resolve the qmail-inject error, was to modify /var/qmail/bin/qmail-scanner-queue.pl and exchange PATH of /usr/bin/reformime default shipped debian repository to new custom built /usr/local/bin/reformime.


After retesting the qmail-scanner installation all seemed fine onwards:
 

# /downloads/qmail-scanner-2.11st/contrib/test_installation.sh -doit

Sending standard test message – no viruses… 1/4
done!

Sending eicar test virus – should be caught by perlscanner module… 2/4
done!

Sending eicar test virus with altered filename – should only be caught by commercial anti-virus modules (if you have any)… 3/4
done!

Sending bad spam message for anti-spam testing – In case you are using SpamAssassin… 4/4


If you have enabled $sa_quarantine, $sa_delete or $sa_reject the
spam-message wont't arrive to the recipients. But if you have enabled
(good idea!) 'debug' you should check
/var/spool/qscan/qmail-queue.log (or where ever you have the log).


        Done!

Finished test. Now go and check Email sent to postmaster@mail.pc-freak.net and/or the log..

Thibs Qmail install qmr_inst_check script also reported my server qmail install scripts as in good state:
 

# /downloads/scripts/qmr_inst_check
! vpopmail database do not exist!

So Hip Hip Hooray my Qmails works again ! Me fixed it again ! 
if you need help with fixing your company Professional Mail QMAIL server or Postfix, contact me via the contact form. Enjoy

 

Saint Emilianos (Emilian) of Dorostorum (Silistra) ancient saint venerated in Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Saturday, August 5th, 2023

saint_Emilian-Dorostolski-Dorostorum-780x470-orthodox-icon

Saint Emilian / Emilianos Dorostolski is a martyr revered with a feast day by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

According to his biography, he was born in Durostorum (now Silistra Bulgaria), where he spent his life as a servant (or slave) to the mayor.
He lived in the time of Emperor Julian (the apostate).

Emperor Julian sent a new governor to Dorostol charged with the task of eradicating Christianity from the city.

Frightened by his fame as a very cruel ruler, the local inhabitants hide from him that there are Christians among them and declare that they all worship the pagan gods.
Satisfied, he gives a feast to the citizens, but for the zealous Christian Aemilianus (Emilianos), the boasting of the pagan governor is unbearable, and during the feast he smashes the statues of the pagan gods in the sanctuary with a hammer.

An innocent person is accused of the crime, but knowing this, Emilian appears before the governor and confesses his guilt.

The city was fined for harboring Christians, and Aemilianus himself, after torture, was burned at the stake by the Danube[1] (river) on July 18, 362; this date is today the day of his veneration by the church[2].

It is assumed that the life of Saint Emilian was written immediately after the saint's death – the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century. Its earliest variants are generally two.

The first is based on the so-called Codex Vaticanus 866 (published by Boschius in 1868), and the second is based on the so-called Codex Parisiensis of the 9th century (published by François Halkin). Although the Codex Parisiensis largely repeats the Codex Vaticanus, there is a difference between the two lives in both the date of Aemilian's martyrdom and the location of his obituary. According to the first, Emilian was burned at the stake on September 3 in Gedina (localized near the present-day village of Golesh), and according to the second, it happened on July 18 in Gezedina, right next to Durostorum (fortress).

Information about Saint Emilian can also be found in blessed Jerome, and saint Ambrose (Ambrosius) of Milan, Theophanes the Confessor and Nicephorus Callistus.
In the Church-Slavic hagiography, the life enters mainly from its later copies in the Paschal Chronicle (Chronicon Paschalae), the Synaxarium (Church book with the service text dedicated to the sant) of the Constantinople Patriarchate (Synaxarium Constantinopolitanum) and the Monthly Message of Emperor Basil II (Menologium Basilii (Basilius) II).

A major difference between the early lives and their later editions is Aemilian's social status.

According to the late Church Slavonic redactions, he was a slave / servant of the mayor of Durostorum (today city of Silistra Bulgaria), while according to the earlier ones he himself was of noble birth – his father Sevastian was the governor of the city – and was a soldier (presumably from the XI Claudius Legion)[3].

