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Play Audio Music CDs in Linux console / terminal in the 21 Century mission hard but possible

Tuesday, July 30th, 2024

Compact discs (CD's) ain't dead yet but there easy straigh use on free operating systems Linux / FreeBSD / OpenBSD is starting to deteriorate. That is quite normal I guess, as CDs are no longer officially produced or sold for few years in America and there is no Audio CD bookstores, neither in europe and perhaps there are just few in europe, perhaps CD are used somewhere in Africa and Asia, but most modern world has officially buried them.

However as I love old stuff and I had the opportunity, I bought an old Audio CD (fake copy one 🙂 of Judas Priest Screaming for Vengence and the famous Jimi Hendrix (Best Complilation) Experience an improvised shelf-book store selling books by a half deaf aging guy who sells books for years in Dobrich in the center.
And to remember the young years of Rock Roll wanted to play it on my very old but still kicking Lenovo Thinkpad R61 notebook (that is now 16 years old but thanksfully it still works and kicks ass with a Debian GNU / Linux 10 Buster.)

The task is very easy and as I have a Window Maker (Wmaker) on it in order to save myself an extra loading of this a kind of "archaic machine" and tried to play my CDs with everything at hand thus I tried first to play the CD in console with the good old but gold cdplay with which I have played a dozens of Audio CDs back in the days …

# cdplay

just to find out the CD got red and started to roll but I get no sound via the Sound Card 🙁

Next thing, i assumed was the problem might be the pulseaudio process blocking the sound card to be used, preventing cdplay to be able to properly channel the sound to the sound card, that used to be quite of classical problem, if you remember, thus I tried to run the cdplay via the aoss (Wrapper script to facilitate use of alsa oss compatibility library.)

Before using oss of course i've loaded the snd-pcm-oss kernel module, to make the sound blaster be able to use the old obsolete Open Sound System.

# modprobe snd-pcm-oss

# aoss cdplay

Though that aoss trick worked for some programs that used old Open Sound System scheme to output sound, it doesn't unfortunately, at that case.

Strange enough my sound card is properly identified by the Debian Linux and I can play MP3 songs, as well browse videos in youtube and other Internet resources in Firefox and even the pulseaudio process that is running in the background is spitting sounds out of the Notebook Speakers.

The laptop doesn't seem to have any sound driver or Sound Card issues, as I can normally play my old .XM and .MOD sound extension files with the good old mikmod

# mikmod

as well as I can even normally play MIDI audio files by using the timidity tool as well as with playmidi

# timidity HitTheLights.mid

# playmidi HitTheLights.mid

Just to proove the MIDIs can be played normally via the Sound Blaster (for a more on the topic check my previous article talking in depth about Linux and MIDI – Play Midis on Linux / Make Linux MIDI Ready for the Future – Enable embedded MIDI music to play in a Browser, Play MIDIs with VLC and howto enjoy Midis in Text Console.

Next logically to make sure, something is not wrong with audio drivers, I tried to play some music normally with, the standard console players I have played with for years on Linux mpg123 / mpg321 for reference check my Listening music in text mode in Linux console but this was no luck again …

I tried even to install the opencubicplayer ( Linux port) music player and tried to open the CD, but even though the CD can be heard to be rolling in the CD drive no sound was outputed out of the laptop speakers.

open-cubic-player-screenshot-on-linux

Thus to resolve tried everything at power starting from increasing any missing volumes via the aumix command, as often in the past I remember the problem in such situations is the sound volume is decreased to zero percentage or completely muted.

# aumix

aumix-with-linux-htop-screenshot-animated-gif

as well as with

# alsamixer

Alsamixer-control-sound-volume-linux-screenshot

Nevertheless, every possible volume up volume was raised and everything looked cool as I could play normally music on machine or in a browser, the AUDIO CD Music refused to play out of the Speakers.

Playing the Audio CD via success with mplayer

The work around to make it play was up to a one liner with mplayer

# mplayer -cdrom-device /dev/cdrom cdda://

To easify the play of CDs I've created for my self a tiny one liner script to run it.

#!/bin/bash
mplayer -cdrom-device /dev/cdrom cdda://

I've called the script playcd.sh, made it executable and placed it under /usr/local/bin

# vim /usr/local/bin/playcd.sh
#!/bin/bash
mplayer -cdrom-device /dev/cdrom cdda://

# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/playcd.sh

Playing Audio CDs with VLC (VideoLAN Media Player)

I've vlc client installed on my Linux box, if you don't have it, do:

# apt install –yes vlc

Then roll on the CD with vlc with passing it the location to the CD, usually one of the down two pointers should work:

# vlc vcd:///dev/sr0

# vlc vcd:///dev/cdrom

If you want to loop the Tracks to play forever

# vlc –loop vcd:///dev/cdrom

By the way vlc can do much more than you think as you can even play youtube with it, for example you can try it with the Axel Folly classics Mod file, by running it like this.

# vlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyK_elUmIw

Cheers and Enjoy CD audio on Linux ! 🙂

Tags: alsamixer, aumix, bin, books, cdplay, cdrom, check, Cheers, everything, good, hand, liner, machine, MIDI, mpg123, music player, power, resolve, roll, sound card, task, terminal, though, tool, Window Maker Wmaker, years
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | No Comments »

Our baby Ekaterina becomes 6 months on 17 of May, 5 days after our boy Dimitar become 4 years. Sum it up my year 2023 experience, lessons learned.

Friday, May 17th, 2024

Our baby Ekaterina becomes 6 months on 17 of May, 5 days after our boy Dimitar become 4 years. Sum it up my year 2023 lessons learned.

This article is a bit late in time but I started writing it quite a long time ago in the beginning of 2024.
But as my various duties as a husband, employee, a volunteer in the Church and computer hobbyist as well as the attempts to still keep up some normality with all the stressful kind of wife that is in the large cities as Sofia.
I could post it just today and what has reminded me is simply our daughter Ekaterina has a half birthday today.
Below I'll pinpoint some important things that happened through the year, starting with a harsh and gloomy Intro

A bit of Overview, things globally seem to be worsening

Life is ticking fast. Life is more boring than thought. Finding a cell people to hang on around is a difficult and almost impossible task. Real People are becoming less and less. Consumerism is already the only thing that matters for most people.

Love between people (unconditional love) is almost gone. Money are the ones dictating what people should do. No real communities anymore exists (COVID-19) has messed up the heads of people.
Christianity is severily partitioned as schisms are seen to plague even the True Christian faith of Eastern Orthodoxy, a hidden persecution against the true pastors is ongoing in many orthodox Churches. War in Ukraine a total disaster for everyone. Politicians as usual using Church to force their own agenda lead by territory and monetary interests. There is a brutal onging economic crisis turmouling the world noone speaks seriosly about. The usual work duties requirements are increasing but sallary payments decreasins.Life expenses are gradually raising as the World Economic Crisis is firing.

People who has suffered COVID numerous times has certainly bad effects on health, many people who have survived COVID and the rest of numerous viruses that has hit us over the past had worsened vision and hearing.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) starts to kicks and puts even more mess in the already messy world especially as it is some kind of another marketing baloon similar to the WWW Domains business baloon. The AI such as ChatGPT, WormGPT, Google Bard said to outsmart our professions (though the facts are still not encouraging enough as the Hype is great, plus the results with collaboration with AI seems to not be fact proof enough yet). The Rapid evolution of technologies has put many moral dilemas and life is becoming harder to bear as the stress of using techonlogies and the higher expectations by humans and their constant requirement to collaborate with technologies (Smart Phone, Tablets Computers, ATMs, Terminals, Cars, Banks, Cards, Virtual currencies and complex systems which claim to simplify life of man makes the human body more fragile sick.

The lack of good and ecologically brew food is also a great factor, as most people who live in large cities eats mostly industrial quality food (and there is no real way to find out whether a food is really ecological even if it is sold as such). In Todays more and more tech inter connected world between People noone can live a normal private life (as often our datas shared on line are leaked to hacker groups after a resource or system is hacked), that poses a number of other challenages and dangers.
Privacy has also become almost impossible task, as we don't have a real or full knowledge on how much of our data seen or processed on our phones is staying at our side and how much shared with Security agencies such as CIA, Musad and KGB etc.

Everything is steering us Camares, Phones, Photos, Social Networks and loneliness is often felt so real.
Most people living in economic slavery, even though doesn't really even recognize the cell they live in due to the smartphones and many virtual false options given. Complexity of life is increasing as one should have too much skills to manage even simple tasks. Lack of people to fill in open gaps about professions and work, same time generally not too much work capacity or willingness to do people is also a great of issue.

The world is more and more starting to look like it is described in anti-utopias books like Brave new World, 1984, Animal Farm.

Even though this hardships and birth pains, that are typically described by Saint Evangelist John in the Book of Reveleation,

The Birth of Ekaterina on 17th November 2023 another hope for the World

With every new kid coming to this earth it is a God blessing for everyone and another oportunity for individuals to grow and raise another meaningful person, that might make the world a little bit of a better place. Even though today is scary to have a kid because of the harsh situation, it is better to stay helpful for the best and share the joy to have second kid born.

i'm happy for God blessed me with second child a baby Ekaterina born on 17 of November 2023.

