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Improve MobaXterm Best Windows terminal client with some additional settings tune ups / Install extra Linux Cygwin tools on MobaXterm and various post install configuration goodies

Friday, January 20th, 2023

mobaxterm-logo_400x400-terminal-client-tune-up-howto-for-a-new-install

Earlier I've written a an article MobaXTerm: A good gnome-terminal like tabbed SSH client for Windows / Windows Putty Tabs Alternative in which I've introduced the best in my opinion SSH / Telnet / VNC / RDP / Xserver in one Terminal client emulator for Windows operating systems.

The client has been around for quite some time and it has been improving rapidly over the last 10 years, where it now more looks like a separate Operating System than a single terminal client. It's size is quite compact as well and my opinion and every self respectiving developer, system administrator, IT geek or a hacker would definitely
use the mobaxterm at home or at work place on a daily. I guess some of my readers, who have already migrated SuperPutty / SecureCRT or Putty / XMing or whatever kind of exotic Remote SSH Console terminal is used could validate this 🙂

Therefore as I've set up Mobaxterm on a multiple computers all around, I've found it useful to write a small article with some post-install hints (tune ups) one can do immediately once he has installed the Desktop or Portable Apps version of mobaxterm on desktop PC / notebook.

1. Set up your bashrc server / command aliases

Lets say you need to setup some rules for connectivity via a socks proxy to dig holes over a harsh company firewalls or add
custom options to every ssh client attempt to remote server, or simply alias some of your servers with custom connectivity options and so on simply open vi / vim text editor from mobaxterm local terminal and place inside your rules, for example that could be anything like:

alias ssh='ssh -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password -v'
alias sftp='sftp -o stricthostkeychecking=no -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'
alias work-server='ssh UserName@work-server -v -o passwordauthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

alias proxy='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxyIP-host1 -o ConnectTimeout=80'
alias proxy1='ssh -D 3128 UserName@proxy-host2 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'
alias proxy3='ssh -D 3128 Username@proxy-host3 -p 443 -o ConnectTimeout=60'

Simply open the terminal and setup whatever you require
export ftp_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export https_proxy="https://proxy-host:8080"
export http_proxy="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTP_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://proxy-host:8080"

2. Set mobaxterm presistent directory / persistent root directory and default text editor

Make sure you have properly defined at least Persistent directory / Persistent directory if you want to keep the files under your /home/mobaxterm and root directory be able to save your data from local mobaxterm terminal work you have done.

To do so o to Configuration -> General

MobaXterm-persistent-home-directory

3. Change default settings for Opening / Closing Terminal tabs just like in gnome-terminal

MobaXterm is really awesome as the developer, followed pretty much the logic of some common GNU / Linux Terminal clients like Gnome-Terminal and KDE's default Konsole terminal.

One of the first things to do once Mobaxterm is installed on the PC is to set up nice key binds as default onces might be heard to learn at the beginning or you might have already the habit to use the certain set of key combinations on your Linux desktop:

Common once are:

1. Open tab / Close tab common once I bind to are (CTRL + T / CTRL + W)
2. Previous tab move / Next tab move keys common one I use are (ALT + LEFT / ALT + RIGHT)
3. Find in terminal (CTRL + F)

4. Make MobaXterm to automatically open a terminal to not Start local terminal every time

By default mobaxterm it is really annoying cause every time you run it after system reboot you have to select
Start local terminal
Once you run the terminal you get this prompt and you have to press on Start local terminal

How to make Mobaxterm automatically open local Terminal Tab on every boot?

To fix this so every time a local terminal is spawn on MobaXterm you have get to:

Settings -> Configuration -> Misc

Open the Following tab at startup by default it will be

<Home (Pinned)>

Change it to:

<Terminal>

That's it on next login your Local Terminal with /bin/bash.exe will auto load !

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ env|grep -i SHELL
SHELL=/bin/bash.exe
PATH=/bin:/drives/c/Users/hipo/DOCUME~1
/MobaXterm/slash/bin:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows/system32:/drives/c/Windows:/drives/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:
/drives/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/drives/c/Windows/sysnative
PSModulePath=C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
CMDPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\;
C:\Users\hipo\DOCUME~1\MobaXterm\slash\bin
WINPATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\sysnative\

5. Make menu buttons to appear smaller

Go to menu and select
View -> (Small Buttons)

6. Disable auto start of XServer to prevent a port listener on the machine on TCP port

By default mobaxterm opens XServer listener, so you can immediately connect from a remote SSH servers missing Xserver and install software requiring an XServer, for example software such as Oracle Database or some MiddleWare WebLogig or IBM's Web Sphere. This is useful but if you want to have a good security only allow this server on a purpose. Otherwise the XServer will run in parallel with rest of your Moba and just load up your PC and eat up some RAM memory. To disable it go to:

7. Change the mobaxterm Default theme to Dark

This is optional I like to set the Theme to Dark, also as a Theme for Windows as well as for MobaxTerm, the aim of that is simply to not put extra stress on my eye sight. Being on the PC around 8 to 10 hours and spending some 6 to 8 hours on console work is enough. If you want to do as well.

mobaxterm-change-default-theme-to-dark-theme

8. Install additional set of common Linux tools to mobaxterm to use on Windows

Tools such as:

1. Midnight Commander (mc)
2. Wget
3. Curl
4. Vim
5. Screen
6. Rsync
7. Perl
8. W3m
9. dosunix
10. unix2dos
11. gnupg
12. diffutils
13. mysql
14. mpg123
15. whois

If you want to have a set of packages pre-installed that are including above as well as the rest of mine, here is a dump of my installed mobapt manager packages:

For more simply use the experimental Mobaxterm Graphical Package installer

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ for i in $(cat Downloads/installed-packages-mobaxterm.txt ); do apt-cyg install $i; done

Found package GeoIP-database

Installing GeoIP-database
Downloading GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…
Unpacking GeoIP-database-20180505-1.tar.xz…

Running postinstall scripts
Package GeoIP-database installed.

Rebasing new libraries

Found package adwaita-icon-theme

Installing adwaita-icon-theme
Downloading adwaita-icon-theme-3.26.1-1.tar.xz…

…

You will be prompted for a single Yes for the respository

MobApt Packages Manager

Though it is said it is experimental, I have to say the MobApt Apt Manager works quite good, I never had any issues with it so far.

9. Mobaxterm.ini the settings storage file that can help you move your configurations

If you have to prepeare new MobaXterm on multiple PCs frequently perhaps it is best to just copy the Mobaxterm.ini file.
Here is an example of my mobaxterm.ini for download.