 

Sources

 1. Georgi Atanasov, 345 early Christian saints-martyrs from the Bulgarian lands I – IV centuries / Publisher: Unicart ISBN: 9789542953012 / page 11
  2. Lives of the Saints. Synodal publishing house. Sofia, 1991. pp. 337-338.
  3. St. Emilian Dorostolski: My name is Christian

Other Research sources

  • Constantinesco, R. Les martyrs de Durostorum. – Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Europeennes, 5, 1967, No. 1 – 2, 14 – 19.
  • G. Atanasov. St. Emilian Dorostolsky († 362) – the last early Christian martyr in Mysia. – In: Civitas divino-humana in honor of Professor Georgi Bakalov. S. 2004, 203 – 218.
  • Ivanova, R., G. Atanasov, P. Donevski. History of Silistra. T. 1. The ancient Durostorum. Silistra-S., 2006.
  • Atanasov, G. The Christian Durostorum-Druster. Varna, 2007.

How to synchronize with / from Remote FTP server using LFTP like with rsync

Sunday, October 15th, 2017

how-to-synchronize-from-remote-ftp-server-easily-like-rsync.jpg

Have you ever been in a need to easily synchronize with a remote host which only runs FTP server?

Or are you in a local network and you need to mirror a directory or a couple of directories in a fast and easy to remember way?

If so then you'll be happy to use below LFTP command that is doing pretty much the same as Rsync, with only difference that it can mirror files over FTP (old but gold File Transfer Protocol).
 

lftp -u FTP_USERNAME,FTP_PASSWORD -e 'mirror REMOTE_DIRECTORY LOCAL_DIRECTORY' FTP_SERVER_HOSTNAME


Enjoy and thanks to my dear friend Amridikon for the tip ! 🙂

How Orthodox Easter is calculated or Why Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha (later) on a different date from Roman Catholics ?

Tuesday, April 5th, 2016

 

 

why-eastern-orthodox-eastern-is-on-different-date-from-roman-catholics-why-we-orthodox-celebrate-easter-later

 

 


Why Does Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate their Eastern often on a later or a different date from (Western Christians) – Roman Catholic Church, Greek Catholic Church, Anglican, Presbyterian or Protestant (Evangelist), Old Catholic Methodist, Calvinist or some other kind of Lutheran or Charismatic Christian sects?

If you happen to be born innd raised in America or Western European contry it is most likely, you're little if at all or not at all aware of the fact that in the Eastern Orthodox Churches the date of Eastern (Passcha) is celebrated often on a different date from the Roman Catholic and the other schismatic churches.

For example, this year 2016 Roman Catholics already celebrated Passcha on March 27th and we Eastern Orthodox Christians are still in the Great Lent (Fasting) period and we'll have the Easter celebrated on 1st of May.
That certainly raises some questions across people who are not Eastern Orthodox, because the Western Roman Catholic Church and the rest of Protestant Christians are the biggest group of Christians out there and even atheists and people belonging to other religions such as Buddhism or Islam might be puzzled why the Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate easter on a different they if after all they're Christian and what and why is this division among Christians?

With the increased globalization of the World and the fact that currently there are a lot of multi-national international companies and the fact that the companies and businesses today are mostly multi-cultural with people from all the world and all religions across the globe, for some countries situated within countries with predominant Eastern Orthodox population such as Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia etc. it might be quite a disturbance because there Orthodox Christian country situated branches might be not able to operate on the days of Orthodox Easter. 

Here is a short example on the martch and dismatch by years between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church by years from 2010 to 2020

 

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Easters from year 2010 to 2020

Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
                       
Catholic 4/4 24/4 8/4 31/3 20/4 5/4 27/3 16/4 1/4 21/4 12/4
Orthodox 4/4 24/4 15/4 5/5 20/4 12/4 1/5 16/4 8/4 28/4 19/4

Easter 2000 to 2009

Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
                     
Catholic 23/4 15/4 31/3 20/4 11/4 27/3 16/4 8/4 23/3 12/4
Orthodox 30/4 15/4 5/5 27/4 11/4 1/5 23/4 8/4 27/4 19/4


A complete list of Eastern Orthodox Pascha feast days is here

Funnly or strangely e ven many people who are situated within an Eastern Orthodox country doesn't have a good understanding why and what is the reason our Eastern Orthodox Easter feast is celebrated on a different date.
There is a lot written on the reasons why Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates on a different date Passcha from Catholics however in this article, I'll try to make it as short and clear as the reasons behind are often presented quiet messy.