Day of Discharge of the Sheinovo Child Birth Hospital, Sofia with Little Baby Ekaterina

During birth Baby Ekaterina was born around 3300 gr of weight, thanksfully the birth of wife was a natural birth. But sadly I had to in parallel take care about the other kid Dimitar, (since he did not attend the Kindergarden for some time), Clean up the house and prepare everything for the acceptance at home of new baby, and buy threats to treat multitude of people who are close and nearby. I'm thankful to Vasil Kolev and Mitko for attending the Official hospital Discharge.

Below is another picture of the now grown baby Ekaterina 4 months later for a one day trip to Balchik (sea resort) near my home city Dobrich

Exactly today on 17th of May 2024 on the feast day of Saint Nicolas (New Martyr of Sofia) and the feast of Gathering of Bataks New Martyrs (we have been in the Batak basilica of the martyrdom, during Svetlana was pregnant with the baby). Ekaterina becomes exactly 6 months she is a very lively baby in the moment she had some temporature and on a baby antibiotics but her overall look and development looks very good thankfully !

During this year personally review the 2023, Helped as Alter server (ipodeacon) in the Holy Liturgies in Saint George (Dyrvenica) https://www.svgeorgi.com as a ipodeacon, on many services, together with Archimandrite Father Flavian.
Summery time i was able to Visited many monasteries nearby

Sofia with Father Flavian. Just to name a few of the multitude of monasteries visited, The 7 Thrones, Praveshki Monastery Saint Teodor Tiron, Seslavski Monastery near Sofia, Saint Petka (near Bankia), Etropolski Monastery, Rilski Monastery, Troyan Monastery, German Monastery, Kremikovski monastery, Glozhenski monastery, Tetevensky monastery Saint Ilija Travelled to Teteven and many others.
Just for reference the monasteries and holy places one could visit in Bulgaria are thousands and this makes the country quite interesting to travel around. The high spirituality which the nation had in the past has left a lot of spiritual inheritance for us. Which however nowadays, we do not value and protect …

Has visited multiple times, monastery of Saint Marina situated near village of Krumovo in between Dobrich and Varna. Also visited Ahtopol (i won't say i'm too impressed – maybe i was in the wrong season and with a pregnant woman) and Tsarevo, Pomorie and Nessebar (for the Feast of Dormition of Holy Theotokos).

To speak the truth has been a heavy and hard year a lot of spiritual sorrow, sicknesses and lack of direction, internal family problems between me wife, my nerves totally strained and I have no clear direction as eyes sems to be deteriorating and I often though about leaving it all behind and going to a monastery. Quite disappointed from the realities I've seen. Bulgaria is very beautiful country but everything seemed too messed …

Also i've had too many temptations, drived a lot our old minivan KIA Carens 2006, which helped me to significantly increase my car driving habits, and hopefully now I become a better driver .
Middle of May had to pay car taxes and expenses in SDI, paid for standard Vignette starting from June as prior year.

Tried to read my prayers daily Morning and Evening prayers + (rule), that turned to be much harder than thought as it takes up to 30 minutes morning and 1 hour evening times (with some of the additional prayers I try to keep).
Also had been blessed to be able to receive the Holy Communion many, many, many times.

Tried to bring the Kid Dimitar regularly on a Church services in Holy Trinity Church (the Slatina (an ex-village) and Sofia district main temple), situated 10 minutes from Svetlostruy where we live currently, as well as bring him to Dyrvenica regulary, and thanksfully he also took part in Christ misteries for many, many times throughout the year.

Spend and I have to say perhaps lost a lot of time hanging with Alexander (The singer), drinking beers – that was a bad idea but as this helped me a bit to get away my focus from sad stuff and cheer me up, it had a positive effect as well. Health, seems to be critical, especially with the high stresses I experienced before and near birth of our daughter Ekaterina. I was also heavily involved in taking care for our kid who is now 3.8 years next year 12 of May to become 4 years.

Also I sung a lot on services as a main singer mainly Evening services as often due to the lack of people to sing the service there is necessity to sing services, sing also a few times a Holy Liturgy and as usual sung every Monday and Friday for the Sanctification of Waters and on a Akathist prayer to the Holy Theotokos (Mother of God). Lately don't have enough time to read too much books.
My Work computer notebook (failed to apply) Windows Updates shipped by WL and I've been sent a new laptop which came early 2024. Exchanging work computer due to failing update is funny and absurd but I survived this one too …
In the begining of 2024, our beloved colleague Dimitar Paskalev has left our team in Worldline and that also one of the hardships, we have to bear an extra amount of things to do when he is gone as he is an excellent system administrator, programmer and business consultant consultant.

People's knowledge thought increasing makes things hard to be fixed more and more. As finding a solution becomes more expensive or sometimes impossible to resolve software issues on a hardware that cannot be tracked it is way easier to simply exchange the hardware. Same is true nowadays for both computers, cars and pretty much everything. If it breaks don't fix it but exchange it with a new, that seems to be valid more and more.

This is product of hardcore consumerism society, we humanity turned out and this is going to destroy the planet obsiously but seems noone really cares, even with the International Summits for reduce of Emitions etc., i'm pretty convinced from what I see is done that is just a pure marketing for countries as well as simple populism.
Ecology is something people has to seriously think about though, because the life style with driving cars everything as we did and hyper consumption is destructional for both people, environment (nature), animals, this is pretty clear observing how the natural environments gets destroed more and more due to conustruction works and industrial waste etc.

The news read about Ukraine and Israel has been mostly troubling and together with the techonlogization and degradation of Society has convinced me the hope for this world is almost gone. Doesn't look like there is any "Road Ahead" as some "visionaries" are foreseeing (i'm talking about the insane book of Bill Gates, called the "Road Ahead", which is picturing a great future with a lot of developments due to technology (what a blatant non-sense). It seems what we observe is starting to become quite opposite to Bill Gates, Ilon Musk and the rest of "visionaire" idols of the world visions as all is falling apart more and more and unresolvable issues are much more.

The technological enslavement of people has been continuing, though it has been presenting as this is making people much more free and happy, it is exactly the opposite, prople become more and more dependent on technology and on the road to become a subordinates of technology than controillers.
Most young people are suffering completely of addictions to technology, has very low literacy and I'm noticing most of teenagers couldn't properly express themselves, quite sadding. A lot of young people seeing the sad reality are turning to sub-culture, just like it was in the end of 1990s but the difference is now, people are separated each one hanging in his tech device and community across the common problem of isolation of the individual, that was sharing and communing with others is not really too much possible in the 21 century.

Many good peoples in the Church has passed away, I've suffered a lot during the summer from the heat, hardly beated. After the COVID seems to have passed through a long COVID and some depressions, which I don''t know whether managed to deal with even now, the Church has helped a lot to keep on track as feelings were overwhelming, most likely due to the nightmare war between orthodox Russia and Ukraine (remember The Gospel says it God''s punishment becomes from his own people). We Bulgarians are at mind wars, as some people take Russia's' positions and others Ukraine (Pro and Anti-Russian attitudes) prevail, everywhere. The same is I guess among all ex-USSR countries The Patriarch Neofit become quite sick. In terms of Work the first part of Year up to end of Summer has been more heavy, but mainly stress at work is not from work complexity but the messiness in the Company Worldline.
In end of Autumn passed all required company trainings. Tried also to blog as regularly as I could but blogging is becoming harder and harder task, as my eyes degrades. Tried to play some Arcades as that has been funny for me but nowadays don't have too much of a free time to play on the handheld consoles. Life in Sofia is quite heavy as distances are putting its toll ((though there is pretty much everyhing) the amount of stress is destructionary for the personality.

I did not have much of achievements this year at work but I guess with years, the energy of person is reducing (just like the motivation due to the messy stuff that is unvailing in the world). With age seems one can do less and less except if he is not some kind of mania mode.
Also the lack of recognition for what is done at work and the type of Corporate stuff that is mostly like a (Social) Socialist company, makes one to be not much motivated to complete much, the other issue is it seems times ticks too fast (just as Christ says in the Gospel because of lawfulness of people, time will be shortened this prophecy seems to be fulfilling and for those who can see it they can see how time reduces and one can do much less than he could some years ago). Days are flying quickly. There are too many experienes all the time and due to information overburn, the mind becomes very unfocused.
Having any even simple kind of focus becomes a luxury nowadays, as we''re bombarded from everywhere with false preaches of advertisement and people's idea and stereotypes of the world.

I remeber about my youth and how simple we lived with my grand parents, and how much happiness was in that and compare to noaways over-stressed and complex world and often, miss that old times (that even though) physically harsh has been much more graceful than today.

In terms of technology I have the desire to go out of the Technological slavery but for that you need to have a co-minded person ( wife), which agrees to live a more simple wife, which i don't have in the moment.

Why I saw technological slavery, well it is what it is, in the past technology was really making the life of one easier and even today, many technologies are doing so. However being online 10 to 12 hours a day is no longer a conforting, especially if about 6 to 8 hours of your midful time is to be hired at work and stay on a chair in front of the computer and to do complex mind stuff, that after 10-15 to 20 years, destroys the psyche and the body .

Being intelligent is also a big problem in the 21 century as you see much more of the usual people and you see most interactions between people are simply manipulative and dictated by the desire to attain something.
The communication between most people is based on "receive" as much as you could and give out as little as possible and on the principle of always do gain in everything. People do things to receive and not to give including me … that is totally the opposite of the teaching of Christ who says "It is more blessed to give, than to take".