10. Change terminal colors and curor type and enable blinking (customizations)

Settings -> Configuration -> Terminal -> (Default Terminal Color Settings)

11. Use very useful moba Tools

For sysadmins Moba has plenty of other jems such as:

Network Port scanner such as Nmap with GUI
list open network ports (GUI interface to netmap)
SSH tunnel tool
Moba Diff
Wake on Lan
Network Packet capturer (such as tcpdump)
List running processes (such as taskmgr in simple form)
List machine hardware devices (such as Windows Device manager)

12. Remote monitoring of opened ssh session

To enable remote monitoring for a Saved session simply use the "Remote monitoring" button on the down left corner of the terminal.

Or to enable it for a new host, open:

1. "Saved sessions"
2. Click over "User sessions"
3. New Session -> (SSH)
4. Basic SSH Settings (Remote host) -> OK
5. Click over the new created session
6. Click on Remote monitoring for the opened session

13. Play some mobaxterm console games

As you might have pissed off of configuring go on and enjoy some of the great console games, some of which are also present on a normal Linux new distribution installation. 🙂

mobaxterm-list-of-games-screenshot

List of Moba Games

teamwalk-mobaxterm-console-connect-network-routers-game
TeamWalk (Use your mouse or keyboard to connect every server to the central router)

ctris-console-text-game-mobaxterm

Ctris Console tetris from Mobaxterm

solitaire-text-console-game-played-on-mobaxterm-screenshot

Text console Solitaire from Moba

Ninvaders-console-game-mobaxterm

Here is NinVaders (Text Version of Space Invaders Arcade Classic)

Enjoy ! 🙂

Tags: administrator, after, aim, alias, ALL, ALLOW, Alt, alternative, and, annoying, cause, Click, download, goodies, How to, Installing, Linux Cygwin, machine hardware, Opening Closing Terminal, Play, post, system administrator, Tools, various, Windows Device
Posted in Various, Windows | No Comments »

Check if server is Physical Bare Metal or a Virtual Machine and its type

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020

check-if-linux-operating-system-is-running-on-physical-bare-metal-or-virtual-machine

In modern times the IT employee system administrator / system engineer / security engineer or a developer who has to develop and test code remotely on UNIX hosts, we have to login to multiple of different servers located in separate data centers around the world situated in Hybrid Operating system environments running multitude of different Linux OSes. Often especially for us sysadmins it is important to know whether the remote machine we have SSHed to is physical server (Bare Metal) or a virtual machines running on top of different kind of Hypervisor node OpenXen / Virtualbox / Virtuosso / VMWare etc.

Then the question comes how to determine whether A remote Installed Linux is Physical or Virtual ?

1. Using the dmesg kernel log utility

The good old dmesg that is used to examine and control the kernel ring buffer detects plenty of useful information which gives you the info whether a server is Virtual or Bare Metal. It is present and accessible on every Linux server out there, thus using it is the best and simplest way to determine the OS system node type.

To grep whether a machine is Virtual and the Hypervisor type use:

nginx:~# dmesg | grep "Hypervisor detected"
[0.000000] Hypervisor detected: KVM

As you see above OS installed is using the KVM Virtualization technology.

An empty output of this command means the Remote OS is installed on a physical computer.

2. Detecting the OS platform the systemd way

Systemd along with the multiple over-complication of things that nearly all sysadmins (including me hate) so much introduced something useful in the fact of hostnamectl command
that could give you the info about the OS chassis platform.

root@pcfreak:~# hostnamectl status
Static hostname: pcfreak
Icon name: computer-desktop
Chassis: desktop
Machine ID: 02425d67037b8e67cd98bd2800002671
Boot ID: 34a83b9a79c346168082f7605c2f557c
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64
Architecture: x86-64

Below is output of a VM running on a Oracle Virtualbox HV.

linux:~# hostnamectl status
Static hostname: ubuntuserver
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 2befe86cf8887ca098f509e457554beb
Boot ID: 8021c02d65dc46b1885afb25fddcf18c
Virtualization: oracle
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-78-generic
Architecture: x86-64

3. Detect concrete container virtualization with systemd-detect-virt

Another Bare Metal or VM identify tool that was introducted some time ago by freedesktop project is systemd-detect-virt (usually command is part of systemd package).
It is useful to detect the exact virtualization on a systemd running OS systemd-detect-virt is capable to detect many type of Virtualization type that are rare like: IBM zvm S390 Z/VM, bochs, bhyve (a FreeBSD hypervisor), Mac OS's parallels, lxc (linux containers), docker containers, podman etc.

The output from the command is either none (if no virtualization is present or the VM Hypervisor Host type):

server:~# systemd-detect-virt
none

quake:~# systemd-detect-virt
oracle

4. Install and use facter to report per node facts

debian:~# apt-cache show facter|grep -i desc -A2
Description-en: collect and display facts about the system
Facter is Puppet’s cross-platform system profiling library. It discovers and
reports per-node facts, which are collected by the Puppet agent and are made
—
Description-md5: 88cdf9a1db3df211de4539a0570abd0a
Homepage: https://github.com/puppetlabs/facter
Tag: devel::lang:ruby, devel::library, implemented-in::ruby,
root@jeremiah:/home/hipo# apt-cache show facter|grep -i desc -A1
Description-en: collect and display facts about the system
Facter is Puppet’s cross-platform system profiling library. It discovers and
—
Description-md5: 88cdf9a1db3df211de4539a0570abd0a
Homepage: https://github.com/puppetlabs/facter

– Install facter on Debian / Ubuntu / deb based Linux

# apt install facter –yes

– Install facter on RedHat / CentOS RPM based distros

# yum install epel-release
…

# yum install facter
…

– Install facter on OpenSuSE / SLES

# zypper install facter
…

Once installed on the system to find out whether the remote Operating System is Virtual:

# facter 2> /dev/null | grep virtual
is_virtual => false
virtual => physical

If the machine is a virtual machine you will get some different output like:

# facter 2> /dev/null | grep virtual
is_virtual => true
virtual => kvm

If you're lazy to grep you can use it with argument.

# facter virtual
physical

6. Use lshw and dmidecode (list hardware configuration tool)

If you don't have the permissions to install facter on the system and you can see whether lshw (list hardware command) is not already present on remote host.

# lshw -class system
storage-host
description: Computer
width: 64 bits
capabilities: smbios-2.7 vsyscall32

If the system is virtual you'll get an output similar to:

# lshw -class system
debianserver
description: Computer
product: VirtualBox
vendor: innotek GmbH
version: 1.2
serial: 0
width: 64 bits
capabilities: smbios-2.5 dmi-2.5 vsyscall32
configuration: family=Virtual Machine uuid=78B58916-4074-42E2-860F-7CAF39F5E6F5

Of course as it provides a verbosity of info on Memory / CPU type / Caches / Cores / Motherboard etc. virtualization used or not can be determined also with dmidecode / hwinfo and other tools that detect the system hardware this is described thoroughfully in my previous article Get hardware system info on Linux.

