Posts Tagged ‘google’

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

Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

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

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

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

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

google-cloud-logo

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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


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

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

# yum install google-cloud-sdk

 

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

Latest install instructions of Google Cloud SDK are here.


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

AmazonWebservices_Logo.svg

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

 

# apt-get install –yes python-pip

 

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

 

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

 

# pip install awscli –upgrade –user

 

3. Install Azure Cloud Console access CLI command interface
 

Microsoft_Azure_Cloud-Logo.svg

On Debian / Ubuntu or any other deb based distro:

# AZ_REPO=$(lsb_release -cs)
# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $AZ_REPO main" | \
$ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list

# curl -L https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add –
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https azure-cli

 

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

 

$ az login

 


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

$ az login


For Latest install instructions check Amazon's documentation here

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

 

OpenShift-Redhat-cloud-platform

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


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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

To test openshift, try to login to OpenShift cloud:

 

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


Latest install instructions on OC here

5. Install Cloud Foundry cf CLI Cloud access tool

cloud-foundry-cloud-logo

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

 

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

 

b) On RHEL Enterprise Linux / CentOS and Fedoras

 

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


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

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

6. Install Ruby GEMs RHC tools collection

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

To start with rhc next do:
 

rhc setup
rhc app create my-app diy-0.1


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

 

 

Closure

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

Change default browser to Internet Explorer

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Almost no sane person and security aware person uses Internet Explorer still. However still in huge American companies it is heavily used. If you install Firefox or Google Chrome and by mistake you change default browser to one of them then it is worthy revert back default browser to Internet Explorer.

Here is how to do it;
Open Internet Explorer and navigate to:

Tools -> Interent Options -> Programs -> click on (Make Default)

Internet-Explorer-Internet-Options-screenshot-on-Windows-7

change-default-browser-to-internet-explorer-make-default-button-screenshot

Done
 

How to install Google Chrome web browser on Debian 7 Wheezy Linux

Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

How to install Google Chrome web browser on Debian Gnu Linux Chrome and tux logo
Just installed Debian 7 Linux and wondered how to install Google Chrome Browser on Debian Wheezy. It took me a while until I figure it out, as direct download from Google after searching for Chrome Linux had library requirements which are missing from Debian 7 Wheezy repositories.
Here is how;

1. Add  Wheezy Backports and Google's Chrome Repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

echo 'deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main contrib non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo 'deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Install Google Chrome with apt-get

Here you have few options install Google Chrome Beta (whether you prefer you're an innovator), install unstable – if you prefer latest functionality and don't count on stability or install stable version.

a) Install Google Chrome Beta

apt-get install --yes google-chrome-beta

b) Install Google Chrome Unstable

apt-get install --yes google-chrome-unstable

c) Install Google Stable

apt-get install --yes google-chrome-stable

I personally prefer always to keep stable so prefer to install google-chrome-stable.

Only reason I need Google-Chrome is for testing how websites looks with it. Otherwise I don't recommend this browser to anyone who cares for his security. Obviously as Chrome is product of Google it is almost certainly it keeps complete surveillance on what you do on the net.

That's all happy web development with Chrome on Debian 🙂
 

Linux: Generating Web statistics from Old Apache logs with Webalizer

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

Webalizer generate and visualize in web page statistics of old websites howto webalizer static html google analytics like statistics on linux logo

Often it happens, that some old hosted websites were created in a way so no Web Statistics are available. Almost all modern created websites nowadays are already set to use Google AnalyticsAnyhow every now and then I stumble on hosting clients whose websites creator didn't thought on how to track how many hits or unique visitors site gets in a month / year etc.
 Thanksfully this is solvable by good "uncle" admin with help with of Webalizer (with custom configuration) and a little bit of shell scripting.

The idea is simple, we take the old website logs located in lets say 
/var/log/apache2/www.website-access.log*,
move files to some custom created new directory lets say /root/www.website-access-logs/ and then configure webalizer to read and generate statistics based on log in there.

For the purpose, we have to have webalizer installed on Linux system. In my case this is Debian GNU / Linux.

For those who hear of Webalizer for first time here is short package description:

debian:~# apt-cache show webalizer|grep -i description -A 2

Description-en: web server log analysis program
The Webalizer was designed to scan web server log files in various formats
and produce usage statistics in HTML format for viewing through a browser.

 If webalizer is not installed still install it with:

debian:~# apt-get install --yes webalizer
...
.....