About entertainment for the year was mostly traveling and going for a Night dinners in Emilian with Angel, Alexander and gathering together with Vasil Kolev (A researcher in the Bulgarian Academy of Science BAN, specalist in the field of Frequencies and Signals) and a very good Christian and man who helped a lot together with Emilian and Angel.
Perhaps part of the entertainment was our after-work stuff we did with Dimitar Paskalev and Georgi Stoyanov which was more happening in beginning of 2023 and has deteoriated as I had a lot of personal issues and did not have enough time to do computer stuff together after work.

Silvia also helped me a lot with the kid, as I needed help, and suffered with informational and physical overload, perhaps that is common for those with kids.

As said we got born our second baby who my wife decided to name Ekatherina after Saint Ekatherina (St. Catherine of Alexandria), a good selection for name as saint Ekatherina is a great woman martyr saint I love much and that helped me in hardships many times.

Have to say, i am very sad that I don't see people to love each massively, this has to be endured but it is hard. Also I feel sad I can't do much my to change the world for better both by work and action and my weak prayers.
Near end of year I had severe pain and left leg inflamation, after having a multtiude of health disturbances in parallel with the pregnancy of Svetlana. Also often i feel very disconnected from everything, perhaps I'm seeing much harsh reality than expected and being raised more or less in the spirit of idealism it is really hard to accept the reality as it is. Also with the aging it is a common and well known fact that we become much less flexible as in the youth age past.
Thanks God the year has passed and in the new year 2024, I hope for the best as everyone but as the monks say Spiritual life is based on the two columns of "Ora" and "Labora" = Work and Prayer, so the coming year depends heavily on my perseverance to do this two and of course follow God's main commandments love God with all my heart and all my being and love my neighbor as myself !

One very notable event to say is early in 2024 Metropolitan JOANIKIJ (Joanichius) of Sliven has passed to Christ aged 82 on 9 of January (The day on which passed my beloved grandather Marin passed away), This year it turned 20 years since my beloved grandfather Marin has passed. He used to be a man of honor and goodness that was rare for the 20th century and he is among main persons for example to follow the good path of helping everyone and love everyone.

Let God have mercy on his soul and receive him in Heaven.The brother of Patriarch of Bulgaria Neofitos (The Proto-Psalt and director of the Cathedral Choire of Saint Alexander Nevsky Proto-Psalt Dimitar passed) as well as a lady called Violeta who was helping in Holy Trinity Church and suffering multiple diseases passed to Christ.

Soon after our beloved Metropolitan of Sofia and Patriarch Neofit passed away to Christ as well followed by a very sad period of 40 days of moruning ,after his passing as he was the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and has been a true monk, everyone in Bulgaria loved too much – see a biography short article about this great person and perhaps saint of new times here.

To close this article as it could be much, much more lenghtly I can only say.

Thanks God for the 2023 and Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us the Sinners for the upcoming 2024 !

Tags: beloved, Below, bulgaria, Christianity, COVID-19, due, everything, experience, Few Observations, finding, Holy Trinity Church Slatina, Lack, learned, life, lord jesus christ, lot, multiple times, new year, passed, Privacy, programmer, Short Observations, social networks, system administrator, technology, though, years
Posted in Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Rant | No Comments »

Short history on how 8 of March Woman International Day (IWD) made up feast replaced the Real Woman Day celebrated on the Christian feast of Annunciation

Wednesday, March 8th, 2023

International Woman's day short history - 8 of march beautiful flowers - Triumph of Woman
International Woman's Day was first observed in 1911, by more than a million people around the world.
Today is therefore the centennial observance, which is being celebrated with events in more than 100 countries, including Israel.

The International Woman Day (IWD) or the Triumph of Women has been growing as a great day to celebrate the achievemts of woman in history and their significance but most people know little or near nothing regarding that feast, that was disguised by the free world as it was connected to Communist countries of the United States of Soviet Republic (USSR) and today's People's Republic of China and Vietnam and only in 1975 accepted to be the International Woman Day be the United Nations.

Origin of 8 of March Woman's day

The earliest reported Women's Day observance, called "National Woman's Day", was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America[14] at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel.There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers have alleged this to be a myth intended to detach International Women's Day from its socialist origin.

In August 1910, an International Socialist Women's Conference was organized ahead of the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. However, what made history for the modern celebration of International Women's Day, according to the ILO, was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City on March 25, 1911, which killed 146 young workers, most of whom were immigrants.
Inspired in part by the American socialists, German delegates Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, Paula Thiede, and others proposed the establishment of an annual "Women's Day", although no date was specified. The 100 delegates, representing 17 countries, agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights, including women's suffrage.

The following year, on March 19, 1911, the first International Women's Day was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. In Austria-Hungary alone, there were 300 demonstrations,with women parading on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, carrying banners honoring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Across Europe, women demanded the right to vote and to hold public office, and protested against employment sex discrimination.
IWD initially had no set date, though it was generally celebrated in late February or early March. Americans continued to observe "National Women's Day" on the last Sunday in February, while Russia observed International Women's Day for the first time in 1913, on the last Saturday in February (albeit based on the Julian calendar, as in the Gregorian calendar, the date was March 8).

In 1914, International Women's Day was held on March 8 for the first time in Germany, possibly because that date was a Sunday. As elsewhere, Germany's observance was dedicated to women's right to vote, which German women did not win until 1918. Concurrently, there was a march in London in support of women's suffrage, during which Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.

8 of March in Modern Times the socialist faux for Annunciation

However as the Soviet system of USSR collapsed in the 1992, the feast started to take heet among other Western countries quickly, now to the point that even some country regions in Western europe do celebrate 8 of March in some kind of a form, today it is under some form celebrated or marked to more than 100+ countries.

The feast started originally in America (United States) on 27 February 1909 in New Year and has walked its way until it become official with many turmoils, public strikes of woman and woman rage. A key

What has to be said is 8 of March has been a Public feast of Great importance among all the countries from Soviet Russia (USSR) and its satellites for many years now.

In ex-USSR not venerating the woman nearby by at least flower giving is near a crime deed, and even for a traditionally Orthodox Christian countries, where there is already a feast of triumph and Veneration of woman the day of Annunciation, 8 of March is continuously celebrated even though nowadays the original meaning of the feast as a riot of woman against unequality in socity has nearly turn to a cult towards the woman for a day.

Every year, thousands of inhabitants of the planet will celebrate a world holiday – International Women's Day, which is celebrated on March 8.

But we as Christians who live in the Church should celebrate the feast of the saint commemorated respectively and not the public holiday, which of this year is Saint Teophilakt (Bishop of Necomedia).

Many of the Christian women will accept flowers from their husbands and children, many of them especially from ex-Soviet space will celebrate women's day and even require, their portion of flowers or feel ignored if they don't.

We will celebrate it too, wishfully or not almost forced … forgetting that the real day of the Mother and the woman is on March 25 on the Great and Beautiful feast of Annunciation, the date on which the Holy Theotokos (Virgin Mary) has received the Angel with the good news that she is about to become a Mother of The Lord Jesus Christ.

For the historical reference it is worthy to make a short historic review of the International Woman Day, for those who still value the feast as a feast that fits well together with the Christian doctrines.

March 8 – Women's Day, this holiday was first celebrated on February 28, 1909 in the USA at the initiative of the American Socialist Party and later become one of the leverages for Communist party worldwide to put attractiveness to their agendas.

The idea of creating an international women's day appeared after the rapid industrialization and economic expansion of the early 20th century, which gave rise to woman protests for the improvement of working conditions.

Historic time of the day is associated with the first mass demonstration of women workers, which took place on March 8, 1857 in New York.

Women from sewing and textile enterprises come out to protest against poor working conditions and low wages, which had a good point as America was a country which still tolerated even Black slavery of the time.

The female workers protesters were attacked and dispersed by the police, as this was seen as a social misconduct dangerous for society by the police officers back then.

Two years later, on the same month, these women formed their first trade union.

In the following years, other protests followed, the most famous of which was in 1908, when women organized a march through New York with demands for a shorter working day, better payment fees and the right to vote.

In 1965, March 8 was officially announced as a non-working day and women's holiday in the USSR. And even today the day is non-working in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union – Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, as well as in Macedonia and Mongolia etc as well as in Communist China and Vietnam.

In my homeland country Bulgaria (the history of the feast is entangled with the history of socialist oriented parties in it).
March 8 was initially "celebrated" with orgnized public talks in a narrow circle of socialists in 1911, in 1915 was the first public celebration, but the kingship and government back of the day did not look well towards this trend, even though tolerated it.

As a general standard Bulgarian holiday, March 8 began to be celebrated after September 9, 1944 with the raise of communism (and the communist revolution – that was very much externally imported by the USSR sent agents) at the finalizing days of World War II.

At first, following the trend of the newly installed pro-bolshevik governments, different meetings were held in various nationalized enterprises, factories, and institutions, where the contribution of women in production, culture, science, and public life was taken into account and praised.

After 1960, the celebration took on particularly wide proportions and became a favorite holiday of women and men of all ages, especially in government offices, perhaps also as an attempts for communist to show the betternes of the socialist regime installed in the country. To reinburse the feeling of the importance of the feast the day was made official non-working day, together with other partheon of imaginative feasts without much meaning, like is for example 1st of March, The day of Labor, the day of the Shepherd and other artificial communist party members made up ones.

The day since then has become a public holiday in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Cuba, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Montenegro and Vietnam.