 

In short there are 2 reasons (rules) why Eastern Orthodox Christian Church celebrates Eastern often on a different date:

1) The Julian calendar which is still used by the Eastern Orthodox Church for counting time
2) Adherence of the Orthodox to the early practices of the Original and Ancient Christian Church for Christian Passcha to not coincide with the Jewish Passover

The consequence of these 2 rules is that the Eastern Orthodox Christians on about 50% of the time throughout  years celebrate Christistmas later from Catholics because the Orthodox Church is following the First Church Ecumenical Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) that has set the rule that Passcha must take place always after the Jewish Passover  because in the Church the Biblical described consequence of events of the Passover and the Crucifix are followed, it appears rest of the Christian churches ignore (break) this requirement and this makes them fall under the Anatemas of the Church fathers from the I Ecumenical Council (see the Full decisions of the 7 Ecumenical Canonical Councils of the Original Church here).


Here the difference for Catholics celebrating on a different date Eastern stems from the fact since the XVI century they're using in Catholic Church the Gregorian calendar (adopted by Pope Gregory the XIII-th) because of scientifical superiority claimed by the Gregorian calendar.

Gregorian Julian calendar-fall-behind-dates by years from 1582 to year 2200

Well as you can see the scientific accuracy of Gregorian calendar is better and with years the Julian calendar is starting to miss astronomical re-calculated dates, causing mathematical incorrectness but the problem with the acceptance of the Gregorian Calendar and the reason why the Eastern Orthodox Church decided not to use the Gregorian calendar for Pascha is the fact that when the Gregorian Calendar was accepted in secular western world and the  Roman Catholic Church in order to matematically align the missing date 13 days were simply dropped off (or from Thursday 4th of October 1582 under Julian Calendar the next day Friday people started being in 15th of October, see the picture below:

inconsistency_change_from_Julian_to_Gregorian_calendar-Date_Change-and-the-missing-13-days

Well as you can see Friday October the 15,  1582 was quite a crazy year for the people as they lay down as 4th of Thursday and they woke up on 15th the next day 🙂

The Eastern Orthodox still to follow the Julian Calendar for Easter feast and some Churches adopted to using partly the Gregorian (Secular) calendar for some of the feasts under the pressure of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate , whether some Churches such as the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) which as of time of writting is the biggest Orthodox Crhuch as well as the Serbian Church are completely using the Julian calendar for calculating all feast days. Now what should be known is difference between Julian and Gregorian calendar is 13 days falling back (Gregorian Calendar is 13 days in future), while Julian calendar is 13 days in time behind the Gregorian.
However as prior said sometimes throughout years the Easterns of (Western) Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church coincide, such a date on which we celebrated Eastern on one date is on 24 April 2011.
The two dates coincide when the full moon following the equinox comes so late that it counts as the first full moon after 21 March in the Julian calendar as well as the Gregorian.
In recent years the conciding years was frequent in 2010, 2011, 2014 and will be again  2017 but after that there will be no coincidence of Orthodox and  Catholic Easter feasts until 2034.

For those who might be wondering why the Eastern Orthodox Church choose to not celebrate Easter on a different date here is some information on how Pascha (Easter) was determined historically in the One and Holy Apostolic Church
which for historical and dogmatical reasons is today Our Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.

During the first three centuries of Christianity, some Christians celebrates Pascha on the First date after Jewish Passover and others celebrates the feast on the same time as Passover.
This was causing confusions in across Churches and this together with other heretical teachings caused the Holy Church Fathers (successors of Holy Apostols) of the First Ecumenical Council to gather and decide
how to solve the issue.

The Holy Fathers therefore devices a uniform formula for calculating the date of the Pascha that was inline and taking in consideration the most early traditions of the Church as well as the Biblical
sequence of events.

Here is the Easter calculation forumla devices on I Ecumenical Council:

Pascha is to be always celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox but  always after the Jewish Passover.
 

To even better ensure that there was no confusion as to when the vernal equinox occured the date of the vernal equinox was set to be March 21 (which is April 3rd or 13 days later on the Julain Calendar).
The formula was universally accepted by all of Christianity, ensuring the Pascha was celebrated on the same day throughout the entire Universe (world).
The Eastern Orthodox Church which is keeping to strictly keep the decisions of the fathers 7 Councils and thus strictly keeps the formula in the Church.
The Western Church (Roman Catholic Church) used to be holding also the Eastern calculation formula however in modern times it rejected the Nicene formulate that requires that Pascha to always follow the Jewish  Passover.