Then make backup copy of original / default webalizer.conf (very important step especially if server is already processing Apache log files with some custom webalizer configuration:

debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf.orig

Next step is to copy webalizer.conf with a name reminding of website of which logs will be processed, e.g.:

debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf /etc/webalizer/www.website-webalizer.conf

In www.website-webalizer.conf config file its necessary to edit at least 4 variables:

LogFile /var/log/apache2/access.log
OutputDir /var/www
#Incremental no
ReportTitle Usage statistics for

 Make sure after modifying 3 vars read something like:  
LogFile /root/www.website/access_log_merged_1.log
OutputDir /var/www/www.website
Incremental yes
ReportTitle Usage statistics for Your-Website-Host-Name.com

Next create /root/www.website and /var/www/www.website, then copy all files you need to process from /var/log/apache2/www.website* to /root/www.website:

debian:~# mkdir -p /root/www.website
debian:~# cp -rpf /var/log/apache2/www.website* /root/www.website

On Debian Apache uses logrotate to archive old log files, so all logs except www.website-access.log and wwww.website-access.log.1 are gzipped:

debian:~#  cd /root/www.website
debian:~# ls 
www.website-access.log.10.gz
www.website-access.log.11.gz
www.website-access.log.12.gz
www.website-access.log.13.gz
www.website-access.log.14.gz
www.website-access.log.15.gz
www.website-access.log.16.gz
www.website-access.log.17.gz
www.website-access.log.18.gz
www.website-access.log.19.gz
www.website-access.log.20.gz
...
 

Then we have to un-gzip zipped logs and create one merged file from all of them ready to be red later by Webalizer. To do so I use a tiny shell script like so:

for n in {52..1}; do gzip -d www.dobrudzhatour.net-access.log.$n.gz; done
for n in {52..1}; do cat www.dobrudzhatour.net-access.log.$n >> access_log_merged_1.log;
done

First look de-gzips and second one does create a merged file from all with name access_merged_1.log The range of log files in my case is from www.website-access.log.1 to www.website-access.log.52, thus I have in loop back number counting from 52 to 1.

Once access_log_merged_1.log is ready we can run webalizer to process file (Incremental) and generate all time statistics for www.website:

debian:~# webalizer -c /etc/webalizer/webalizer-www.website-webalizer.conf

Webalizer V2.01-10 (Linux 2.6.32-27-server) locale: en_US.UTF-8
Using logfile /root/www.website/access_log_merged_1.log (clf)
Using default GeoIP database Creating output in /var/www/webalizer-www.website
Hostname for reports is 'debian'
Reading history file… webalizer.hist
Reading previous run data.. webalizer.current
333474 records (333474 ignored) in 37.50 seconds, 8892/sec

To check out just generated statistics open in browser:

http://yourserverhost/webalizer-www.website/

or

http://IP_Address/webalizer-www.website

 You should see statistics pop-up, below is screenshot with my currently generated stats:

Webalizer website access statistics screenshot Debian GNU Linux

Checking port security on Linux with Nmap – Just another Nmap examples tutorial

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

Scanning with nmap checking computer network security Linux FreeBSD Windows Nmap logo
Nmap
(Network Mapper) is one of the most essential tools for checking server security. As a penetration testing instrument it is both used by SysAdmins / Crackers and Security Specialists. Its perfect too to make periodic port audits and determine how good is configured server firewall or even in time of building one. Often with time Firewall rules grow bigger and bigger and as a consequence there is a risk of loopholes in FW rules, nmap routine host checks (i.e. run as a cronjob and logging port status on server is IMHO a good preventive measure).

I first get introduced to Nmap in the early days of my careers as IT Geek and System Administrator around year 2000. Back then Computer Security and hacking culture was a common thing across IT geeks and ppl hanging in IRC 😉 This article will not say much of news for those accustomed to Nmap, but hope interesting for people newly introduced to Computer Security it will be of use.


1. Checking host status with Nmap (Is remote scanned host up).

There is plenty of ways to check, whether remote host is reachable, ping is classics, but not always relevant as many network admins decide to filter ping for security reasons. Of course one can do manual try outs with telnet on common Services Ports (Apache, Mail, Squid, MySQL etc. / 80,25,8080, 3306), or even write on own prog to do so but its worthless as Nmap is already there with options for this and its report in about 90% of cases is relevant:

To check whether host is up with Nmap:

pcfreak:~# nmap -sP google.com

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 11:58 EEST
Nmap scan report for google.com (173.194.39.227)
Host is up (0.013s latency).
Other addresses for google.com (not scanned): 173.194.39.238 173.194.39.231 173.194.39.226 173.194.39.232 173.194.39.230 173.194.39.233 173.194.39.228 173.194.39.225 173.194.39.229 173.194.39.224
rDNS record for 173.194.39.227: sof01s02-in-f3.1e100.net
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.74 seconds

2. Port map with Quick remote host (connect) scan

Most classical way of scanning, since the early days of computing is to  attempt connecting to remote host ports opening connection via creating new TCP or UDP protocol socket with C's connect(); function. Hence nmap's "default" way of scanning is like so. Anyways it doesn't scan all possible 65534 ports, when run with no extra arguments, but instead scans only those more popular widespread used.

noah:~# nmap -sT www.pc-freak.net

 

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 15:05 EEST
Stats: 0:00:01 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 2.00% done; ETC: 15:07 (0:01:38 remaining)
Stats: 0:00:02 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 24.40% done; ETC: 15:05 (0:00:09 remaining)
Stats: 0:00:03 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 77.25% done; ETC: 15:05 (0:00:01 remaining)
Interesting ports on www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76):
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   unknown
9001/tcp open   tor-orport

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4.69 seconds
 

During scan, pressing Enter, prints on screen statistics on how many percentage of scan is completed. In older Nmap, releases this was not so, it is very convenient stuff, as some host scans (with specific firewalls), can have anti port scan rules making the scan time ultra luggish. If this is the case nmap can be run in different scan mode, I'm gonna say few words on that later.