7. Detect virtualziation using virt-what or imvirt scripts

imvirt is a little script to determine several virtualization it is pretty similar to virt-what the RedHat own script for platform identification. Even though virt-what is developed for RHEL it is available on other distros, Fedoda, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux (AUR) just like is imvirt.

installing both of them is with the usual apt-get / yum or on Arch Linux with yay package manager (yay -S virt-what) …

Once run the output it produces for physical Dell / HPE / Fujitsu-Siemens Bare Metal servers would be just empty string.

# virt-what
#

Or if the system is Virtual Machine, you'll get the type, for example KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) / virtualbox / qemu etc.

#imvirt
Physical

Conclusion

It was explained how to do a simple check whether the server works on a physical hardware or on a virtual Host hypervisor. The most basic and classic way is with dmesg. If no access to dmesg is due to restrictions you can try the other methods for systemd enabled OSes with hostnamectl / systemd-detect-virt. Other means if the tools are installed or you have the permissions to install them is with facter / lshw or with virt-what / imvirt scripts.
There definitely perhaps much more other useful tools to grasp hardware and virtualization information but this basics could be useful enough for shell scripting purposes.
If you know other tools, please share.

Tags: Below, installed, kvm, Linux Check, oracle, servers, system administrator, system hardware, utility, virtual machines, virtualization
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Finding top access IPs in Webserver or how to delay connects from Bots (Web Spiders) to your site to prevent connect Denial of Service

Friday, September 15th, 2017

analyze-log-files-most-visited-ips-and-find-and-stopwebsite-hammering-bot-spiders-neo-tux

If you're a sysadmin who has to deal with cracker attemps for DoS (Denial of Service) on single or multiple servers (clustered CDN or standalone) Apache Webservers, nomatter whether working for some web hosting company or just running your private run home brew web server its very useful thing to inspect Web Server log file (in Apache HTTPD case that's access.log).

Sometimes Web Server overloads and the follow up Danial of Service (DoS) affect is not caused by evil crackers (mistkenly often called hackers but by some data indexing Crawler Search Engine bots who are badly configured to aggressively crawl websites and hence causing high webserver loads flooding your servers with bad 404 or 400, 500 or other requests, just to give you an example of such obstructive bots.

1. Dealing with bad Search Indexer Bots (Spiders) with robots.txt

Just as I mentioned hackers word above I feel obliged to expose the badful lies the press and media spreading for years misconcepting in people's mind the word cracker (computer intruder) with a hacker, if you're one of those who mistakenly call security intruders hackers I recommend you read Dr. Richard Stallman's article On Hacking to get the proper understanding that hacker is an cheerful attitude of mind and spirit and a hacker could be anyone who has this kind of curious and playful mind out there. Very often hackers are computer professional, though many times they're skillful programmers, a hacker is tending to do things in a very undstandard and weird ways to make fun out of life but definitelely follow the rule of do no harm to the neighbor.

Well after the short lirical distraction above, let me continue;

Here is a short list of Search Index Crawler bots with very aggressive behaviour towards websites:

# mass download bots / mirroring utilities
1. webzip
2. webmirror
3. webcopy
4. netants
5. getright
6. wget
7. webcapture
8. libwww-perl
9. megaindex.ru
10. megaindex.com
11. Teleport / TeleportPro
12. Zeus
….

Note that some of the listed crawler bots are actually a mirroring clients tools (wget) etc., they're also included in the list of server hammering bots because often websites are attempted to be mirrored by people who want to mirror content for the sake of good but perhaps these days more often mirror (duplicate) your content for the sake of stealing, this is called in Web language Content Stealing in SEO language.

I've found a very comprehensive list of Bad Bots to block on Mike's tech blog his website provided example of bad robots.txt file is mirrored as plain text file here

Below is the list of Bad Crawler Spiders taken from his site:

# robots.txt to prohibit bad internet search engine spiders to crawl your website
# Begin block Bad-Robots from robots.txt
User-agent: asterias
Disallow:/
User-agent: BackDoorBot/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: Black Hole
Disallow:/
User-agent: BlowFish/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: BotALot
Disallow:/
User-agent: BuiltBotTough
Disallow:/
User-agent: Bullseye/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: BunnySlippers
Disallow:/
User-agent: Cegbfeieh
Disallow:/
User-agent: CheeseBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: CherryPicker
Disallow:/
User-agent: CherryPickerElite/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: CherryPickerSE/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: CopyRightCheck
Disallow:/
User-agent: cosmos
Disallow:/
User-agent: Crescent
Disallow:/
User-agent: Crescent Internet ToolPak HTTP OLE Control v.1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: DittoSpyder
Disallow:/
User-agent: EmailCollector
Disallow:/
User-agent: EmailSiphon
Disallow:/
User-agent: EmailWolf
Disallow:/
User-agent: EroCrawler
Disallow:/
User-agent: ExtractorPro
Disallow:/
User-agent: Foobot
Disallow:/
User-agent: Harvest/1.5
Disallow:/
User-agent: hloader
Disallow:/
User-agent: httplib
Disallow:/
User-agent: humanlinks
Disallow:/
User-agent: InfoNaviRobot
Disallow:/
User-agent: JennyBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: Kenjin Spider
Disallow:/
User-agent: Keyword Density/0.9
Disallow:/
User-agent: LexiBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: libWeb/clsHTTP
Disallow:/
User-agent: LinkextractorPro
Disallow:/
User-agent: LinkScan/8.1a Unix
Disallow:/
User-agent: LinkWalker
Disallow:/
User-agent: LNSpiderguy
Disallow:/
User-agent: lwp-trivial
Disallow:/
User-agent: lwp-trivial/1.34
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mata Hari
Disallow:/
User-agent: Microsoft URL Control – 5.01.4511
Disallow:/
User-agent: Microsoft URL Control – 6.00.8169
Disallow:/
User-agent: MIIxpc
Disallow:/
User-agent: MIIxpc/4.2
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mister PiX
Disallow:/
User-agent: moget
Disallow:/
User-agent: moget/2.1
Disallow:/
User-agent: mozilla/4
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; BullsEye; Windows 95)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 95)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 98)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows XP)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows 2000)
Disallow:/
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows ME)
Disallow:/
User-agent: mozilla/5
Disallow:/
User-agent: NetAnts
Disallow:/
User-agent: NICErsPRO
Disallow:/
User-agent: Offline Explorer
Disallow:/
User-agent: Openfind
Disallow:/
User-agent: Openfind data gathere
Disallow:/
User-agent: ProPowerBot/2.14
Disallow:/
User-agent: ProWebWalker
Disallow:/
User-agent: QueryN Metasearch
Disallow:/
User-agent: RepoMonkey
Disallow:/
User-agent: RepoMonkey Bait & Tackle/v1.01
Disallow:/
User-agent: RMA
Disallow:/
User-agent: SiteSnagger
Disallow:/
User-agent: SpankBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: spanner
Disallow:/
User-agent: suzuran
Disallow:/
User-agent: Szukacz/1.4
Disallow:/
User-agent: Teleport
Disallow:/
User-agent: TeleportPro
Disallow:/
User-agent: Telesoft
Disallow:/
User-agent: The Intraformant
Disallow:/
User-agent: TheNomad
Disallow:/
User-agent: TightTwatBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: Titan
Disallow:/
User-agent: toCrawl/UrlDispatcher
Disallow:/
User-agent: True_Robot
Disallow:/
User-agent: True_Robot/1.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: turingos
Disallow:/
User-agent: URLy Warning
Disallow:/
User-agent: VCI
Disallow:/
User-agent: VCI WebViewer VCI WebViewer Win32
Disallow:/
User-agent: Web Image Collector
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebAuto
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebBandit
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebBandit/3.50
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebCopier
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebEnhancer
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebmasterWorldForumBot
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebSauger
Disallow:/
User-agent: Website Quester
Disallow:/
User-agent: Webster Pro
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebStripper
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebZip
Disallow:/
User-agent: WebZip/4.0
Disallow:/
User-agent: Wget
Disallow:/
User-agent: Wget/1.5.3
Disallow:/
User-agent: Wget/1.6
Disallow:/
User-agent: WWW-Collector-E
Disallow:/
User-agent: Xenu’s
Disallow:/
User-agent: Xenu’s Link Sleuth 1.1c
Disallow:/
User-agent: Zeus
Disallow:/
User-agent: Zeus 32297 Webster Pro V2.9 Win32
Disallow:/
Crawl-delay: 20
# Begin Exclusion From Directories from robots.txt
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Veryimportant variable among the ones passed by above robots.txt is