As the Communist led countries parties did not have a good set of traditions, they had to set new ones and started the trend to celebrate the feast through men giving flowers to the women around them – mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues. As the times of Communist isolation and dictatorship in this countries was harsh time for the people, any kind of feast that can give some freshness to the gray daily routine of the working class was well and quickly accepted by society.

Gifting a flower was also advantegous for many people, as this was another way to sell flowers and make some extra cash for the poor 🙂

Internetioanl Woman Day in some of the mentioned countries including Bulgaria in the past was celebrated as the equivalent of Mother's Day, where children give small gifts to their mothers and grandmothers.

And I remember when I was still in the kindergarden, we had a task to prepare special post-cards for mom with a photo of ourselves and a written text like “Mother I love you”.

After reading this short story, it will not become clear, but for the elder people it was that the holiday was not really of a big importance and was one of the many inventions of the party to build the new communist man “homo sovieticus”.

Why 8 of March was not a considered big deal in the past?

Because in 1944, the socialist party changed a traditional holiday in Bulgaria, Mother's Day, and instead of the Annunciation, that was already a public holiday dedicated to the mother / women on 25 of March, the date was moved to March 8.

A proof to that is in history, here is what was said in a message to Radio Sofia in year 1943.
– "On the Annunciation., His Eminence Metropolitan Stefan will celebrate in the metropolitan church "Saint Sophia", a temple holiday of the same, the bishop's Holy Liturgy, and the day before – a great bishop's vespers with Pentecost at 6 p.m. In 4:30 p.m. on the occasion of Mother's Day, on behalf of the church and the women's committee from the brotherhood, our famous writer and public figure Konstantin Petkanov will speak in the "Saint Sophia" church, on the topic: The Christian heart of the Bulgarian woman ". Before and after the story, the church choir will perform appropriate chants.”

This is how our ancestors celebrated mother's day, on the day of the Mother of God, when the archangel announced the great joy that the Messiah would come to redeem the world from sin. And about whether the Christian woman is equal to the man, that should be clear, for anything who has a head. By simple physiologyand psycho-somatism, woman and man are different, however in spiritual sense in the eyes of God both male and female are equal and wonderfully made by the Good god.
A proof for the spiritual equality of man and woman are the words of Saint Apostle Paul, who says:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28).

In the Church, this is also the interesting and captivating thing, that everyone has their place there where he is set on, their work, their home, everyone is given his own talent to develop.

Eight of March Epitaph

Showing respect and appreciation for a woman by bying her a flower on 8^th of March is a good thing, but then again this can be done any other day and each of us man who love and venerate our mothers and wifes do it every now and then.
There is also little known facts, that one who digs deeper in history of 8 of March will certainly found, which can stun him and not everything around the feast is so white and shiny as most people thing nowadays.
But of course it is rather better to make the flower gift on the true feast when the Church and the elements and universe together with it celebartes it, and on the date when our ancestors venerated their woman too for hundreds of years before us on the Annunciation.

Tags: celebrated, communist party, everything, feast, first, history, holiday, Real Woman Day, Short, topic, working, years
Posted in Christianity, Curious Facts, Educational | No Comments »

Create Linux High Availability Load Balancer Cluster with Keepalived and Haproxy on Linux

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

Configuring a Linux HA (High Availibiltiy) for an Application with Haproxy is already used across many Websites on the Internet and serious corporations that has a crucial infrastructure has long time
adopted and used keepalived to provide High Availability Application level Clustering.
Usually companies choose to use HA Clusters with Haproxy with Pacemaker and Corosync cluster tools.
However one common used alternative solution if you don't have the oportunity to bring up a High availability cluster with Pacemaker / Corosync / pcs (Pacemaker Configuration System) due to fact machines you need to configure the cluster on are not Physical but VMWare Virtual Machines which couldn't not have configured a separate Admin Lans and Heartbeat Lan as we usually do on a Pacemaker Cluster due to the fact the 5 Ethernet LAN Card Interfaces of the VMWare Hypervisor hosts are configured as a BOND (e.g. all the incoming traffic to the VMWare vSphere HV is received on one Virtual Bond interface).

I assume you have 2 separate vSphere Hypervisor Physical Machines in separate Racks and separate switches hosting the two VMs.
For the article, I'll call the two brand new brought Virtual Machines with some installation automation software such as Terraform or Ansible – vm-server1 and vm-server2 which would have configured some recent version of Linux.

In that scenario to have a High Avaiability for the VMs on Application level and assure at least one of the two is available at a time if one gets broken due toe malfunction of the HV, a Network connectivity issue, or because the VM OS has crashed.
Then one relatively easily solution is to use keepalived and configurea single High Availability Virtual IP (VIP) Address, i.e. 10.10.10.1, which would float among two VMs using keepalived so at a time at least one of the two VMs would be reachable on the Network.

haproxy_keepalived-vip-ip-diagram-linux

Having a VIP IP is quite a common solution in corporate world, as it makes it pretty easy to add F5 Load Balancer in front of the keepalived cluster setup to have a 3 Level of security isolation, which usually consists of:

1. Physical (access to the hardware or Virtualization hosts)
2. System Access (The mechanism to access the system login credetials users / passes, proxies, entry servers leading to DMZ-ed network)
3. Application Level (access to different programs behind L2 and data based on the specific identity of the individual user,
special Secondary UserID, Factor authentication, biometrics etc.)

1. Install keepalived and haproxy on machines

Depending on the type of Linux OS:

On both machines

[root@server1:~]# yum install -y keepalived haproxy
…

If you have to install keepalived / haproxy on Debian / Ubuntu and other Deb based Linux distros

[root@server1:~]# apt install keepalived haproxy –yes
…

2. Configure haproxy (haproxy.cfg) on both server1 and server2

Create some /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg configuration

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg

#———————————————————————
# Global settings
#———————————————————————
global
log 127.0.0.1 local6 debug
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
pidfile /run/haproxy.pid
stats socket /var/lib/haproxy/haproxy.sock mode 0600 level admin
maxconn 4000
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
#debug
#quiet

#———————————————————————
# common defaults that all the 'listen' and 'backend' sections will
# use if not designated in their block
#———————————————————————
defaults
mode tcp
log global
# option dontlognull
# option httpclose
# option httplog
# option forwardfor
option redispatch
option log-health-checks
timeout connect 10000 # default 10 second time out if a backend is not found
timeout client 300000
timeout server 300000
maxconn 60000
retries 3

#———————————————————————
# round robin balancing between the various backends
#———————————————————————

listen FRONTEND_APPNAME1
bind 10.10.10.1:15000
mode tcp
option tcplog
# #log global
log-format [%t]\ %ci:%cp\ %bi:%bp\ %b/%s:%sp\ %Tw/%Tc/%Tt\ %B\ %ts\ %ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%rc\ %sq/%bq
balance roundrobin
timeout client 350000
timeout server 350000
timeout connect 35000
server app-server1 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 1 check port 68888
server app-server2 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 2 check port 68888

listen FRONTEND_APPNAME2
bind 10.10.10.1:15000
mode tcp
option tcplog
#log global
log-format [%t]\ %ci:%cp\ %bi:%bp\ %b/%s:%sp\ %Tw/%Tc/%Tt\ %B\ %ts\ %ac/%fc/%bc/%sc/%rc\ %sq/%bq
balance roundrobin
timeout client 350000
timeout server 350000
timeout connect 35000
server app-server1 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 5
server app-server2 10.10.10.55:30000 weight 5

You can get a copy of above haproxy.cfg configuration here.
Once configured roll it on.

[root@server1:~]# systemctl start haproxy
[root@server1:~]# ps -ef|grep -i hapro
root 285047 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid
haproxy 285050 285047 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:26 /usr/sbin/haproxy -Ws -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg -p /run/haproxy.pid

Bring up the haproxy also on server2 machine, by placing same configuration and starting up the proxy.

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
…

…

3. Configure keepalived on both servers

We'll be configuring 2 nodes with keepalived even though if necessery this can be easily extended and you can add more nodes.
First we make a copy of the original or existing server configuration keepalived.conf (just in case we need it later on or if you already had something other configured manually by someone – that could be so on inherited servers by other sysadmin)

[root@server1:~]# mv /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf.orig
[root@server2:~]# mv /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf.orig

a. Configure keepalived to serve as a MASTER Node

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf

Master Node
global_defs {
router_id server1-fqdn # The hostname of this host.

enable_script_security
# Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
lvs_sync_daemon eth0

notification_email {
linuxadmin@notify-domain.com # Email address for notifications
}
notification_email_from keepalived@server1-fqdn # The from address for the notifications
smtp_server 127.0.0.1 # SMTP server address
smtp_connect_timeout 15
}

vrrp_script haproxy {
script "killall -0 haproxy"
interval 2
weight 2
user root
}

vrrp_instance LB_VIP_QA {
virtual_router_id 50
advert_int 1
priority 51

state MASTER
interface eth0
smtp_alert # Enable Notifications Via Email

authentication {
auth_type PASS
auth_pass testp141

}
### Commented because running on VM on VMWare
## unicast_src_ip 10.44.192.134 # Private IP address of master
## unicast_peer {
## 10.44.192.135 # Private IP address of the backup haproxy
## }