Now as the apostacy from True Christian faith is increasing Western theologians and many of the misguided or so called heretical (ecumenism movement oriented) orthodox theologians are starting to claim that the provision about the formula
was not important and thus provision of the formula is rejected and thus ignoring the fact that during years 325 – 1582 as well as the historical date from early Christian historians and Early Canons such as Canon VII of the Apostolic Canons clearly reads:

“If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Pascha before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.”
 

 The Calendar Issue came to be in 1582  by Pope Gregory XIII with  instituted reform of the traditional Julian calendar. Actually the Protestant Reformation in its beginning harshly defended the Julian Calendar and kept the new Julian Calendar as an unnecessery information at times
when large chunks of the protestantized countries such as Germany and Netherlands were thinking actively of joining the Orthodox Church, however for some historical reason and by the settle backs of the Roman Catholic Church the rejoining of large sea of protestants with Orthodox sadly never happened.

Until 1923 all Eastern Orthodox Chuches was following the Julian calendar for all yearly feasts however as in 1923 an inter-Orthodox congress was helpd in Constantinople attended by some but not all of the Orthodox Churches, the Church fathers gathering took the very
controversial decision to follow a revised Julian calendar (the so called new Orthodox Church Calendar / New Style) which is essentially the same as Gregorian calendar for all things except the celebration of Pascha and few other feasts which continued to be celebrated across all Orthodox Churches on the same dates across all  Eastern Orthodox Churches who are in full eucharistic communion.

The official claimed reason for accepting the Gregorian calendar and moving most of the feasts +13 days in future  was that within some eastern countries many of the orthodox christian workers couldn't attend many of the 12 important feasts because of work duties (for example 7th of January is a working day in most of the world except Russia and thus it is a problem for many to attend the Church service and prepare and much more confortable if the feast is celebrated on 24th of December like it is in Roman Catholic and Protestant christians) – i.e. the change was initiated most for economical reasons right after the end of the 1st world war.

The result is now many of the great 12 Church Feasts in Orthodox Church like Christmas (Nativity of Christ), Epiphany, the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos, Entrance Presentation of the Theotokos in many of the Orthodox Churches together with Catholics but not with Russian Church and the other Orthodox Churches who still stick to the Julian Calendar.
The only other feasts which are being celebrated together with Russian Orthodox Church is Pentecost and Ascension as they're movable feasts depending on Pascha according to Julian calendar.

For us Orthodox tradition and Church teachings are of paramount importance and thus sadly the change to re-visited Julian calendar just created further confusion internally in the Eastern Orthodox Church, today many people who completely stick to the Julian calendar and refuse the re-visited Julian calendar has joined Schismatic Self-Proclaimed Orthodox Old Calendar Churches or for those who prefered to stay in full communion with the rest of the Eastern Orthodox Churches and stick to old calendar joined the Russian Orthodox Church and Serbian Church as they're considered to better keep the true faith tradition and spiritual descendance from the holy apostles. The question of the calendar difference has been largely discussed within the Orthodox Church and hopefully on the upcoming Holy All Orthodox Council upcoming this year in June 16 – 27 2016 the question of returning back the Old Julian calendar for all Church feasts might be also raised and resolved, once and for all.

As a closure I'll say that the most important thing why Pascha tends to falls different from Catholics is to show that actually the Eastern Orthodox Church is the original Church and different from Roman Catholic and the true Church of Christ falling the prescription of the Church fathers.

P.S. As the so called "Holy Orthodox Council", often called by many 8th ecumenical counil already has taken place in Crete and there was no real signs for it to be neither ecuminical nor holy as the Bulgarian, The Russian, Antiochian and Georgian Orthodox Churches refused to take participation and the overall observation online from their website holycouncil.org  evidently shows that this council is not needed neither solved any of the real important non-doctrinal problems of the Orthodox Church it also prooved to be a PR kind of council trying to make in the eyes of the world the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomeo to look like an Orthodox Church (head) pope and perhaps the ones who organized this council had this intention together with the intention to put even more confusion concerning the unity of the Orthodox Church and separate the chirch into two parties (a conservatives) and (liberals) sides.
Also after the council finalized it prooved not to be really what it meant to be Thanks be to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The refusal of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to take participation in the council from my point of view as a member of the Orthodox Church was a right one and has delayed the plans of global enemies of the church to destroy it.
An interesting rumor is the holy council in Crete was sponsored with 70 000 000 from anonymous donators within United States some priests claim the money come from secret societies such as free masonry also it is mostly ridiculous the costs that this ecumenical council impeded.