3. Nmap – Scanning only selected ports of interest and  port range

a) Scanning only desired ports
Whether scanning a complete range of IPs from C or B class network, it is handy to only scan only ports of interests for example (Apache, SMTP, POP3, IMAP etc.).
Here is how to scan those 4;

noah:~# nmap -sT www.pc-freak.net -p 80,25,110,143

 

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 15:49 EEST
Stats: 0:00:00 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (0 up), 1 undergoing Ping Scan
Ping Scan Timing: About 100.00% done; ETC: 15:49 (0:00:00 remaining)
Stats: 0:00:00 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 100.00% done; ETC: 15:49 (0:00:00 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.20s latency).
PORT    STATE SERVICE
25/tcp  open  smtp
80/tcp  open  http
110/tcp open  pop3
143/tcp open  imap

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1.00 seconds

List of all common network services with port number is located in /etc/services

b) Scanning a port range

By default nmap does not scan all the ports in the low ports range 1-1024. This port range according to RFC standards are reserved for standard more often and high priority network services. Default's nmap scan does not scan all of the 1-1024 ports and sometimes, some people prefer to run services in non-standard port numbers on some obscure ports in those port range. It is common that some "hacked (cracked is proper word here)", have secretly install Connect Shell or Connect back shell services running in those port range. Thus scanning those port range on administrated servers (especially whether there is suspicion for intrusion).

noah:~# nmap -sT www.pc-freak.net -p 1-1024

 

 

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 15:47 EEST
Stats: 0:00:04 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 77.44% done; ETC: 15:47 (0:00:01 remaining)
Stats: 0:00:04 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 84.86% done; ETC: 15:47 (0:00:01 remaining)
Interesting ports on www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76):
Not shown: 1011 filtered ports
PORT    STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp  closed ftp-data
21/tcp  open   ftp
22/tcp  open   ssh
25/tcp  open   smtp
53/tcp  open   domain
80/tcp  open   http
110/tcp open   pop3
143/tcp open   imap
443/tcp closed https
465/tcp open   smtps
631/tcp closed ipp
993/tcp open   imaps
995/tcp closed pop3s

4. Scanning all possible ports to make complete node port audit

As I said prior, if no extra port arguments nmap scans only number of pre-selected high use ports. However it is always nice to run complete port scan. Doing complete port scan on host, can reveal unusual open ports for cracker backdoors or ports or whether on Windows (ports open by Viruses and Trojans). As the complete number of possible remote ports to attempt to connect to is (65536), such a scan is much slower and sometimes can take literally "ages". To scan all ports on my home router in a local 100 M/Bit network with my notebook it takes about 23 minutes. On remote hosts it can take from 30 / 40 minutes to many hours – depending on firewall type on remote scanned host. Also by scanning all ports, there is risk remote host add you to its FW reject rules, whether its running some kind of automated software for Intrusion Detection (IDS) like Snort or AIDE.
To run complete port scan with nmap;

noah:~# nmap -sT www.pc-freak.net -p 0-65535
 

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 22:28 EEST
Stats: 0:00:01 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 0.03% done
Stats: 0:00:01 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 0.05% done
Stats: 0:06:35 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 31.23% done; ETC: 22:50 (0:14:28 remaining)
Stats: 0:06:35 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 31.24% done; ETC: 22:50 (0:14:27 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:21 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.41% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:57 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:21 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.43% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:56 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:21 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.46% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:56 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:22 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.50% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:55 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:22 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.53% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:56 remaining)
Stats: 0:08:28 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 37.96% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:13:50 remaining)
Stats: 0:11:55 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 53.22% done; ETC: 22:51 (0:10:28 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0023s latency).
Not shown: 65518 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
2060/tcp open   unknown
2070/tcp open   ah-esp-encap
2207/tcp closed unknown
8022/tcp open   oa-system
9001/tcp open   tor-orport

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1367.73 seconds

5. Scanning a network range of IPs with NMAP

It is common thing to scan a network range in C class network, especially as usually we admins have to administrate a number of hosts running in a local network:

 

noah:~# nmap -sP '192.168.0.*'

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 22:29 EEST
Stats: 0:00:01 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (0 up), 256 undergoing Ping Scan
Ping Scan Timing: About 0.98% done
Stats: 0:00:09 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (0 up), 256 undergoing Ping Scan
Parallel DNS resolution of 256 hosts. Timing: About 0.00% done
Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.16
Host is up (0.00029s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (1 host up) scanned in 9.87 seconds

You can also scan class C network with:

>noah:~# nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24

6. Obtaining network services version numbers

Nmap is capable digging version numbers of remote running application binding to port:. Option to try to guess obtain version number is -sV (Show Version).

noah:~# nmap -sV www.pc-freak.net

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 22:35 EEST
Stats: 0:00:05 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Service scan Timing: About 90.91% done; ETC: 22:37 (0:00:09 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0083s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE         VERSION
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp             ProFTPD 1.3.3a
22/tcp   open   ssh             OpenSSH 5.5p1 Debian 6+squeeze3 (protocol 2.0)
25/tcp   open   smtp            qmail smtpd
53/tcp   open   domain?
80/tcp   open   http            Apache httpd
110/tcp  open   pop3            qmail pop3d
143/tcp  open   imap            Courier Imapd (released 2005)
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   ssl/smtp        qmail smtpd
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   tcpwrapped
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   http            ShellInABox httpd
9001/tcp open   ssl/tor-orport?
Service Info: Host: mail.www.pc-freak.net; OSs: Unix, Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:kernel

Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 126.37 seconds

 

7. Checking remote server OS version

 noah:~# nmap -O www.pc-freak.net

 

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 22:42 EEST
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0017s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   oa-system
9001/tcp open   tor-orport
Device type: general purpose|broadband router|WAP|media device
Running (JUST GUESSING): Linux 2.6.X|2.4.X|3.X (94%), Gemtek embedded (89%), Siemens embedded (89%), Netgear embedded (88%), Western Digital embedded (88%), Comtrend embedded (88%)
OS CPE: cpe:/o:linux:kernel:2.6 cpe:/o:linux:kernel:2.4.20 cpe:/o:linux:kernel:3 cpe:/o:linux:kernel:2.4
Aggressive OS guesses: Linux 2.6.32 – 2.6.35 (94%), Vyatta 4.1.4 (Linux 2.6.24) (94%), Linux 2.6.32 (93%), Linux 2.6.17 – 2.6.36 (93%), Linux 2.6.19 – 2.6.35 (93%), Linux 2.6.30 (92%), Linux 2.6.35 (92%), Linux 2.4.20 (Red Hat 7.2) (92%), Linux 2.6.22 (91%), Gemtek P360 WAP or Siemens Gigaset SE515dsl wireless broadband router (89%)
No exact OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal).

OS detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 8.76 seconds

As you can see from above output OS version guess is far from adequate, as my home router is running a Debian Squeeze. However in some older Linux releases, where services return OS version nr., it reports proper.

8. Scanning silently with Nmap SYN (Stealth Scan)

As many servers run some kind of IDS logging attempts to connect to multiple ports on the host and add scanning IP to filtering CHAIN. It is generally good idea to always scan with SYN Scan. SYN scan is not a guarantee that scanning attempt will not be captured by well configured IDS, or admin snorting on network with tcpdump,trafshow or iptraf. Stealth scan is useful to prevent IDS from raising red lamps.

noah:~# nmap -sS www.pc-freak.net

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-08 22:57 EEST
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0075s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   oa-system
9001/tcp open   tor-orport

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 7.73 seconds

 

9. Nmap Scan Types (Paranoid | sneaky | polite | normal | insane)

Nmap has 6 modes of scanning. Whether no Type of scan is passed on with (-T) arg. , it scans in normal mode. Paranoid and sneaky are the slowest but lest aggressive and less likely to be captured by automated firewall filtering rules soft or IDS.

Insane mode is for people, who want to scan as quickly as possible not caring about consequences. Usually whether scanning your own hosts Insane is nice as it saves you time.

Paranoid scan is ultra, slow so in general, such scan is helpful if you're going to sleep and you  want to scan your concurrent company servers, without being identified. Paraonid scan, takes hours and depending on where remote scanned host is located can sometimes take maybe 12 to 24 hours.
noah:~# nmap -T0 www.pc-freak.net

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-09 00:23 EEST
Stats: 0:15:00 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing SYN Stealth Scan
SYN Stealth Scan Timing: About 0.05% done
Almost always -T3 or T4 is reasonable.

10. Scanning hosts in verbose mode

pcfreak:~# nmap -vv localhost

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-09 01:14 EEST
NSE: Loaded 0 scripts for scanning.
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan at 01:14
Scanning localhost (127.0.0.1) [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 21/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 111/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 22/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 53/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 993/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 143/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 110/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 25/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 783/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 8022/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 9001/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Discovered open port 465/tcp on 127.0.0.1
Completed SYN Stealth Scan at 01:14, 0.09s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Host localhost (127.0.0.1) is up (0.0000070s latency).
Scanned at 2013-06-09 01:14:27 EEST for 1s
Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 986 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
21/tcp   open  ftp
22/tcp   open  ssh
25/tcp   open  smtp
53/tcp   open  domain
80/tcp   open  http
110/tcp  open  pop3
111/tcp  open  rpcbind
143/tcp  open  imap
465/tcp  open  smtps
783/tcp  open  spamassassin
993/tcp  open  imaps
3306/tcp open  mysql
8022/tcp open  unknown
9001/tcp open  tor-orport