# }
# master node with higher priority preferred node for Virtual IP if both keepalived up
### priority 51
### state MASTER
### interface eth0
virtual_ipaddress {
10.10.10.1 dev eth0 # The virtual IP address that will be shared between MASTER and BACKUP
}
track_script {
haproxy
}
}

To dowload a copy of the Master keepalived.conf configuration click here

Below are few interesting configuration variables, worthy to mention few words on, most of them are obvious by their names but for more clarity I'll also give a list here with short description of each:

vrrp_instance – defines an individual instance of the VRRP protocol running on an interface.
state – defines the initial state that the instance should start in (i.e. MASTER / SLAVE )state –
interface – defines the interface that VRRP runs on.
virtual_router_id – should be unique value per Keepalived Node (otherwise slave master won't function properly)
priority – the advertised priority, the higher the priority the more important the respective configured keepalived node is.
advert_int – specifies the frequency that advertisements are sent at (1 second, in this case).
authentication – specifies the information necessary for servers participating in VRRP to authenticate with each other. In this case, a simple password is defined.
only the first eight (8) characters will be used as described in to note is Important thing
man keepalived.conf – keepalived.conf variables documentation !!! Nota Bene !!! – Password set on each node should match for nodes to be able to authenticate !
virtual_ipaddress – defines the IP addresses (there can be multiple) that VRRP is responsible for.
notification_email – the notification email to which Alerts will be send in case if keepalived on 1 node is stopped (e.g. the MASTER node switches from host 1 to 2)
notification_email_from – email address sender from where email will originte
! NB ! In order for notification_email to be working you need to have configured MTA or Mail Relay (set to local MTA) to another SMTP – e.g. have configured something like Postfix, Qmail or Postfix

b. Configure keepalived to serve as a SLAVE Node

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf

#Slave keepalived
global_defs {
router_id server2-fqdn # The hostname of this host!

enable_script_security
# Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
lvs_sync_daemon eth0

notification_email {
linuxadmin@notify-host.com # Email address for notifications
}
notification_email_from keepalived@server2-fqdn # The from address for the notifications
smtp_server 127.0.0.1 # SMTP server address
smtp_connect_timeout 15
}

vrrp_script haproxy {
script "killall -0 haproxy"
interval 2
weight 2
user root
}

vrrp_instance LB_VIP_QA {
virtual_router_id 50
advert_int 1
priority 50

state BACKUP
interface eth0
smtp_alert # Enable Notifications Via Email

authentication {
auth_type PASS
auth_pass testp141
}
### Commented because running on VM on VMWare
## unicast_src_ip 10.10.192.135 # Private IP address of master
## unicast_peer {
## 10.10.192.134 # Private IP address of the backup haproxy
## }

### priority 50
### state BACKUP
### interface eth0
virtual_ipaddress {
10.10.10.1 dev eth0 # The virtual IP address that will be shared betwee MASTER and BACKUP.
}
track_script {
haproxy
}
}

Download the keepalived.conf slave config here

c. Set required sysctl parameters for haproxy to work as expected

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/sysctl.conf
#Haproxy config
# haproxy
net.core.somaxconn=65535
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.ipv4.ip_nonlocal_bind = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 10240
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 400000
net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 60000
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3

4. Test Keepalived keepalived.conf configuration syntax is OK

[root@server1:~]# keepalived –config-test
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 7) Unknown keyword 'lvs_sync_daemon_interface'
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 21) Unable to set default user for vrrp script haproxy – removing
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 31) (LB_VIP_QA) Specifying lvs_sync_daemon_interface against a vrrp is deprecated.
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 31) Please use global lvs_sync_daemon
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 35) Truncating auth_pass to 8 characters
(/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf: Line 50) (LB_VIP_QA) track script haproxy not found, ignoring…

I've experienced this error because first time I've configured keepalived, I did not mention the user with which the vrrp script haproxy should run,
in prior versions of keepalived, leaving the field empty did automatically assumed you have the user with which the vrrp script runs to be set to root
as of RHELs keepalived-2.1.5-6.el8.x86_64, i've been using however this is no longer so and thus in prior configuration as you can see I've
set the user in respective section to root.
The error Unknown keyword 'lvs_sync_daemon_interface' is also easily fixable by just substituting the lvs_sync_daemon_interface and lvs_sync_daemon and reloading
keepalived etc.

Once keepalived is started and you can see the process on both machines running in process list.

[root@server1:~]# ps -ef |grep -i keepalived
root 1190884 1 0 18:50 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D
root 1190885 1190884 0 18:50 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D

Next step is to check the keepalived statuses as well as /var/log/keepalived.log

If everything is configured as expected on both keepalived on first node you should see one is master and one is slave either in the status or the log

[root@server1:~]#systemctl restart keepalived

[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived|grep -i state
Mar 14 18:59:02 server1-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering MASTER STATE

[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived

● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2022-03-14 18:15:51 CET; 32min ago
Process: 1187587 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1187589 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Mar 14 18:15:04 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.44.192.142
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopping LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor…
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: Stopping
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: (LB_VIP_QA) sent 0 priority
Mar 14 18:15:50 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: (LB_VIP_QA) removing VIPs.
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1187590]: Stopped – used 0.002007 user time, 0.016303 system time
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: CPU usage (self/children) user: 0.000000/0.038715 system: 0.001061/0.166434
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1187589]: Stopped Keepalived v2.1.5 (07/13,2020)
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: keepalived.service: Succeeded.
Mar 14 18:15:51 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopped LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor

[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived|grep -i state
Mar 14 18:59:02 server2-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering BACKUP STATE

[root@server1:~]# grep -i state /var/log/keepalived.log
Mar 14 18:59:02 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Entering MASTER STATE

a. Fix Keepalived SECURITY VIOLATION – scripts are being executed but script_security not enabled.

When configurating keepalived for a first time we have faced the following strange error inside keepalived status inside keepalived.log

Feb 23 14:28:41 server1 Keepalived_vrrp[945478]: SECURITY VIOLATION – scripts are being executed but script_security not enabled.

To fix keepalived SECURITY VIOLATION error:

Add to /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf on the keepalived node hosts
inside

global_defs {}

After chunk

enable_script_security

include

# Synchro of the state of the connections between the LBs on the eth0 interface
lvs_sync_daemon_interface eth0

5. Prepare rsyslog configuration and Inlcude additional keepalived options
to force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log

To force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log on RHEL 8 / CentOS and other Redhat Package Manager (RPM) Linux distributions

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/rsyslog.d/48_keepalived.conf

#2022/02/02: HAProxy logs to local6, save the messages
local7.* /var/log/keepalived.log
if ($programname == 'Keepalived') then -/var/log/keepalived.log
if ($programname == 'Keepalived_vrrp') then -/var/log/keepalived.log
& stop

[root@server:~]# touch /var/log/keepalived.log

Reload rsyslog to load new config

[root@server:~]# systemctl restart rsyslog
[root@server:~]# systemctl status rsyslog

● rsyslog.service – System Logging Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/rsyslog.service.d
└─rsyslog-service.conf
Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-03-07 13:34:38 CET; 1 weeks 0 days ago
Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
Main PID: 269574 (rsyslogd)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 100914)
Memory: 5.1M
CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
└─269574 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n

Mar 15 08:15:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —
Mar 15 08:35:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —
Mar 15 08:55:16 server1lb-fqdn rsyslogd[269574]: — MARK —

If once keepalived is loaded but you still have no log written inside /var/log/keepalived.log

[root@server1:~]# vim /etc/sysconfig/keepalived
KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -S 7"

[root@server2:~]# vim /etc/sysconfig/keepalived
KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -S 7"

[root@server1:~]# systemctl restart keepalived.service
[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived

● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2022-02-24 12:12:20 CET; 2 weeks 4 days ago
Main PID: 1030501 (keepalived)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 100914)
Memory: 1.8M
CGroup: /system.slice/keepalived.service
├─1030501 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D
└─1030502 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D

Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output is incomplete or unavailable.

[root@server2:~]# systemctl restart keepalived.service
[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived
…

6. Monitoring VRRP traffic of the two keepaliveds with tcpdump

Once both keepalived are up and running a good thing is to check the VRRP protocol traffic keeps fluently on both machines.
Keepalived VRRP keeps communicating over the TCP / IP Port 112 thus you can simply snoop TCP tracffic on its protocol.

[root@server1:~]# tcpdump proto 112

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:08:07.356187 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:08.356297 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:09.356408 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:10.356511 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:11.356655 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20

[root@server2:~]# tcpdump proto 112

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:08:07.356187 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:08.356297 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:09.356408 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:10.356511 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20
11:08:11.356655 IP server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20

As you can see the VRRP traffic on the network is originating only from server1lb-fqdn, this is so because host server1lb-fqdn is the keepalived configured master node.

It is possible to spoof the password configured to authenticate between two nodes, thus if you're bringing up keepalived service cluster make sure your security is tight at best the machines should be in a special local LAN DMZ, do not configure DMZ on the internet !!! 🙂 Or if you eventually decide to configure keepalived in between remote hosts, make sure you somehow use encrypted VPN or SSH tunnels to tunnel the VRRP traffic.