 

How to check if your Linux WebServer is under a DoS attack

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

There are few commands I usually use to track if my server is possibly under a Denial of Service attack or under Distributed Denial of Service

Sys Admins who still have not experienced the terrible times of being under a DoS attack are happy people for sure …

1. How to Detect a TCP/IP Denial of Service Attack This are the commands I use to find out if a loaded Linux server is under a heavy DoS attack, one of the most essential one is of course netstat.
To check if a server is under a DoS attack with netstat, it’s common to use:

linux:~# netstat -ntu | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n|wc -l

If the output of below command returns a result like 2000 or 3000 connections!, then obviously it’s very likely the server is under a DoS attack.

To check all the IPS currently connected to the Apache Webserver and get a very brief statistics on the number of times each of the IPs connected to my server, I use the cmd:

linux:~# netstat -ntu | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
221 80.143.207.107 233 145.53.103.70 540 82.176.164.36

As you could see from the above command output the IP 80.143.207.107 is either connected 221 times to the server or is in state of connecting or disconnecting to the node.

Another possible way to check, if a Linux or BSD server is under a Distributed DoS is with the list open files command lsof
Here is how lsof can be used to list the approximate number of ESTABLISHED connections to port 80.

linux:~# lsof -i TCP:80
litespeed 241931 nobody 17u IPv4 18372655 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 25u IPv4 18372659 TCP 85.17.159.89:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 30u IPv4 29149647 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:54565 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 33u IPv4 18372647 TCP 85.17.159.93:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 34u IPv4 29137514 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:50885 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 35u IPv4 29137831 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:52312 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 37w IPv4 29132085 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:50000 (ESTABLISHED)

Another way to get an approximate number of established connections to let’s say Apache or LiteSpeed webserver with lsof can be achieved like so:

linux:~# lsof -i TCP:80 |wc -l
2100

I find it handy to keep track of above lsof command output every few secs with gnu watch , like so:

linux:~# watch "lsof -i TCP:80"

2. How to Detect if a Linux server is under an ICMP SMURF attack

ICMP attack is still heavily used, even though it’s already old fashioned and there are plenty of other Denial of Service attack types, one of the quickest way to find out if a server is under an ICMP attack is through the command:

server:~# while :; do netstat -s| grep -i icmp | egrep 'received|sent' ; sleep 1; done
120026 ICMP messages received
1769507 ICMP messages sent
120026 ICMP messages received
1769507 ICMP messages sent

As you can see the above one liner in a loop would check for sent and recieved ICMP packets every few seconds, if there are big difference between in the output returned every few secs by above command, then obviously the server is under an ICMP attack and needs to hardened.

3. How to detect a SYN flood with netstat

linux:~# netstat -nap | grep SYN | wc -l
1032

1032 SYNs per second is quite a high number and except if the server is not serving let’s say 5000 user requests per second, therefore as the above output reveals it’s very likely the server is under attack, if however I get results like 100/200 SYNs, then obviously there is no SYN flood targetting the machine 😉

Another two netstat command application, which helps determining if a server is under a Denial of Service attacks are:

server:~# netstat -tuna |wc -l
10012

and

server:~# netstat -tun |wc -l
9606

Of course there also some other ways to check the count the IPs who sent SYN to the webserver, for example:

server:~# netstat -n | grep :80 | grep SYN |wc -l

In many cases of course the top or htop can be useful to find, if many processes of a certain type are hanging around.

4. Checking if UDP Denial of Service is targetting the server

server:~# netstat -nap | grep 'udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort |uniq -c |sort -n

The above command will list information concerning possible UDP DoS.

The command can easily be accustomed also to check for both possible TCP and UDP denial of service, like so:

server:~# netstat -nap | grep 'tcp|udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort |uniq -c |sort -n
104 109.161.198.86
115 112.197.147.216
129 212.10.160.148
227 201.13.27.137
3148 91.121.85.220

If after getting an IP that has too many connections to the server and is almost certainly a DoS host you would like to filter this IP.