Read data files from: /usr/share/nmap
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.21 seconds
           Raw packets sent: 1000 (44.000KB) | Rcvd: 2014 (84.616KB)

 

11. Nmap typical scan arguments combinations

noah:~# nmap -sS -P0 -sV www.pc-freak.net

Stats: 0:01:46 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Service Scan
Service scan Timing: About 90.91% done; ETC: 01:22 (0:00:10 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0063s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE         VERSION
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp             ProFTPD 1.3.3a
22/tcp   open   ssh             OpenSSH 5.5p1 Debian 6+squeeze3 (protocol 2.0)
25/tcp   open   smtp            qmail smtpd
53/tcp   open   domain?
80/tcp   open   http            Apache httpd
110/tcp  open   pop3            qmail pop3d
143/tcp  open   imap            Courier Imapd (released 2005)
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   ssl/smtp        qmail smtpd
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   tcpwrapped
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   http            ShellInABox httpd
9001/tcp open   ssl/tor-orport?
Service Info: Host: mail.www.pc-freak.net; OSs: Unix, Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:kernel

Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 106.23 seconds
 

12. Logging nmap output

Nmap can output logs in Plain Text (TXT) / GNMAP and XML. I prefer logging to TXT, as plain text is always better:
noah:~# nmap www.pc-freak.net -o nmap-log.txt

Starting Nmap 6.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-06-09 01:32 EEST
Stats: 0:00:01 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 4.60% done; ETC: 01:32 (0:00:21 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.013s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
3306/tcp closed mysql
8022/tcp open   oa-system

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.23 seconds

Below is also a paste from nmap man page (Example section) nmap -Pn -p80 -oX logs/pb-port80scan.xml -oG logs/pb-port80scan.gnmap 216.163.128.20/20

This scans 4096 IPs for any web servers (without pinging them) and saves the output in grepable and XML formats.

13. Other good Nmap scanning examples and arguments

One very useful Nmap option is;
-A – Enables OS detection and Version detection, Script scanning and Traceroute

Whether you have a list of all IPs administrated by you and you would like to scan all of them;

noah:~# nmap -iL /root/scan_ip_addresses.txt

Other useful option is -sA (This does TCP ACK Scan), it is useful way to determine if remote host is running some kind of stateful firewall. Instead of connecting to ports to check whether opened, ACKs are send.

– Fast port Scan

noah:~# nmap -F www.pc-freak.net
...

-D argument (Decoy scanning
Nmap has option for simulating port scan from multiple IPs, the so called Decoyed scanning. Using Decoys, one can hide real IP address from which Nmap scan is initiated

# nmap -n -D192.168.1.5,10.5.1.2,172.1.2.4,3.4.2.1 192.168.1.5

– Scan firewall for security weaknesses

(TCP Null Scan to full firewall to generate responce)
# nmap -sN 10.10.10.1

(TCP Fin scan to check firewall)

  # nmap -sF 10.10.10.1

(TCP Xmas scan to check firewall)

# nmap -sX 10.10.10.1

– Scan UDP ports

# nmap -sU hostname

– Scan remote host using IP (ping) Protocol

noah:~# nmap -P0 www.pc-freak.net

Connect Scan Timing: About 96.20% done; ETC: 23:16 (0:00:00 remaining)
Nmap scan report for www.pc-freak.net (83.228.93.76)
Host is up (0.0099s latency).
Not shown: 985 filtered ports
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp   closed ftp-data
21/tcp   open   ftp
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   open   smtp
53/tcp   open   domain
80/tcp   open   http
110/tcp  open   pop3
143/tcp  open   imap
443/tcp  closed https
465/tcp  open   smtps
631/tcp  closed ipp
993/tcp  open   imaps
995/tcp  closed pop3s
8022/tcp open   oa-system
9001/tcp open   tor-orport

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4.97 seconds

 

Linux: Fixing Qmail server qmail-smtpd port 25 slow (lagged) connect problem

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

qmail logo fixing qmail mail SMTP port 25 connect delays

After updating my Debian Squeeze to latest stable packages from repository with standard:
# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

I routinely checked, if afterwards all is fine with Qmail?, just to find out connect to port 25 was hell delayed about 40-50 seconds before qmail responds with standard assigned Mail Greeting.
I Googled long time to see if I can find a post or forum thread discussing, exact issue, but though I found similar discussions I didn't found anything that exactly match problem. Thus I decided to follow the good old experimental try / fail method to figure out what causes it.

elow is pastes from telnet, illustrating delays in Qmail SMTP greeting respond:

# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

I spend about 2 hours, checking Qmail for the standard so common errors, usually causing it to not work properly following my previous article testing qmail installation problems

After going, through all of possible causes the only clue for problems, were some slowness with spamassassin. This brought me the idea that something is done wrong with spamassassin .I tried disabling, Spamassassin Razon and Pyzor restarting spamd through (in my case done not via the standard start/stop debian script) but through daemontools with svc and qmailctl i.e.:

# svc -d /service/spamd
# svc -u /service/spamd
# svc -a /service/spamd

qmailctl restart
* Stopping qmail-smtpdssl.
* Stopping qmail-smtpd.
* Sending qmail-send SIGTERM and restarting.
* Restarting qmail-smtpd.
* Restarting qmail-smtpdssl.
* Restarting qmail-pop3d.
This doesn't help, so I continued trying to figure out, what is wrong .One assumption for slow  qmail-smtpd responce was of course slow DNS resolve issues. I checked /etc/resolv.conf to find out server is configured to use local  configured DJBDNS server as first line DNS resolver. I used djbdns for it is simple and easy to configure, however it is a bit obsolete so it was possible bottleneck. After commenting line to use localhost 127.0.0.1
and settings as primary DNS Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8, problem persisted so problems with hosts resolving was obviously not the problem.

I pondered for about 30 minutes, checking again all logs and checking machine processes. Just to remember before I experienced similar issues caused by unresolving RBL (blacklist IP) hosts. I checked configured SPF records in
(process list) and noticed following 4 hosts;

# ps auxwwf

7190 ?        S      0:00 tcpserver -vR -l /var/qmail/control/me -c 30 -u 89 -g 89 -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb 0 25 rblsmtpd -t0 -r zen.spamhaus.org -r dnsbl.njabl.org -r dnsbl.sorbs.net -r bl.spamcop.net qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/control/me /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true
 

I checked one by one hosts and find out 1st two hosts in line are no longer resolving (blacklist is no longer accessible) as before:

 

zen.spamhaus.org, dnsbl.njabl.org

DNSBL (DNS blocklist) is configured on this host via /service/qmail-smtpd/run, hence to remove two unresolvable hosts forcing the weird qmail-smtpd connect delay I had to modify in it:

RBL_BAD="zen.spamhaus.org dnsbl.njabl.org dnsbl.sorbs.net bl.spamcop.net"

to

RBL_BAD="dnsbl.sorbs.net bl.spamcop.net"

After a close examinations in mail server config /var/qmail/control/spfrules, found one other Unresolvable SPF Blacklist host configured ;
# cat /var/qmail/control/spfrules
include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org

To move that one I null-ed file:

# cat /dev/null > /var/qmail/control/spfrules

Finally to take affect all changes, launched Qmail start:

# qmailctl restart
Restarting qmail:
* Stopping qmail-smtpdssl.
* Stopping qmail-smtpd.
* Sending qmail-send SIGTERM and restarting.
* Restarting qmail-smtpd.
* Restarting qmail-smtpdssl.
* Restarting qmail-pop3d.

To check all was fine afterwards, again used telnet:

# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 This is Mail Pc-Freak.NET ESMTP

Mail greeting now appears in about 2-3 seconds time.

 

 

Linux Currency convert GUI tool KeuroCalc / Convert world currencies Desktop Linux application, Convert USD to EUR

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

keurocalc Linux convert us dollars to euro and to rest of major world currencies

If you happen to run a small business or you're just an adventurer who use Linux for his notebook Desktop. Sooner or later you will end up needing Linux software to convert between world currencies. Some might argue that such a software is obsolete since already there are the Google Currency Converter and plenty of other (online) web currency converter sites. However for people like to use desktop applications like me it is much better to use a separate desktop tool which do currency convertion. If this is the case with and you happen to use Debian GNU / Linux, Ubuntu Fedora or any other main stream Linux distribution on your Linux powered Laptop or Tablet you will be surely happy to know about KEuroCalc – Universal Currency Converter. As all "K"-named starting Linux apps unfortunately keurocalc is using QT KDE graphic library and thus whenever used on GNOME it starts a bunch of KDE services (kedinit,klauncher, kded), however the load of this few on any modern notebook or PC is neglectably low so for most users the only disadvantage of kerocalc might be interface is looking a bit different compared to rest of Gnome GTK+ programs.

To install keurocalc on deb based Linuces e.g. – Debian / Ubuntu, ArchLinux ..:

noah:~# apt-cache show keurocalc|grep -i description -A 3

Description: universal currency converter and calculator – binary package
 KEurocalc is a universal currency converter and calculator.
 It downloads latest exchange rates directly from the
 European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
 

noah:~# apt-get install --yes keurocalc

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information… Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  keurocalc
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 23 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/87.8 kB of archives.
After this operation, 319 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package keurocalc.
(Reading database … 393466 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking keurocalc (from …/keurocalc_1.0.3-2_amd64.deb) …
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme …
Processing triggers for man-db …
Processing triggers for menu …
Processing triggers for gnome-menus …
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils …
Setting up keurocalc (1.0.3-2) …
Processing triggers for menu …

On Fedora, CentOS and rest of RPM based Linux distros keurocalc is installable too out of default package repositories:

[root@fedora ~]# yum -y -q install keurocalc
....