[root@server1:~]# tcpdump proto 112 -vv
tcpdump: listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:36:25.530772 IP (tos 0xc0, ttl 255, id 59838, offset 0, flags [none], proto VRRP (112), length 40)
server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: vrrp server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20, addrs: VIPIP_QA auth "testp431"
11:36:26.530874 IP (tos 0xc0, ttl 255, id 59839, offset 0, flags [none], proto VRRP (112), length 40)
server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: vrrp server1lb-fqdn > vrrp.mcast.net: VRRPv2, Advertisement, vrid 50, prio 53, authtype simple, intvl 1s, length 20, addrs: VIPIP_QA auth "testp431"

Lets also check what floating IP is configured on the machines:

[root@server1:~]# ip -brief address show
lo UNKNOWN 127.0.0.1/8
eth0 UP 10.10.10.5/26 10.10.10.1/32

The 10.10.10.5 IP is the main IP set on LAN interface eth0, 10.10.10.1 is the floating IP which as you can see is currently set by keepalived to listen on first node.

[root@server2:~]# ip -brief address show |grep -i 10.10.10.1

An empty output is returned as floating IP is currently configured on server1

To double assure ourselves the IP is assigned on correct machine, lets ping it and check the IP assigned MAC currently belongs to which machine.

[root@server2:~]# ping 10.10.10.1
PING 10.10.10.1 (10.10.10.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.10.10.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.526 ms
^C
— 10.10.10.1 ping statistics —
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.526/0.526/0.526/0.000 ms
[root@server2:~]# arp -an |grep -i 10.44.192.142
? (10.10.10.1) at 00:48:54:91:83:7d [ether] on eth0
[root@server2:~]# ip a s|grep -i 00:48:54:91:83:7d
[root@server2:~]#

As you can see from below output MAC is not found in configured IPs on server2.

[root@server1-fqdn:~]# /sbin/ip a s|grep -i 00:48:54:91:83:7d -B1 -A1
eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:48:54:91:83:7d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.10.10.1/26 brd 10.10.1.191 scope global noprefixroute eth0

Pretty much expected MAC is on keepalived node server1.

7. Testing keepalived on server1 and server2 maachines VIP floating IP really works

To test the overall configuration just created, you should stop keeaplived on the Master node and in meantime keep an eye on Slave node (server2), whether it can figure out the Master node is gone and switch its
state BACKUP to save MASTER. By changing the secondary (Slave) keepalived to master the floating IP: 10.10.10.1 will be brought up by the scripts on server2.

Lets assume that something went wrong with server1 VM host, for example the machine crashed due to service overload, DDoS or simply a kernel bug or whatever reason.
To simulate that we simply have to stop keepalived, then the broadcasted information on VRRP TCP/IP proto port 112 will be no longer available and keepalived on node server2, once
unable to communicate to server1 should chnage itself to state MASTER.

[root@server1:~]# systemctl stop keepalived
[root@server1:~]# systemctl status keepalived
● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2022-03-15 12:11:33 CET; 3s ago
Process: 1192001 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1192002 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Mar 14 18:59:07 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopping LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor…
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: Stopping
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) sent 0 priority
Mar 15 12:11:32 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: (LB_VIP_QA) removing VIPs.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[1192003]: Stopped – used 2.145252 user time, 15.513454 system time
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: CPU usage (self/children) user: 0.000000/44.555362 system: 0.001151/170.118126
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn Keepalived[1192002]: Stopped Keepalived v2.1.5 (07/13,2020)
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: keepalived.service: Succeeded.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server1lb-fqdn systemd[1]: Stopped LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor.

On keepalived off, you will get also a notification Email on the Receipt Email configured from keepalived.conf from the working keepalived node with a simple message like:

=> VRRP Instance is no longer owning VRRP VIPs <=

Once keepalived is back up you will get another notification like:

=> VRRP Instance is now owning VRRP VIPs <=

[root@server2:~]# systemctl status keepalived
● keepalived.service – LVS and VRRP High Availability Monitor
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/keepalived.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-03-14 18:13:52 CET; 17h ago
Process: 297366 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/keepalived $KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 297367 (keepalived)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 100914)
Memory: 2.1M
CGroup: /system.slice/keepalived.service
├─297367 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D -S 7
└─297368 /usr/sbin/keepalived -D -S 7

Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Remote SMTP server [127.0.0.1]:25 connected.
Mar 15 12:11:33 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: SMTP alert successfully sent.
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: (LB_VIP_QA) Sending/queueing gratuitous ARPs on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1
Mar 15 12:11:38 server2lb-fqdn Keepalived_vrrp[297368]: Sending gratuitous ARP on eth0 for 10.10.10.1

[root@server2:~]# ip addr show|grep -i 10.10.10.1
inet 10.10.10.1/32 scope global eth0

As you see the VIP is now set on server2, just like expected – that's OK, everything works as expected. If the IP did not move double check the keepalived.conf on both nodes for errors or misconfigurations.

To recover the initial order of things so server1 is MASTER and server2 SLAVE host, we just have to switch on the keepalived on server1 machine.

[root@server1:~]# systemctl start keepalived

The automatic change of server1 to MASTER node and respective move of the VIP IP is done because of the higher priority (of importance we previously configured on server1 in keepalived.conf).

What we learned?

So what we learned in this article?
We have seen how to easily install and configure a High Availability Load balancer with Keepalived with single floating VIP IP address with 1 MASTER and 1 SLAVE host and a Haproxy example config with few frontends / App backends. We have seen how the config can be tested for potential errors and how we can monitor whether the VRRP2 network traffic flows between nodes and how to potentially debug it further if necessery.
Further on rawly explained some of the keepalived configurations but as keepalived can do pretty much more,for anyone seriously willing to deal with keepalived on a daily basis or just fine tune some already existing ones, you better read closely its manual page "man keepalived.conf" as well as the official Redhat Linux documentation page on setting up a Linux cluster with Keepalived (Be prepare for a small nightmare as the documentation of it seems to be a bit chaotic, and even I would say partly missing or opening questions on what does the developers did meant – not strange considering the havoc that is pretty much as everywhere these days.)

Finally once keepalived hosts are prepared, it was shown how to test the keepalived application cluster and Floating IP does move between nodes in case if one of the 2 keepalived nodes is inaccessible.

The same logic can be repeated multiple times and if necessery you can set multiple VIPs to expand the HA reachable IPs solution.

high-availability-with-two-vips-example-diagram

The presented idea is with haproxy forward Proxy server to proxy requests towards Application backend (servince machines), however if you need to set another set of server on the flow to process HTML / XHTML / PHP / Perl / Python programming code, with some common Webserver setup ( Nginx / Apache / Tomcat / JBOSS) and enable SSL Secure certificate with lets say Letsencrypt, this can be relatively easily done. If you want to implement letsencrypt and a webserver check this redundant SSL Load Balancing with haproxy & keepalived article.

That's all folks, hope you enjoyed.
If you need to configure keepalived Cluster or a consultancy write your query here 🙂

Tags: Ansible, application cluster, backup, Below, cluster config, common, configured, Configuring, CPU, Easy, everything, haproxy, howto, incoming traffic, inside, installation, keepalived, linux?, long time, Mar, master node, network, nightmare, Sending, server2, servers, Set, Slave, smtp, something, Stopping, test keepalived, var, vip address, virtual machines, Warning Journal
Posted in Cloud services, Educational, Haproxy, Keepalived, System Administration | No Comments »

Set all logs to log to to physical console /dev/tty12 (tty12) on Linux

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Those who administer servers from the days of birth of Linux and who used actively GNU / Linux over the years or any other UNIX knows how practical could be to configure logging of all running services / kernel messages / errors and warnings on a physical console.

Traditionally from the days I was learning Linux basics I was shown how to do this on an old Debian Sarge 3.0 Linux without systemd and on all Linux distributions Redhat 9.0 / Calderas and Mandrakes I've used either as a home systems or for servers. I've always configured output of all messages to go to the last easy to access console /dev/tty12 (for those who never use it console switching under Linux plain text console mode is done with key combination of CTRL + ALT + F1 .. F12.

In recent times however with the introduction of systemd pretty much things changed as messages to console are not handled by /etc/inittab which was used to add and refresh physical consoles tty1, tty2 … tty7 (the default added one on Linux were usually 7), but I had to manually include more respawn lines for each console in /etc/inittab.
Nowadays as of year 2020 Linux distros /etc/inittab is no longer there being obsoleted and console print out of INPUT / OUTPUT messages are handled by systemd.

1. Enable Physical TTYs from TTY8 till TTY12 etc.

The number of default consoles existing in most Linux distributions I've seen is still from tty1 to tty7. Hence to add more tty consoles and be ready to be able to switch out not only towards tty7 but towards tty12 once you're connected to the server via a remote ILO (Integrated Lights Out) / IdRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) / IPMI / IMM (Imtegrated Management Module), you have to do it by telling systemd issuing below systemctl commands:

# systemctl enable getty@tty8.service Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty8.service -> /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service.

systemctl enable getty@tty9.service

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty9.service -> /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service.

systemctl enable getty@tty10.service

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty10.service -> /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service.

systemctl enable getty@tty11.service

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty11.service -> /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service.

systemctl enable getty@tty12.service

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty12.service -> /lib/systemd/system/getty@.service.

Once the TTYS tty7 to tty12 are enabled you will be able to switch to this consoles either if you have a physical LCD / CRT monitor or KVM switch connected to the machine mounted on the Rack shelf once you're in the Data Center or will be able to see it once connected remotely via the Management IP Interface (ILO) remote console.