You can use the /sbin/route command to filter it out, using route will probably be a better choice instead of iptables, as iptables would load up the CPU more than simply cutting the route to the server.

Here is how I remove hosts to not be able to route packets to my server:

route add 110.92.0.55 reject

The above command would null route the access of IP 110.92.0.55 to my server.

Later on to look up for a null routed IP to my host, I use:

route -n |grep -i 110.92.0.55

Well hopefully this should be enough to give a brief overview on how, one can dig in his server and find if he is under a Distributed Denial of Service, hope it’s helpful to somebody out there.
Cheers 😉

Selecting Best Wireless channel / Choosing Best Wi-FI channel for Wireless Routers or (How to improve Wireless Network performance)

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Wireless AP
Below are some valuable advices on Wireless Access Point initial install and configuration to better off your Wireless connection.It’s worthy to note that the 2.4 GHz

Wi-Fi signal range is divided into a number of smaller bands or “channels,” similar to television channels. I decided to run my wireless on channel 12 since this there was no other wireless routers operating on that frequency, though most routers are preconfigured to spread it’s signal on channel 6.

There is a difference in channels available for setup for 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks in the United States and the European Union. In the USA the wireless channels available are from (1 to 11) whether in the EU it’s in the range of (1-13). Each of the Wireless channels run on a different frequency.

The lower the number of the channel is the lowest the radiating frequence band on which data is transmitted .Subsequently, increasing the channel increases the frequency slightly. Therefore the higher the channel you select on your AP the lesser the overlap with other devices running on the same channel and thus the lesser the possibility to overlap and interference.
It’s quite likely that you experience problems, if you use the default wireless channel which is 6.
If that’s the case it’s recommended to use either channel 1 or channel 11. In case of interference, i.e. overlap with other wireless networks, cellphones etc., there are 2 possible ways to approach the situation. In case of smaller interference, any change in channel on which there is no wireless device running could fix it up. The second way is to choose a wireless channel for your router in between 1,6 or 11 in (The USA) or 1,7,13 in Europe.
Up to 3 networks can run on the same space with minimum interference, therefore it would be a wise idea to check the list of wireless routers in your and check if there are others running on the same frequency.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the post I initially started running my wireless on channel 12, however after I discovered it is recommended to run your wireless router either on channel 1 7 or 13 in Europe I switched my D-Link DI-524 wireless router to transmit it’s signal on Channel 13.

I should testify that after changing the wireless channel, there was quite an improvement in my wireless connection.For instance before I change to Channel 13 (when my wireless internet was still streamed on channel 12) my wireless had constantly issues with disconnects because of low wireless signal.

Back then My wireless located physically in like 35 meters away set in another room, I can see my wireless router hardly connected on like 35%, changing to channel 13 enhanced my connection to the current 60% wireless router availability.

It’s also an interesting fact that Opened Wireless networks had better network thoroughput, so if you’re living in a house with a neighbors a bit distant from your place then you might consider it as a good idea to completely wipe out Wireless Router security encryption and abandon the use of WEP or WPA network encryption.

In case if all of the above is not working for you, you might consider take a close look at your Wireless Wireless LAN pc card and see if there are no any kind of bumps there. Another really interesting fact to know is that many people here in Bulgaria tend to configure there Wireless Access Points on channels either 1,6 or 11 which is quite inadequate considering that we’re in the EU and we should use a wireless channel between 1, 7 or 13 as prescribed for EU citizens.

Another thing not to forget is to place your wireless in a good way and prevent it from interferences with other computer equipment. For example keep the router at least few meters away from PC equipment, printers, scanners, cellphones, microwaves. Also try to put your wireless router on some kind of central place in your home, if you want to have the wireless signal all around your place.

At my place I have a microwave in the Kitchen which is sometimes an obstacle for the Wireless signal to flow properly to my notebook, fortunately this kind of interference happens rare (only when the Microwove is used to warm-up food etc.).Upgrading 802.11b wireless card / router to a better one as 802.11g is a wise idea too. 802.11g are said to be like 5 times faster than 802.11b.

You can expect 802.11b wireless network to transfer maximum between 2-5 Mbp/s whether 802.11g is claimed to transfer at approximately (12 to 23 Mbp/s). If even though the above prescriptions there is no wireless signal at some remote place at your home, you might consider adding a wireless repeater or change the AP router antenna.