 

Here is a snapshot of keurocalc GUI interface;

Linux Universal Currency Converter Keurocalc

Keurocalc Linux universal currency converter settings screenshot

As you see from settings screenshot, information about rates can be obtained from 2 sources; – European Central Bank and New York Federal Reserve Bank. I give a try also to Euro, no network access (fixed rates only) method but unfortunately by choosing it you can only convert between Fixed Currencies (currencies which are already not in use – in EU member states who dropped their local currencies in favor of EURO).

I've tested the program and it works good, the disadvantage is convertion between some of the World currencies of countries with non-transparent planned (Soviet like) economies for example Belarus is not among app list of convertable currencies.

Apr 23 Saint George’s day in England – St. George Patron Saint of England

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Earlier when I wrote an article about celebration of St. George's day in Bulgaria and took the time to read a bit more in Wikipedia about which country venerate st. George's day who by the way is one of the most honored Orthodox Saints, I curiously found United  Kingdom to be among one of the countries keeping saint's memory. Today while opening Google.co.uk for a search Google's usual picture logo had instead below nice looking fairytale medieval picture;

United KIngdom patron saint George Google logo medieval picture

The picture made my childish nature be curious and I clicked on it just to find few articles about Saint George's day in England which happens to be celebrated today in 23 of April. As I myself bear name after saint George it means it is now my nameday in England 🙂 Though saint George is England patron saint because English people are not so religious as earlier, the feast is not considered as Official Public Feast. In Bulgaria we celebrate st. George's day in 6th of may and it is non-working public holiday for all country as well as it is Official Feast of Bulgarian Army.
I like comparing things so It was quite curious for me to see how Saint George is depicted in England and Western Europe countries and compare to our Orthodox icon saint tradition;

saint George orthodox icon from Novgorod 15th century icon

St. George Orthodox icon from Novgorod 15-th centuryicon

saint George orthodox icon

St. George Roman Warrior before his Martyrdom – Orthodox Icon

England South Darley St George depiction on church window

Saint England depicted on Anglican Church Window

saint George and the Dragon Raphael painter painting year 1506

Saint George and the Dragon by Master Raphael – circa 1506

saint George and the Dragon master Raphael painting 2

Master Raphael – Saint George killing the Dragon (beast)

Saint Martyr George from Lydda Palestine Carlo Crivelli - Italian Master 14th century

Saint Martyr George from Lydda Palestine Carlo Crivelli – Italian Master 14th century

Curious fact related to Saint George's veneration is that the center cross on England's flag is actually saint George's cross of victory – A reference for saint's victory over evil with faith in Christ.
 

Saint George Cross on England's national flag

In England it is typical flags with the image of St George's cross are flown on some buildings, especially pubs, and a few people wear a red rose on their lapel.
Saint's day is most venerated in Salisbury, where there’s an annual St George’s Day pageant, which probably dates back to the 13th century. During the crusades in the 1100s and 1200s, English knights used St George's cross as part of their uniform. St. George's cross keeps in England official flag for centuries. Nowadays the flag of England – the so called Union Flag is a combination of St George's cross, St. Andrew's ( X shaped crsoss ) and St. Patrick's cross. Even to this day English football fans paint variation of cross on their face most of which do it without realizing  the deep roots of the ancient Great Britain symbol.

How to download books from Books Google with Google Book Download stand alone program and Greasemonkey with Google Books Downloader script

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

If you are student or just a researcher, you already know most of the good books you can find are on books.google.com. Google Books's is nice, but not all browsers support it well. Older mobile phones has big troubles with it, plus it is always nice to have a stored copy of book on your PC for later review or just to refresh your memory on books previously read.

Thus if you get to task to download Books from Google a quick research reveals few programs claiming to support downloading Books from Google in PDF;

1. Google Books Download standalone application for Windows and Mac OS X

Google Books Download is said to support Save of Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.
This program works good whether you need to extract only certain book pages, however with complete books it often hangs. Other problem is it is  proprietary software, (freeware), so pages book pages it downloads in PDF had a big red color stamp complaining the program is trial.
There is a cracked version available on Piratebay.se's website. But as Piratebay is filtered from here. To test it I had to google it via piratebay proxy: –  with "piratebay  google books download"
.


Google Books Download
, standalone app from Piratebay is at current version 3.1.308.
As you can see from screenshot Google Book Download has two modes of work, one is;
Download Manually
– This is used for manual download a pages from a complete book and converting them to PDF.
Download Automatically – Is purposed to download a complete book from books.google.com and converting it to PDF. Downloading a complete copy of book using this mode is sometimes, hanging, plus it is really, really slow. The reason is each of the pages from the Book is first scanned using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology page by page and later after all pages are downloaded in pictures, they're converted to 1 PDF file.

Because Download Automatically loops at certain pages, this makes Google Books Download almost useless for people looking to store a full copy of books on Books.Google.com ….