Crawl-Delay: 20

You might want to tune that variable a Crawl-Delay of 20 instructs all IP connects from any Web Spiders that are respecting robots.txt variables to delay crawling with 20 seconds between each and every connect client request, that is really useful for the Webserver as less connects means less CPU and Memory usage and less degraded performance put by aggressive bots crawling your site like crazy, requesting resources 10 times per second or so …

As you can conclude by the naming of some of the bots having them disabled would prevent your domain/s clients from Email harvesting Spiders and other not desired activities.

2. Listing IP addresses Hits / How many connects per IPs used to determine problematic server overloading a huge number of IPs connects

After saying few words about SE bots and I think it it is fair to also mention here a number of commands, that helps the sysadmin to inspect Apache's access.log files.
Inspecting the log files regularly is really useful as the number of malicious Spider Bots and the Cracker users tends to be raising with time, so having a good way to track the IPs that are stoning at your webserver and later prohibiting them softly to crawl either via robots.txt (not all of the Bots would respect that) or .htaccess file or as a last resort directly form firewall is really useful to know.

– Below command Generate a list of IPs showing how many times of the IPs connected the webserver (bear in mind that commands are designed log fields order as given by most GNU / Linux distribution + Apache default logging configuration;

webhosting-server:~# cd /var/log/apache2 webhosting-server:/var/log/apache2# cat access.log| awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c |sort -n

Below command provides statistics info based on whole access.log file records, sometimes you will need to have analyzed just a chunk of the webserver log, lets say last 12000 IP connects, here is how:

webhosting-server:~# cd /var/log/apache2 webhosting-server:/var/log/apache2# tail -n 12000 access.log| awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c |sort -n

You can combine above basic bash shell parser commands with the watch command to have a top like refresh statistics every few updated refreshing IP statistics of most active customers on your websites.

Here is an example:

webhosting-server:~# watch "cat access.log| awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c |sort -n";

Once you have the top connect IPs if you have a some IP connecting with lets say 8000-10000 thousand times in a really short interval of time 20-30 minues or so. Hence it is a good idea to investigate further where is this IP originating from and if it is some malicious Denial of Service, filter it out either in Firewall (with iptables rules) or ask your ISP or webhosting to do you a favour and drop all the incoming traffic from that IP.

Here is how to investigate a bit more about a server stoner IP;
Lets assume that you found IP: 176.9.50.244 to be having too many connects to your webserver:

webhosting-server:~# grep -i 176.9.50.244 /var/log/apache2/access.log|tail -n 1
176.9.50.244 – – [12/Sep/2017:07:42:13 +0300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 371 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MegaIndex.ru/2.0; +http://megaindex.com/crawler)"

webhosting-server:~# host 176.9.50.244
244.50.9.176.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer static.244.50.9.176.clients.your-server.de.

webhosting-server:~# whois 176.9.50.244|less

The outout you will get would be something like:

% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf

% Note: this output has been filtered.
% To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.

% Information related to '176.9.50.224 – 176.9.50.255'

% Abuse contact for '176.9.50.224 – 176.9.50.255' is 'abuse@hetzner.de'

inetnum:        176.9.50.224 – 176.9.50.255
netname:        HETZNER-RZ15
descr:          Hetzner Online GmbH
descr:          Datacenter 15
country:        DE
admin-c:        HOAC1-RIPE
tech-c:         HOAC1-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         HOS-GUN
mnt-lower:      HOS-GUN
mnt-routes:     HOS-GUN
created:        2012-03-12T09:45:54Z
last-modified: 2015-08-10T09:29:53Z
source:         RIPE

role:           Hetzner Online GmbH – Contact Role
address:        Hetzner Online GmbH
address:        Industriestrasse 25
address:        D-91710 Gunzenhausen
address:        Germany
phone:          +49 9831 505-0
fax-no:         +49 9831 505-3
abuse-mailbox: abuse@hetzner.de
remarks:        *************************************************
remarks:        * For spam/abuse/security issues please contact *
remarks:        * abuse@hetzner.de, not this address. *
remarks:        * The contents of your abuse email will be *
remarks:        * forwarded directly on to our client for *
….

3. Generate list of directories and files that are most called by clients

webhosting-server:~# cd /var/log/apache2; webhosting-server:/var/log/apache2# awk '{print $7}' access.log|cut -d? -f1|sort|uniq -c|sort -nk1|tail -n10

( take in consideration that this info is provided only on current records from /var/log/apache2/ and is short term for long term statistics you have to merge all existing gzipped /var/log/apache2/access.log.*.gz )

To merge all the old gzipped files into one single file and later use above shown command to analyize run:

cd /var/log/apache2/
cp -rpf *access.log*.gz apache-gzipped/
cd apache-gzipped
for i in $(ls -1 *access*.log.*.gz); do gzip -d $i; done
rm -f *.log.gz;
for i in $(ls -1 *|grep -v access_log_complete); do cat $i >> access_log_complete; done

Though the accent of above article is Apache Webserver log analyzing, the given command examples can easily be recrafted to work properly on other Web Servers LigHTTPD, Nginx etc.

Above commands are about to put a higher load to your server during execution, so on busy servers it is a better idea, to first go and synchronize the access.log files to another less loaded servers in most small and midsized companies this is being done by a periodic synchronization of the logs to the log server used usually only to store log various files and later used to do various analysis our run analyse software such as Awstats, Webalizer, Piwik, Go Access etc.