2. Taking screenshot of the physical console TTY with fbcat

For example below is a screenshot of the 10th enabled tty10:

tty10-linux-screenshot-fbcat-how-to-screenshot-console

As you can in the screenshot I've used the nice tool fbcat that can be used to make a screenshot of remote console. This is very useful especially if remote access via a SSH client such as PuTTY / MobaXterm is not there but you have only a physical attached monitor access on a DCs that are under a heavy firewall that is preventing anyone to get to the system remotely. For example screenshotting the physical console in case if there is a major hardware failure occurs and you need to dump a hardware error message to a flash drive that will be used to later be handled to technicians to analyize it and exchange the broken server hardware part.

Screenshots of the CLI with fbcat is possible across most Linux distributions where as usual.

In Debian you have to first instal the tool via :

# apt install –yes fbcat
…

and on RedHats / CentOS / Fedoras

# yum install -y fbcat
…

Taking screenshot once tool is on the server of whatever you have printed on console is as easy as

# fbcat > tty_name.ppm

Note that you might want to convert the .ppm created picture to png with any converter such as imagemagick's convert command or if you have a GUI perhaps with GNU Image Manipulation Tool (GIMP).

3. Enabling every rsyslog handled message to log to Physical TTY12

To make everything such as errors, notices, debug, warning messages become instantly logging towards above added new /dev/tty12.

Open /etc/rsyslog.conf and to the end of the file append below line :

daemon,mail.*;\
news.=crit;news.=err;news.=notice;\
*.=debug;*.=info;\
*.=notice;*.=warn /dev/tty12

To make rsyslog load its new config restart it:

# systemctl status rsyslog

● rsyslog.service – System Logging Service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-08-10 04:09:36 EEST; 2 days ago
Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
Main PID: 671 (rsyslogd)
Tasks: 4 (limit: 4915)
Memory: 12.5M
CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
└─671 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE

авг 12 00:00:05 pcfreak rsyslogd[671]: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.1901.0" x-pid="671" x-info="https://www.rsyslo
Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output is incomplete or unavailable.

# systemctl restart rsyslog

That's all folks navigate by pressing simultaneously CTRL + ALT + F12 to get to TTY12 or use ALT + LEFT / ALT + RIGHT ARROW (console switch commands) till you get to the console where everything should be now logged.

Enjoy and if you like this article share to tell your sysadmin friends about this nice hack ! 🙂

Tags: console, daemon, dev, Enabling, Enjoy, error message, everything, getty, Journal, linux?, logs, mail, news, rsyslog, servers, Set, status, sysadmin, systemctl, systemd, Warning, Warning Journal
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Remote System Administration, System Administration | 1 Comment »

Into great depression – What is like to live in the Balkans?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

I'm so depressed these days that I'm trying to write something decent here but everytime I try I do stop and delete all I have written and start from scratch again.
It's terrible, I believe everyone have this days and they're so dark that even the smallest ray of light is gone somewhere…

The causes for depression are multiple, I know we're entering into the season period and that could be a factor, but truly for a long time I haven't felt that bad and I really cannot find the true cause. It's like hunting the unexplained.
Being a citizen of a countries on the balkans brings a lot of questions which cannot get answered. Why we the Balkan and more specificly most of the Orthodox Christian countries are suffering so badly and economically in constant crisis and recession?
From a material perspective Bulgaria is one of the worst countries one can live in, we the people on the balkans are chronically depressed and it really seems like a downward spiral
We've been gone through so far, when I was a child we were teached in the spirit of communism and a believe in a hard material realities.

Communism has taught us we're all fleshly brothers and we should live in groups and stick to the group, now as the democracy come it's on the contraty, we're being constantly re-taught that we should leave behind the group kind of thinking and all built from communism destroy it all and build the new society… We're told by individualist nations like USA and Western europe that the only thing for the good of a person is to (get an absolute individualistic life and only exist for the greater goodness of each ones self as individuals..

As with everything the Balkans are notable for being a very unordered place. Living here is like living in chaos…
The social security policies here are not working, the jurisdiction is working on behalf of the rich, the police force is seriously disfunctional and easily bribable. Put next to all this shit a high levels of unemployment and a lot of unhappy depressed people crawling around the streets and you get the picture …
As a normal consequence most of the young people have entered a dark ways of alcoholism and hard-core nihillism.
There are high level of people who are oriented into the new dark realities of Metal or underground music.
Each philosophy that is being put in from the west is being adopted here and being multiplied million times and mostly the bad things are being adopted and less rarely the good ones…
It's so mixed up that nobody can explain why it is happening as it is here.
I really am trying hard to convince myself for a years now that it is worthy to live here but the more I live here in Bulgaria the more I see all is getting worser than getting for good.

I wonder for how long it will go this pointless way, we the balkan people are living in ruins literally.

The only light we still have is the Church, but very sadly most people has left behind the faith and prefer to follow the fake American dream than to obey to our old ways and traditions.

Globalisation has entered in the Balkans in a full-force and is destroying our ancient culture and traditions and building the fakeness of the coca-cola culture that most of the people prefer to adore nowdays …

Bulgaria's population is mostly based of old people and we're a dying nation, if a miracle doesn't happen then we definitely will be gone.

Tags: balkans, behalf, cause, chaos, communism, consequence, democracy, everyone, everything, good, goodness, great depression, hard material, individualist, jurisdiction, level, Light, living in chaos, nihillism, nobody, orthodox christian countries, person, perspective, philosophy, place, police, police force, ray of light, realities, recession, scratch, season period, security policies, social security, something, time, true cause, unemployment, western europe
Posted in Everyday Life | No Comments »

Love is the only true motivator for us as humans and for company personnel

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

love-only-true-motivator

During my succesfully failed studies 🙂 in Arnhem Business School (ABS). I've thought a lot on what really is the greatest motivator for human personnel

My conclusion after probably two years of observing myself and the surrounding environment is that the only true motivator that could be for everyone on this world is Love.
This kind of idea came to me as I've noticed that, I'm only fully truly happy when I do something I love to do!

Probably anyone who is observing himself and has a strive for truth in himself has figured that out too. But I think online there are not too many materials talking about Love as beeing the only true motivator and hence I decided to drop this few lines here.

The conclusion I came up with that Love is the Ultimate Motivator was not only my idea.

This we read in the Holy Bible too. I will quote here the whole John Chapter 4 – King James Version because what it says is an Ultimate Un-changable Truth known for centuries and soneone who really thinks with his mind and looks for true science could get some faith and wisdom on being motivated by this same Love:

King James Version: 1 John Chapter 4
1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.
6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

Again I will repeat the exact phrasing which supports my claim that Love is the Only true Humans and Human employees Motivator :

KJV Verse 16: And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

It is said so simple so anyone can understand it God is Love and since God can be the only motive for what we do, by doing what we do "living by the law of love" so to say, we can only be life filled happy and productive by doing everything moved by Love with Love for Love (From God, through God, for God)!

Even for unbelievers (atheists) or some other non-Christian religion faiths belonging people this ancient text exposes a very deep truth, which by the way most of the most notable people of all times people has put in their lives mindfully or unmindfully already.

My rationalization continued like so:

If Love is the only true human, and human as a work unit (resource) motivator and we know God is Love himself, then what do you think would a person need to be motivated to love what he does??

Love is like a big firewood which makes fire stronger and stronger the more fuel (Love) you put inside. Therefore my personal belief is to motivate anyone to do anything constructive, we can only do it through Love too.

Everything out of the boundary of Love is ever doomed to fail, it is how God designed us and the universe to work in very beginning ( we can read in the holy bible Genesis chpt).

I'm pretty sure even non-Christian scientists could see that the Love is the only motivator with a fair repetitive experimentation (science) and even probably many has already concluded this and put it in work inside big organizations.

With all said, I've found a very nice example video showing off that Love is the only motivator where it is well said by Steve Jobs who passed away few months ago.
The video is his speech in-front of Stanford University, during the handing in to him of a diploma Phd from the university to honor his big contribution for the development of the IT industry.

If one watches closely at the speech he will find out one of the most known enterpreneur of our times claims exactly the same thing "Love is the only Motivator", he says in his speech and speaks about the Love and how one should be driven by the heart in what he does.

It was his Love for his job that make him achieve what he does even though he explains, he went through various "love" for his job trials, many times in his life.

I've taken this speech as a good example since his religion believe was pretty much mixed (he was not Christian, though raised up in Christian family after being adopted). Hence 'The Love being a true motivator' can be observed and understood by a believing devoted Christians but it is like an Universal never changing law God put in the center of our being since he made us in Eden.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (speech in front of Graduating SU students)

I should add that I didn't support many of the things and religious ideas of Jobs,
as well as I don't believe jobs temporal earth success is something we should strive for.
Anyway I give his speech as an example that even people who are not Christians have figured out the Love being the biggest motivator in doing our job and non-work related daily life.

Some of the things that are anti-christian he says are:

"Remembering we will be death soon is among the most important tools I've encountered to help me make the big choices in life", because almost everything all external expectations or pride or fear of emberassment of failure this things fall away in the face of death. Leaving only what is truly important, remembering that you're going to die is the best way I know to avoid the thinking you have something to loose. YOU ARE ALREADY NAKED, THERE IS NO REASON NOT TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART"

As you can notice in Jobs speech, he obviously doesn't believe in afterlife existence, we people to possesses soul, and he rejected the Christian belief in existence of Heaven and Hell. He believes the Buddhist lie of the re-incarnation and Hare Krishna's deceptions. The claim that we're all naked in not true, we know said by the Holy Scriptures that all Christians who received the spirit of truth after baptism are dressed up by the same spirit.