2. Downloading PDFs from books.google.com with Firefox Greasemonkey and Google Book Downloaderjavascript

a. Install GreaseMonkey Firefox add-on

If you never before heard of Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox Extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to web page content after or before the page is loaded in the browser (also known as augmented browsing).

b. Install Google book downloader GreaseMonkey javascript

After a FF restart, you're ready to download any book from Books.Google.com.
To use it open the book you want to download and on the left upper corner you will see a Download this book button, press it and the book will be scanned in OCR and saved in PNG picture format. Below is a screenshot showing a sample book to download from books.google.com;

how to download book from google in firefox web browser screenshot


After each book page is succesfully download in page on the left pane you get a download status;

google book download firefox screenshot pictures - Scythian Monks download - how to download books to pictures from Google books on Windows XP, Windows 8

You should keep in mind that the download links of Google Book pages, will have a time expiry, so if you don't hurry up to save the pictures for later use soon links will become inaccessible and showing as broken from Google – I'm not sure how much exactly is google's max expiry time set of links but I guess it should be something 5-10 mins.

The pages of PDF, gets fetched as pictures one by one so it takes 20 secs or so to get all links to pages. Since Google Books Downloader only provides links to PDF pages it is necessery to either save each of the pictures manually (quite a lot of effort) or Install and use lets say DownThemAll! FF download extension. Using DownThemAll does not completely automates picture downloads, as you need to manually select all pictures for downloading, but at least selecting pages saves some time. To download all book pages with DownThemAll click with right mouse button on the left pane where links to pictures appears and choose download with DownThemAll!. After that tick on all links pointing to books.google.com……. to make them have the green tick as shown in below screenshot;

Once you have all PNGs saved on the PC you need to then convert them to unified PDF file. One way to do this is using ImageMagick's convert command line tool.
To do so install imagemagick for Windows downloading Win binaries from here
There are a bunch of binaries you will need to install named like ImageMagick-*-x86-static.exe

Run cmd.exe, change dir (cd) to folder where the just download book is saved in PNG and issue:


C:\Downloads> convert *.png pdf/my-book-from-pictures.pdf

How to install Skype on Nokia n95 8G mobile phone

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

 

How to install skype on nokia n95 8G java client program

 I was asked if it is possible to install Skype on a Nokia Mobile N95 8G by a relative of a friend I remembered I've earlier installed and used Skype on my Nokia 9300i with some kind of Java Skype client, so I guessed installing Skype on Nokia N95 will be much easier and most likely supported by Skype.com's available mobile versions.

Further on, I tried downloading from Skype.com's client mobile download versions and after selecting the model of the Nokia N95 OS which is Symbia, was asked for a mobile number to which Skype will be send via SMS. I've typed in the Mobile number, hoping it will be the usual click on link and authorize Skype download and install on mobile, but instead Skype send me in SMS, just a link to Skype's Mobile download section  http://www.skype.com/m/ .

In other words, typing in the phone number and navigating through the URL from the mobile was completely useless. As I ended on the same place where I could manually browse using Nokia embedded Browser ….

Though I did my best to look through all the appearing links in N95's browser I was just redirected to either the same or similar page with  Skype Download button. After getting pissed off of looking and not finding any usable Symbian Skype app install binary (.SIS or SISX), I've decided to just look in Google. If some third party website is not storing  .SISX Skype bin for Nokia N95.  After few minutes of search I've found one offering an Archive with 3 versions of Skype. 2 of the .sisx files
, were versions of Skype which I've installed using Nokia Mobile Suite for Windows. Two of the .sisx files in archive Symbian Mobile Skype ver. 1.5 and Symbian Mobile Skype ver 5 did not work on N95. The binary that launched okay on the Mobile was Skype_S60_3_0_v_1_5_0_12.sisx. Though this binary launches the client and one can choose between the usual Sign In or Register new skype name buttons, it wasn't possible to login with the username and skype. After a bunch of prolonged waiting trying to Sign in the skype showed up again the Skype Login Name and Password prompts.

I spend some more time, trying to Install Fring – free mobile, chat, voice, video Skype substitute program, after reading on few Symbian Forums that fring is able to be used as a mobile substitute for Skype. Just a bit after installing it I've red on some forums some other posts from  2010, saying fring support for Skype is no longer available.  I tried also to login to Fring's client with Skype Login and Pass but login failed thus uninstalled Fring and continued researching online whether Skype can somehow be used on Nokia N95 mobile.

I've found a Skype Java (.JAR) same file version which I have also installed on my Nokia 9300i and downloaded and tried this one as well. Guess what it works 😉 It is not supporting Outgoing Skype users video clients, and it supports incoming Skype Video calls only with pre-purchased Skype call minutes, but Skype messaging works. I've made mirror of nokiaN95.jar Nokia N95 Java skype program here. I was lazy to research further if there is some other software or Skype.com symbian old version mirrored somewhere on the net working with the N95, but I guess it is possible. If someone reading this post knows a better Skype binary supporting Skype Video and Voice please drop a comment how ? Other way to use skype without loosing time to install Skype client is http://IMO.IM web Skype service