Worthy to mention one great text console must have Apache tool that should be mentioned to analyze in real time for the lazy ones to type so much is Apache-top but those script will be not installed on most webhosting servers and VPS-es, so if you don't happen to own a self-hosted dedicated server / have webhosting company etc. – (have root admin access on server), but have an ordinary server account you can use above commands to get an overall picture of abusive webserver IPs.

If you have a Linux with a desktop GUI environment and have somehow mounted remotely the weblog server partition another really awesome way to visualize in real time the connect requests to web server Apache / Nginx etc. is with Logstalgia

Well that's all folks, I hope that article learned you something new. Enjoy

Thanks for article neo-tux picture to segarkshtri.com.np)

Tags: apache webservers, apache2, Below, blog, Bots Web Spiders, country, crackers, RMA, role, status, system administrator, topic, VCI, Windows
Posted in Curious Facts, Performance Tuning, System Administration, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Windows key Shortcuts and Commands List every Win admin / support must know

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

If you're a system administrator of Windows Servers or or just a PC support in a small company and you have to fix PCs running Microsoft Windows XP / 7 / 8 daily, sooner or later you will be interested into how to optimize your windows maintainance work to be able to do more adminsitration work for less time.

M$ Windows OS has evolved a lot over the past 10+ years and many of the features available GUI are now either possibile to be done via a standard commands and the GUI interfaces. Various adminsitration and common daily work simplification goodies are now accessible through quick access shortcuts and commands.

Virtually all Windows operating system environment could be now customized by using such shortcuts, this reduces the multitude of annoying double clicks which are truely pissing off sysadmins and tech-supports involved in Windows Ticket solving.

Win Shortcuts and Commands helps to:

Quickly invoke almost all System Settings available from Windows Control Panel
Access all admins tools GUIs throguh command
Speed up Opening Video, Pictures, Documents, Downloads folders start Windows Update, Configure Printers / Fax / Add Sharings

etc..

A lot of the commands were new to me thus I decided to try out all of the commands in command prompt (cmd). Many of the tools down-mentioned were news to me and let me understand better on Windows Internals, so if you time try them out.

Function	Comand
Open Documents Folder	Start menu -> Search (Type documents)
Open Videos folder	Start -> Search (Type videos)
Open Downloads Folder	Start -> Search (Type downloads)
Open Favorites Folder	favorites
View Recent messages of your PC	Start menu -> Search (Type recent)
Open Recent Folder	N/A
Open Pictures Folder	Start menu -> Search (Type pictures)
Windows Sideshow	control.exe /name Microsoft.WindowsSideshow
Windows CardSpace (Windows ID Manager)	control.exe /name Microsoft.cardspace
Windows Anytime Upgrade	Start menu -> Search dialog (Type WindowsUpdate)
Taskbar and Start Menu	control.exe /name Microsoft.TaskbarandStartMenu
Troubleshooting	control.exe /name Microsoft.Troubleshooting
User Accounts (Run user accounts Interface)	control.exe /name Microsoft.UserAccounts
Adding a new Device	devicepairingwizard
Add Hardware Wizard	hdwwiz
Advanced User Accounts Management	netplwiz
Advanced User Accounts (Authorization Mgr)	azman.msc
Windows Backup and Restore	sdclt
Bluetooth File Transfer	fsquirt
Calculator	calc
Certificates Manager	certmgr.msc
Change Computer Performance Settings	systempropertiesperformance (Remove visual effects)
Change Data Execution Prevention Settings	systempropertiesdataexecutionprevention
Change Data Execution Prevention Settings	printui
Character Map	charmap
ClearType Tuner	cttune (Make text onscreen more readable)
Color Management	colorcpl
Command Prompt	cmd
Component Services	comexp.msc
Component Services	dcomcnfg
Computer Management Interface	compmgmt.msc
Computer Management Interface	compmgmtlauncher
Connect to Network Project via Network	netproj
Connect to a Projector	displayswitch (Alias for Fn key + F4)
Run Control Panel command	control
Create A Shared Folder Wizard	shrpubw
Create a System Repair Disc	recdisc
Credential Backup and Restore Wizard	credwiz
Data Execution Prevention	systempropertiesdataexecutionprevention
Date and Time	timedate.cpl
Default Location	locationnotifications
Device Manager	devmgmt.msc
Device Manager	hdwwiz.cpl
Device Pairing Wizard	devicepairingwizard
Diagnostics Troubleshooting Wizard	msdt
Digitizer Calibration Tool	tabcal
DirectX Diagnostic Tool	dxdiag
Disk Cleanup	cleanmgr
Disk Defragmenter	dfrgui
Disk Management	diskmgmt.msc
Display (Change font size of text onscreen)	dpiscaling
Display Color Calibration	dccw
Display Switch	displayswitch
DPAPI Key Migration Wizard	dpapimig
Driver Verifier Manager	verifier
Ease of Access Center	utilman
EFS Wizard	rekeywiz
Event Viewer	eventvwr.msc
Fax Cover Page Editor	fxscover
File Signature Verification	sigverif
Font Viewer	fontview
Game Controllers	joy.cpl
Windows Getting Started Iface	gettingstarted
IExpress Wizard	iexpress
Another alias for Getting Started	irprops.cpl
Install or Uninstall Display Languages	lusrmgr
Internet Explorer	iexplore
Run Internet Explorer Internet Options	inetcpl.cpl
iSCSI Initiator Configuration Tool	iscsicpl
Language Pack Installer	lpksetup
Local Group Policy Editor	gpedit.msc
Local Security Policy	secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups	lusrmgr.msc
Location Activity	locationnotifications
Magnifier	magnify
Malicious Software Removal Tool	mrt (Might be not existent on some Windows versions)
Manage Your File Encryption Certificates	rekeywiz
Math Input Panel	mip
Microsoft Management Console	mmc
Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool	msdt
Mouse	main.cpl
NAP Client Configuration	napclcfg.msc
Narrator	narrator
Network Connections	ncpa.cpl
New Scan Wizard	wiaacmgr
Notepad	notepad
ODBC Data Source Administrator	odbcad32
ODBC Driver Configuration	odbcconf
On-Screen Keyboard	osk
Paint	mspaint
Pen and Touch	tabletpc.cpl
People Near Me	collab.cpl
Performance Monitor	perfmon.msc
Performance Options	systempropertiesperformance
Phone and Modem	telephon.cpl
Phone Dialer	dialer
Power Options	powercfg.cpl
Presentation Settings	presentationsettings
Print Management	printmanagement.msc
Printer Migration	printbrmui
Printer User Interface	printui
Private Character Editor	eudcedit
Problem Steps Recorder	psr
Programs and Features (Install / Uninstall)	appwiz.cpl
Protected Content Migration	dpapimig
Region and Language	intl.cpl
Registry Editor	regedit
Registry Editor 32	regedt32
Remote Access Phonebook	rasphone
Remote Desktop Connection	mstsc
Resource Monitor	resmon
Resultant Set of Policy	rsop.msc
SAM Lock Tool	syskey
Screen Resolution	desk.cpl
Securing the Windows Account Database	syskey
Services	services.msc
Set Program Access and Computer Defaults	computerdefaults
Share Creation Wizard	shrpubw
Shared Folders	fsmgmt.msc
Snipping Tool	snippingtool
Sound	mmsys.cpl
Sound recorder	soundrecorder
SQL Server Client Network Utility	cliconfg
Sticky Notes	stikynot
Stored User Names and Passwords	credwiz
Sync Center	mobsync
System Configuration	msconfig
System Configuration Editor	sysedit
System Information	msinfo32
System Properties	sysdm.cpl
System Properties (Advanced Tab)	systempropertiesadvanced
System Properties (Computer Name Tab)	systempropertiescomputername
System Properties (Hardware Tab)	systempropertieshardware
System Properties (Remote Tab)	systempropertiesremote
System Properties (System Protection Tab)	systempropertiesprotection
System Restore	rstrui
Task Manager	taskmgr
Task Scheduler	taskschd.msc
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Management	tpm.msc
User Account Control Settings	useraccountcontrolsettings
Utility Manager	utilman
Version Reporter Applet	winver
Volume Mixer	sndvol
Windows Action Center	wscui.cpl
Windows Activation Client	slui (Runs on Windows license activation time)
Windows Anytime Upgrade Results	windowsanytimeupgraderesults
Windows CardSpace	infocardcpl.cpl
Windows Disc Image Burning Tool	isoburn (Command line tool to burn images)
Windows DVD Maker	dvdmaker (N/A on Windows 7, 8)
Windows Easy Transfer	migwiz (N/A on many Windows versions)
Run Windows Explorer	explorer
Windows Fax and Scan	wfs
Windows Features	optionalfeatures
Windows Firewall	firewall.cpl
Windows Firewall with Advanced Security	wf.msc
Windows Journal	journal (N/A on Windows 7)
Windows Media Player	wmplayer (N/A on many Windows releases)
Windows Memory Diagnostic Scheduler	mdsched (Check your PC memory on next boot)
Windows Mobility Center (Stats)	mblctr
Windows Picture Acquisition Wizard	wiaacmgr
Windows PowerShell	powershell
Windows PowerShell ISE	powershell_ise
Windows Remote Assistance	msra
Windows Repair Disc	recdisc
Windows Script Host	wscript
Windows Update	wuapp
Windows Update Standalone Installer	wusa
Show Windows Version	winver
WMI Management	wmimgmt.msc
WordPad	write
XPS Viewer	xpsrchvw