Also his idea that "one should follow his heart always" is well romantic but doesn't reflect the Christian teachings, as not following the heart is most important in Christianity but following God's laws on the first place and then our own ways. The follow your heart is no different from Alister Crawley's satanic philosophy saying in his satanic book "The Book of the Law". Do thy your will. Well what jobs tells to this young people is the same in other words "do thy your will".

Tags: company, everything, god is love, Hare Krishna, heart, jesus christ, John Chapter, life, motivator, speech, spirits, Stanford University, steve jobs, truth, work
Posted in Business Management, Company onboarding basics, Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Various | 1 Comment »

How and Why Walt Disney Is Trying To Corrupt You and Your Children

Thursday, May 24th, 2012

I've seen a number of videos exposing, a lot of symbolism, occultism and evil contained in Walt Disney's most famous videos.

I've been amazed that a first glimpse innocent looking cartoon can contain so much magical stuff, occult and hidden satanic symbolism.
Its been amazing that we still, are continuously flooding the youth with such openly anti-christian contained cartoons.

I guess even a lot of Christian devoted couples are playing this evil message movies.
On the first look it is not immediately evident what is happening in the movies, a kid could never understand how much bad stuff is contained inside. However a grown parents can easily see if they observe the movies closely. If you don't believe me check the few videos below and also just play some of your favourite kids cartoon and do a critical analysis of what is inside. There is no doubt there is everything inside, everything instead of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
We have become terribly crazy, since we learn the kids to look for anti-Christian lives, even from the very early stages of their childhood.

The result from such movies in the growing up youth is clear; they are attracted to movies with murder violence, sex related plots, stealing lies, ungodly music, love for evil and not a search for good, hatred, betrayal and all the evils, our grandfathers were teaching us to avoid …

How and Why Walt Disney Is Trying To Corrupt You and Your Children

Was Disney Satanic – Part 1

Was Disney Satanic – Part 2

Disney is pure evil

Journalism – How Disney Movies Corrupt Young Minds

There are plenty of psychological books explaining the badness over a child mind of such movies, yet parents are not careful to protect their children but rather encourage them to watch disney's production thinking they help the kid to develop their brain …
If you're a Christian and you know this things exist and they're preached, please be careful and try to select carefully what kind of movies you play to your kids.

If you're a grow up Christian and you've been raised with this movies, don't be in wonder why you have a very severe desire for sex, money, power and occult. The desire for all this ungodly things was 'installed' in you since the time of your youth simply by being bombarded with Disney's, Hanna Barbera and the rest of the 'all times cartoon' American popular cinema and cartoons.

Tags: bad stuff, cartoon, desire, everything, first glimpse, Hanna Barbera, kid, look, lot, saviour jesus christ, symbolism, Walt Disney corrupting children, youth
Posted in Christianity, Conspiracy theories, Curious Facts, Everyday Life | No Comments »

Windows “God Mode” one shortcut to see and configure all setttings in Microsoft Windows 7 / 8 / 10 – Windows Master Control Panel hidden feature

Monday, January 25th, 2016

GodMode-secret-master-control-panel-in-windows-operating-system
One very handy "secret" feature of Windows Operating System which is very useful to people who administrate a dozen of Windows servers daily is called "God Mode".
The idea behind "God Mode" is pretty simple it aims to give you maximum control and viability concentrated in one single Window interface.

God Mode was quite a lot ranted over the past years so it is likely that many of my blog readers are already aware of that Windows secret, but for those who didn't it will be
nice to check it out. To see the God Mode Windows functionality just create a New Folder in Windows Desktop or Anywhere on the Windows PC and Rename the New Folder to:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Windows-7-God-mode-screenshot-or-how-to-easily-get-one-point-of-control-in-windows-OS

By creating folder witth his text string you will be able to do almost everything you ever tend to do on Windows from changing the outlook of theme and mouse cursor, changing,
Win explorer's folder's options, modify fonts, change cursor blink rate, get windows performance tools and information, add / remove programs, modify language, modify
firewall settings and in short do everything that is provided by Control Panel + some other goodies like Administrative Tools, Restore Options, Event logs etc. grouped in a fantastic readable manner.
GodMode naming says it all more or less it aims to give you "Godlike" accessibility to the Windows. Of course to be able to properly use the feature you will have to create
the Folder named GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} with Administrator user.
The GodMode is available in Windows OSes since quite a long (2007) and is documented officially by Microsoft

Another alternative shortcut that gives the Godmode Master control panel is:

God.{ed7ba470-8e54-465e-825c-99712043e01c}

Enjoy 🙂

Tags: aims, configure, control panel, everything, feature, goodies, microsoft windows, mouse cursor, text string, Windows God Mode
Posted in Everyday Life, Performance Tuning, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »

How to enable VirtualBox Windows XP FullScreen with VboxGuestAdditions.iso on Ubuntu 11.10 Linux

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Right after installing Windows XP inside VirtualBox, I've found out everything works fine except the screen. Even though pressing (Right CTRL + F) was changing the Windows XP running window to FullScreen the XP screen was taking only a part of the whole screen area, where almost half of the screen was visible as simply staying blank.

A bit of research and I found the issue is caused by missing VirtualBoxGuestAdditions .

VBoxAdditions is a package which should be installed inside the VirtualBox by navigating to Devices -> Install Guest Additions

Virtualbox offers a download of a VboxGuestAdditions_4.1.2_Ubuntu.iso from url;
http://dlc.sun.edgesuite.net/virtualbox/4.1.2_Ubuntu/VBoxGuestAdditions_4.1.2_Ubuntu.iso, anyways this download fails since the URL is currently unavailable.

To fix this two ways are possible:

1. Download VBoxGuestAdditions.iso from here and put it in directory /usr/share/virtualbox , e.g.:

root@ubuntu:~# cd /usr/share/virtualbox root@ubuntu:/usr/share/virtualbox# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso ...

2. Download and install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso_4.1.2-1_all.deb

root@ubuntu:~# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/virtualbox-guest-additions-iso_4.1.2-1_all.deb ... root@ubuntu:~# dpkg -i virtualbox-guest-additions-iso_4.1.2-1_all.deb ...

Next to enable and install guest additions once again use menus:

Devices -> Install Guest Additions

The screen to appear next will be similar to:

Further on follow the few dialogs to complete the installations and integration of Guest Additions and restart the Virtual machine and hooray the Windows will appear in Full screen in VirtualBox ! 😉

Tags: additions, area, deb, dialogs, dlc, download, dpkg, edgesuite, everything, freak, FULL, fullscreen, half, hooray, How to, Install, installing windows, integration, iso 2, issue, Linux, menus, net, package, root, screen, share, sun, two ways, Ubuntu, usr, Virtual, virtual machine, VirtualBox, VirtualBoxGuestAdditions, wget, windows xp
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration, Virtual Machines | 1 Comment »

☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

Posts Tagged ‘everything’

Short history on how 8 of March Woman International Day (IWD) made up feast replaced the Real Woman Day celebrated on the Christian feast of Annunciation

Origin of 8 of March Woman's day

8 of March in Modern Times the socialist faux for Annunciation

Why 8 of March was not a considered big deal in the past?

Eight of March Epitaph

Create Linux High Availability Load Balancer Cluster with Keepalived and Haproxy on Linux

1. Install keepalived and haproxy on machines

2. Configure haproxy (haproxy.cfg) on both server1 and server2

…

3. Configure keepalived on both servers

4. Test Keepalived keepalived.conf configuration syntax is OK

5. Prepare rsyslog configuration and Inlcude additional keepalived options
to force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log

6. Monitoring VRRP traffic of the two keepaliveds with tcpdump

7. Testing keepalived on server1 and server2 maachines VIP floating IP really works

What we learned?

Love is the only true motivator for us as humans and for company personnel

How and Why Walt Disney Is Trying To Corrupt You and Your Children

Windows “God Mode” one shortcut to see and configure all setttings in Microsoft Windows 7 / 8 / 10 – Windows Master Control Panel hidden feature

Daily Bible quote

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Posts Tagged ‘everything’

Playing the Audio CD via success with mplayer

Playing Audio CDs with VLC (VideoLAN Media Player)

A bit of Overview, things globally seem to be worsening

The Birth of Ekaterina on 17th November 2023 another hope for the World

Origin of 8 of March Woman's day

8 of March in Modern Times the socialist faux for Annunciation

Why 8 of March was not a considered big deal in the past?

Eight of March Epitaph

1. Install keepalived and haproxy on machines

2. Configure haproxy (haproxy.cfg) on both server1 and server2

…

3. Configure keepalived on both servers

4. Test Keepalived keepalived.conf configuration syntax is OK

5. Prepare rsyslog configuration and Inlcude additional keepalived options to force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log

6. Monitoring VRRP traffic of the two keepaliveds with tcpdump

7. Testing keepalived on server1 and server2 maachines VIP floating IP really works

What we learned?

1. Enable Physical TTYs from TTY8 till TTY12 etc.

2. Taking screenshot of the physical console TTY with fbcat

3. Enabling every rsyslog handled message to log to Physical TTY12

Daily Bible quote

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5. Prepare rsyslog configuration and Inlcude additional keepalived options
to force keepalived log into /var/log/keepalived.log