By default wireless Routers are designed to be omni-directional (in other terms they broadcast the wireless signal all around the place. Thus is quite unhandy if you intend to use your Wireless net only in certain room or location at your place. If that’s the case for you, you might consider upgrading to a hi-gain antenna that will focus the wireless signal to an exact direction. Let me close this article with a small diagram taken from the net which illustrates a good router placement that will enable you to have a wwireless connection all over your place.

improve wireless router placement diagram

The Living of Saint Peter and Saint Fevronia – a fascinating Russian cartoon retelling the saints story

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Saint Peter and Fevronia Orthodox Christian saints protector of happy family, love and blessed marriage

The anime Living Story of Saint Peter and Saint Fevronia is a modern story remake of an ancient Church living of two bright Russian saints.
The official movie genre is orthodox christian kids animation movie.
The 14 minutes cartoon re-tolds the living story of St. Peter and st, Fevronia in a playful and entertaining way like for kids or youngsters.
Nomatter the movie primary target audience is children, the cartoon is great to see for adults people as well :).
The movie genre is orthodox christian kids animation movie.
The plot is based on a true (historic record) story of two saints venerated each year across Orthodox Churches around the world.

The original story I watched was a Bulgarian translation from Russian. But since I found it to be so valuable, I look for a translated video and got one in youtube.Take 14 minutes break and watch it, I'm sure you will like it so much, that probably give it a second time glimpse alone or with your wife, children or girlfriend.

Unfortunately, the english title is mis-translated as it says "Tale" and not "Story" and there is difference in meaning between this two words.
It is not tale as tale is made up story and this is not a made story but a story based on the two saints who lived in the end of 12 and beginning of the thirteen century.
Here is in short the real Church living:
The two saints were living in Murom Russia. Peter was prince and Fevronia a poor maid a daughter of a beekeeper who made his family living by collecting wild honey in the forest.

Prince Peter was striken by a severe sickness and in a vision it was revealed to him, that the only one that can cure him is Fevronia (a village maid living in the village of Laskovo Russia. The prince went to her and since he saw she is a pious, good and wisdom rich maid promised her, if she manage to heal him to take her as a bride to his place.
By her warm prayers to God and herbs, Fevronia succeeded in healing the prince sickness. Being fully restored st.Peter changed his mind and wanted to break his promise to marry her, cause the young made not part of the aristocratic Russian society. He didn't yet reached his home and the sickness, came back. This time with a deep repentance, he came back to Fevronia and she cured him again. Then the prince merried her and made her a princess of Murom
 

St. Peter and Fevronia Orthodox Church saints protector of marriage

However there love in Christ had to went through high temptations. Once the couple married, the prince proud boyars requested the prince to leave his new bride, as they didn't wanted to accept a simple girl as Fevronia will be governing them. Being in uneasy situation prince Peter prefered to leave his governing power and castle but to stay with his life. Together by boat by the near river Oka they left the kingdom. Soon after Gods wrath came Murom because of people's rebellion and the people requested the chased prince family to be restored to power.
Pushed by the peasents, the boyars bringed back the couple to power. The two saints governed their kingdom with great wisdom, love and mercy to the people.

In their old age the decided to become monks in separate monasteries. St. Peter received his new monk name David and princess Fevronia took the nun name Evphrosia (Evfrosia). Even living a sepate monk / nun life the couple continued having a deep love to each other and asked God to take them from this earthly life on the same date. God answered their prayer granting them to depart this earth on the same day in the same hour!
Like in life even in death people tried to separate them.
Fevronia was put in a coffin in the nun monastery, where Peter was prepared for a monk funeral in the man monastery and they put them in separate graves.
In the morning the graves were empty and their bodies were found buried together in one grave. People realized it is Gods will they are buried together and left them buried together. Today the incorruptable bodies of the two saints can be seen and venerated in Holy Trinity's nun monastery in the town of Murom Russia. St. Peter and St. Fevronia are considered patron of the Christian marriage, couple's love and family happiness.
It is common that many young people are, asking for the two saints prayer intercession in front of God for getting a good spouse in life and good marriage.

Also the two saints are oftenly asked for prayer for improving a marriege bindings.
The two saints feast day is like the Orthodox Antipode of the Roman Catholic feast of couples in love – St. Valentine.

As you see, St. Peter and St. Fevronia living is full of wisdom and true spirituality, and there is plenty we the modern disbelieving people can learn from it.
Let God by the two saints holy prayers have mercy on us.