Most of above commands works fine with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 / 8, Windows 2003 / 2012, however some cmds are missing across some win versions.

Here is list of other useful Windows shortcut keys:

General keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+C (Copy)
Ctrl+X (Delete selected item and save a copy to the clipboard)
Ctrl+V (Paste)
Ctrl+Z (Undo)
Delete (Delete)
Shift+Delete (Delete the selected item permanently without moving the item to the Recycle Bin)
Ctrl while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
Ctrl+Shift while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
Ctrl+Right Arrow (Move the cursor to the beginning of the next word)
Ctrl+Left Arrow (Move the cursor to the beginning of the previous word)
Ctrl+Down Arrow (Move the cursor to the beginning of the next paragraph)
Ctrl+Up Arrow (Move the cursor to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
Ctrl+Shift with any arrow key (Highlight a block of text)
Shift with any arrow key (Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
Ctrl+A (Select all)
F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
Alt+Enter (View the properties for the selected item)
Alt+F4 (Close the active item, or exit the active program)
Alt+Enter (Display the properties of the selected object)
Alt+Spacebar (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
Ctrl+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable multiple documents to be open at the same time)
Alt+Tab (Switch between the open items)
Alt+Esc (Cycle through items in the order in which they were opened)
F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or in Windows Explorer)
Shift+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
Alt+Spacebar (Display the System menu for the active window)
Ctrl+Esc (Display the Start menu)
Alt+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu)
Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
Right Arrow (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
Left Arrow (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
F5 key (Update the active window)
Backspace (View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
Esc (Cancel the current task)
Shift when you insert a CD into the CD drive (Prevent the CD from automatically playing)
Ctrl+Shift+Esc (Open Task Manager)

Dialog box keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+Tab (Move forward through the tabs)
Ctrl+Shift+Tab (Move backward through the tabs)
Tab (Move forward through the options)
Shift+Tab (Move backward through the options)
Alt+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command, or select the corresponding option)
Enter (Perform the command for the active option or button)
Spacebar (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box)
Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons)
F1 key (Display Help)
F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
Backspace (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box)

Microsoft natural keyboard shortcuts

Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
Windows Logo+Break (Display the System Properties dialog box)
Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
Windows Logo+M (Minimize all the windows)
Windows Logo+Shift+M (Restore the minimized windows)
Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
Ctrl+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)

Accessibility keyboard shortcuts

Right Shift for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys on or off)
Left Alt+left Shift+Print Screen (Switch High Contrast on or off)
Left Alt+left Shift+Num Lock (Switch the MouseKeys on or off)
Shift five times (Switch the StickyKeys on or off)
Num Lock for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys on or off)
Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)

Windows Explorer keyboard shortcuts

End (Display the bottom of the active window)
Home (Display the top of the active window)
Num Lock+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all the subfolders that are under the selected folder)
Num Lock+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)
Num Lock+Minus sign (-) (Collapse the selected folder)
Left Arrow (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder)
Right Arrow (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder)

Keyboard Shortcuts for Character Map

After you double-click a character on the grid of characters, you can move through the grid by using the keyboard shortcuts:

Right Arrow (Move to the right or to the beginning of the next line)
Left Arrow (Move to the left or to the end of the previous line)
Up Arrow (Move up one row)
Down Arrow (Move down one row)
Page Up (Move up one screen at a time)
Page Down (Move down one screen at a time)
Home (Move to the beginning of the line)
End (Move to the end of the line)
Ctrl+Home (Move to the first character)
Ctrl+End (Move to the last character)
Spacebar (Switch between Enlarged and Normal mode when a character is selected)

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) main window keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+O (Open a saved console)
Ctrl+N (Open a new console)
Ctrl+S (Save the open console)
Ctrl+M (Add or remove a console item)
Ctrl+W (Open a new window)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
Alt+Spacebar (Display the MMC window menu)
Alt+F4 (Close the console)
Alt+A (Display the Action menu)
Alt+V (Display the View menu)
Alt+F (Display the File menu)
Alt+O (Display the Favorites menu)

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) window keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+P (Print the current page or active pane)
Alt+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console window)
Shift+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
Ctrl+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
Ctrl+F5 (Restore the active console window)
Alt+Enter (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the selected item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
Ctrl+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)

Remote desktop connection navigation

Ctrl+Alt+End (Open the Microsoft Windows NT Security dialog box)
Alt+Page Up (Switch between programs from left to right)
Alt+Page Down (Switch between programs from right to left)
Alt+Insert (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
Alt+Home (Display the Start menu)
Ctrl+Alt+Break (Switch the client computer between a window and a full-screen display)
Alt+Delete (Display the Windows menu)
Ctrl+Alt+Minus sign (-) (Put a snapshot of the complete client window area on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing Alt+Print Screen on a local computer)
Ctrl+Alt+Plus sign (+) (Put a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing Print Screen on a local computer.)