People Just Pretend

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

I’m starting to realize that there is no actually friendship in life. I’m starting realize, ppl use you time after time. I’m sick of existence. I want to go out of this Hell. Why I’m Here Why? What makes the difference with or without me? Nobody cares in general. I’m so disappointed of this miserable existence here on earth even. My life is not so bad but with or without God it’s so meaningless. I want out of this body and this universe. I want Freedom in the END. I want real things I’m sick of all this. As Buddha says everything is chaning nothing seems to be static, he is right about this! I never imagined I’ll be the person which I’m now. I hate my life. Please take my life Lord. Let me out of this miserable Place Please! Body My holding Cell …

How to Add sub-menus to Joomla main navigation buttons (Making dropdown menus) in Joomla

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

I’m using a template youbizz just recently for a website. The website is already configured to use Joomla as a CMS.
This is a website related to the university so joomla was the perfect choice for a quick and easy to configure Content Management System

The youbizz template really makes difference and make the website layout look & feel quite a business looking.

However I needed a way to make my general configured menu buttons on the website to have a dropdown sub-menus in it

I even didn’t know if Joomla is supporting this, but by a chance I’ve made a submenu to the website Home buttom menu and thus I learned it how I can make submenus.

It actually appears creating the submenus to a menu in Joomla is a piece of cake, all you have to do in joomla administrator is go to to:

Menus -> Main Menu

From there you can configure as website buttons and link them to the ones already prepared in Article Manager

Just in case if you don’t know to add a buttons to a new joomla installation it’s necessary from admin to first go to:

Content -> Article Manager

Next press the New button (a green button with an image of a plus sign)

Thereon put a Title , Alias and in the input box put on everything you want this button pressed to show up in ur website.

Completing that simply press the Apply button and it should be done.
Next step to make the article appear in Menus -> Main Menu is to go this section and respectively from there use the green button with the plus sign to add up a new element to the main menu.

Right after you will have the Menu Item: [ New ] to appear it looks like in the pic below:

Joomla menu add new element screenshot

From the list of items to select you need to select the Article menu element. A submenu will appear in your browser to the Articles reading:

Article Layout
Article Submission Layout
etc.

From this menu you will have to select the Article Layout

The next screen to appear will look like the pic below:

Joomla main menu add new button through article, article layout

Here in article layout few things needs to be adjusted, again you will need to place the Title and the Alias, further after from the Parameters (Basic) located on the right you will have to select an article to link the new menu you’re just creating in Joomla’s new menu.
This is achieved via pressing the Select button located nearby the Select Article
Here it’s important to note the existence of Parent Item scrolldown field. This field will have all the created menu buttons in Main Menu . In case if this is the first one to create in main menu then it could be also empty.

The Parent Item field is really an important field and through it the menu’s submenus are created in Joomla.

For instance let’s say you want the current creating article to be listing as a sub-benu button to another already existing category, instead of listing as a separate button to the Joomla’s main menu navigation.

Well it’s pretty easy just choose from the Parent Item the name of an already existing menu button in Joomla main menu to be the parent of the sub-menu button you want to have.
That’s it now you will have the sub-menu button to appear as a drop down button (if of course your template supports dropdown menus).
There are few more options to choose in between which I found to be quite self explanatory, so I want explain them

But I hope I was able to explain at least the basics how menu subbuttons can be created in Joomla 1.5I find it a bit harder to explain in a bit plain way, but anyways if some of my dear readers is not understanding how to achieve the sub-menus I’m more than willing to help out further via the comments.

How to delete entries from routing table on Linux

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Every now and then I had to tamper routing tables in Linux and every time I had to do it I forgot how I did it last time so finally I decided to put it on my blog and find how I can delete from Linux routing table easier

Deleting a record from a wrong routing table on Linux is a piece of cake basicly, here is an example:

linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

Let’s say this is the routing table and it’s incorrect as the routing through the node 169.254.0.0 should not be there.
Here is how the routing through 169.254.0.0 can be deleted:

linux:~# /sbin/route del -net 169.254.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0

Now here is the difference after deletion:

linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

If you want to delete the default gateway just use 0.0.0.0, e.g. -net 0.0.0.0 .. in above cmd example.
This would delete default gateway record from routing table which by the way in routing tables is marked with the UG flag.
Cheers 😉