Microsoft Internet Explorer navigation

Ctrl+B (Open the Organize Favorites dialog box)
Ctrl+E (Open the Search bar)
Ctrl+F (Start the Find utility)
Ctrl+H (Open the History bar)
Ctrl+I (Open the Favorites bar)
Ctrl+L (Open the Open dialog box)
CtrlL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same web address)
Ctrl+O (Open the Open dialog box, the same as CTRL+L)
Ctrl+P (Open the Print dialog box)
Ctrl+R (Update the current webpage)
Ctrl+W (Close the current window)

Complete list of Windows Keyboard Shorcuts is on Microsoft website

Tags: beginning, cmd, command prompt, complete list, control, Ctrl Left Arrow Move, Ctrl Right Arrow Move, Device, exe, firewall, General, joy, list, Microsoft, msconfig, phone, Programs, Securing, Shift Print Screen Switch High Contrast, Start, system administrator, Touch, Windows
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »

Quitting my job as IT Manager and moving to Further Horizons in Hewlett Packard

Friday, September 13th, 2013

I haven't blogged for a while for a plenty of reasons, I'm going through a change period in my life and as any change it is not easy.
This post will be not informative and will not teach any of my dear readers, anything on Computers its pretty personal but still for my friends it might cause interest.
Here is my personal life story over the last few months …

For a while I worked in a International University College situated in my hometown Dobrich. I was hired on position of IT Manager, and actually was doing a bit of E-Marketing to try to boost traffic to College's website – www.vumk.eu and mostly helping the old school hacker ad college system administrator over the last 10 yrs – Ertan to fix a bunch of Linux Mail / SQL and Webservers and some Windows machines. In college I learned from Ertan how to install and backups of restaurants software called BARBEQUE as well as how to fix problems with billing terminals situated in College Restaurant (3rd floor of building). Other of my work time I had to fix infested Windows computers with viruses re-install Windowses and fix various printing and network problems of College's teachers, accountants, cash desk, marketing and rest of college employees.

Talking about Ertan I should express my sincere tremendous Thanks (Thanks Ertan) to it for recommending me for this job position. Right before I started work in the college I was jobless for a while starting to get desperate that its impossible find work. Current IUC sysadmin – Mr. Ertan Geldiev is a remarkable man and one of the people that made great impression in my mind. Something I found interesting I can learn from Ertan was to get from his cheerful "admin" attitude. As a true hacker Ertan had this hacker attitude of playfulness I myself has for a while lost over the years. So seeing someone like this near my life make me a good favor and had a positive influence on myself.

I have learned a lot from Ertan during the 3 months and 3 days in International University College. Just for a bit of historic information earlier IUC was known as International College – Albena, also among Dobrich citizens known as The Dutch College – as earlier IUC had good relations with Dutch Universities and was issuing double degrees both Bulgarian and Dutch. Nowadays I'm not sure if still Double-degrees partnership between IUC and Dutch Universities exist, what I know for sure is college is issuing European Double Degrees in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University. I myself have earlier studied in the college and already know the place well thus will use this post to say a few words on my impressions on it …

International University College - one of top prestigious colleges in Eastern Europe

The college is a great place to be as you have chance to meet plenty of people both lecturers (professors), participate in the various events organized by College's as well as get involved in the many European Projects which are being handled by a European Projects department special department situated on the back of the College Building. Other positive about College is it is small and located on a peaceful town of Dobrich. This gives the bright people a lot of space for personal development, anyways on the other hand it can make you also a bad as Dobrich as a small city is a bit boring. The studies in College are good for students who want personal freedom as there is not too strict requirements for professors on how to teach.

Though college had help me grow, especially in my knowledge in Windows 7 and 8 (Ertan had a really good Windows background), I couldn't have the chance to develop myself too further in the long term. So my job offer to work in HP as Web and Middleware Implementation Engineer opened much broader opportunities for my long term IT career. Other reason I quit the College IT job was simply because I needed more money I had the vision to make a family with a girl from Belarus – Svetlana and in order to take care for her I need to earn good money. My official salary in the college was the funny for the position – 640 lv (though after a few months I was promised to have a raise and earn 400 EUR :)) . Such low sallary was for the reason I had the idea to continue studying in College and complete my Bachelor Business degree and we had agreed with the College CEO Mr. Todor Radev to extract part of my salary monthly and with that to pay my 1 semester tuition fee (2200 EUR) – necessary for my graduation assignment. Though completing the Bachelor is important phase to close in my life for a long time, I found for the moment more valuable to work for HP and earn normal living salary with which to possibly finance myself and create family with woman of my life (hopefully) in the short term.

In this post I want express my sincere thanks to all people in International College (Elena Urchenko, Krasimir – for helping me in my job duties), Pavel and Silvia for being a colleague for a while I worked partly in the Marketing Department.

Talking about Marketing Department what I did there is some Twitter Marketing (building some twitter followers) and wrote a tiny document with recommendation on how to optimize College website – vumk.eu (future version) – for better SEO ranking. This included complete analysis from user outlook to Indexing bots and site current code.

Mr Docent Phd Todor Radev

I have to do a big underline on how great person the College President and UNI Rector – Docent Todor Radev is. I have already bitter experience studying for a while in a government universities when younger and I know from experience usually Rectors and Universities management of state universities is pure "Hell". Thanks to Mr. Todor Radev for he did me a big favor letting me quit job just a week later (instead of 1 month as it is officially set by Bulgarian Dismissal Law and explicitly stated in my Work Contract. Also as a person my experience from Docent Radev is wonderful too. He is extremely intelligent, brilliant gentleman and most importantly open minded and always open for innovation.

As a close up I would like to say Big Thanks to everyone which I worked with or met in International University College! Thanks guys for all your support and help, thanks for being work mates and friends for the time.

Tags: 2c i, blogged, change period, european projects, hacker attitude, hewlett packard, hometown, horizons, lecturers, Linux, mail, marketing, old school, personal life story, random reasons, remarkable man, system administrator, traffic, true hacker, webservers, website www, windows machines, windows pcs, windows xp, work time
Posted in Business Management, Everyday Life, Various | 3 Comments »

Linux: Configure Midnight Commander to use mcedit instead of nano or vi text editor

Friday, June 21st, 2013

reverting mc text editor to mcedit fix problem with mcedit not working in linux

I use Midnight Commander console file manager on any UNIX like servers, since my early days as system administrator. mc comes with its own text editor mcedit which is often very handy for reading config files or pieces of source code. Many times I had to modify files which were spitting errors which I couldn't track in VIM, jor or whatever text editor had on server at hand and after checking file with mcedit I caught my config or source code mistake. I guess many other admins has similar nice experiences with mcedit – Internal file editor of GNU Midnight Commander. Nowadays, I install mostly Debian Linux on new configured servers and using mc to navigate in file system is very useful. I prefer mc to open files for edit with F4 (Edit – kbd shortcut) with its default mcedit, however for some reasons most of Debian / Ubuntu and other Linuxes, nowadays has set global environment text editor to nano. I totally dislike this text editor and like changing mc always to use mcedit. This is done straight from MC menus by:

Pressing F9 -> Going to Options -> Configuration -> (Setting mark on) -> Use Inernal Edit /code>


Tags: Admins, config files, configured servers, debian linux, experiences, global environment, gnu midnight commander, Linux, linuxes, menus, midnight commander, nano, source code, system administrator, Ubuntu
 Posted in System Administration, Various |   1 Comment »



Remote Desktop client – Remmina, Connect Remote to MS Windows VNC hosts from Linux
Friday, May 31st, 2013



If you're system administrator, who use Linux as Desktop. You surely want to check out Remmina – The GTK+ Remote Desktop Client.
	As far as I tested among all VNC Linux clients I know Remmina is definitely the one of choice in terms of Interface simplicity / stability and remote connection level of responsibility.
	Before finding out about Remmina existence, I tried xtightvncviewer, xvnc4viewer, gvncviewer, gtkvncviewer. xtightvncviewer, xvncviewer and gvncviewer are more for console geeks and hence either they lack GUI interface or user interface looks terrible. 
	GTKVncViewer's interface is also not bad but still not ÑÐ¾ nice as Remmina's.
	
	As you see in above shot, gtkvncviewer lacks any configuration. The only thing it can do is connect to remote host and you have option to configure nothing related how remote connection will respond, what type of Resolution to use etc.
	I know of of no other Linux VNC Clients that has configurability and GUI interface of Remmina.
 
As of time of writting Remmina is at stable version 1.0 and supports following Remote connection protocols:

VNC
VNC
RDP
RDPF
RDPS
SFTP
SSH

Remmina is available across mostly all Linux mainstream distributions:
	To install Remmina on Debian / Ubuntu and deb derivatives:
debian:~# apt-get –yes install remmina

….
	On Redhats (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL – RPM based Linuxes) install via:
	[root@centos ~]# yum –yes install remmina

…
	Below are few screenshots of Remmina:
	
	
	One of best Remmina feature is it supports Tabbing just like in Firefox. You can open a number of Remote VNC connects to different Windows hosts and manage them all by switching from tab to tab.
	

Tags: CentOS, connection protocols, derivatives, distributions, Firefox, linux clients, ms windows, redhats, remote desktop client, rhel, simplicity, system administrator, Ubuntu, user interface
 Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Remote System Administration, System Administration |   1 Comment »


Linux: Delete empty lines from text file with sed, awk, grep and vim
Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

As a system administrator, sometimes is necessary to do basic plain text processing for various sysadmin tasks. One very common task I do to remove empty lines in file. There are plenty of ways to do it i.e. – with grep, sed, awk, bash, perl etc.
1. Deleting empty file lines with sed
	The most standard way to do it is with sed, as sed was written to do in shell quick regexp. Here is how;
sed '/^\s*$/d' file_with_empty_lines.txt > output_no_empty_lines.txt



 2. Deleting empty file lines with awk
  It is less of writting with awk, but I always forget the syntax and thus I like more sed, anyways here is how with awk;
 
 
cat file_with_empty_lines.txt | awk 'NF' > 

output_no_empty_lines.txt


 3. Deleting empty lines with grep
  Grep  regular expression can be used. Here is grep cmd to cut off empty lines from file;
 
 
grep -v '^\s*$' file_with_empty_lines.txt > 

output_no_empty_lines.txt


  4. Delete empty files with vi / vim text editor
  
 Open vi / vim text editor
 
$ vim


  Press Esc+: and if empty lines doesn't have empty space characters use command
  
 g/^$/d 
  Whether, empty lines contain " " – space characters (which are not visible in most text editors), use vi cmd:
 
 g/^ $/d


 
 Tags: empty space, grep, Linux, Perl, regexp, regular expression, Shell, space characters, syntax, system administrator, text editors, vim text editor, writting
 Posted in Linux, Programming, System Administration, Various | No Comments »
 
  How to count lines of PHP source code in a directory (recursively)
 Saturday, July 14th, 2012  
  Being able to count the number of PHP source code lines for a website is a major statistical information for timely auditting of projects and evaluating real Project Managment costs. It is inevitable process for any software project evaluation to count the number of source lines programmers has written.
 In many small and middle sized software and website development companies, it is the system administrator task to provide information or script quickly something to give info on the exact total number of source lines for projects.
  Even for personal use out of curiousity it is useful to know how many lines of PHP source code a wordpress or Joomla website (with the plugins) contains.
 Anyone willing to count the number of PHP source code lines under one directory level, could do it with:::
  
serbver:~# cd /var/www/wordpress-website

server:/var/www/wordpress-website:# wc -l *.php

17 index.php

101 wp-activate.php

1612 wp-app.php

12 wp-atom.php

19 wp-blog-header.php

105 wp-comments-post.php

12 wp-commentsrss2.php

90 wp-config-sample.php

85 wp-config.php

104 wp-cron.php

12 wp-feed.php

58 wp-links-opml.php

59 wp-load.php

694 wp-login.php

236 wp-mail.php

17 wp-pass.php

12 wp-rdf.php

15 wp-register.php

12 wp-rss.php

12 wp-rss2.php

326 wp-settings.php

451 wp-signup.php

110 wp-trackback.php

109 xmlrpc.php

4280 total


  This will count and show statistics, for each and every PHP source file within wordpress-website (non-recursively), to get only information about the total number of PHP source code lines within the directory, one could grep it, e.g.:::
  
server:/var/www/wordpress-website:# wc -l *.php |grep -i '\stotal$'

4280 total


  The command grep -i '\stotal$' has \s in beginning and $ at the end of total keyword in order to omit erroneously matching PHP source code file names which contain total in file name; for example total.php …. total_blabla.php …. blabla_total_bla.php etc. etc.
  The \s grep regular expression meaning is "put empty space", "$" is placed at the end of tital to indicate to regexp grep only for words ending in string total.
  So far, so good … Now it is most common that instead of counting the PHP source code lines for a first directory level to count complete number of PHP, C, Python whatever source code lines recursively – i. e. (a source code of website or projects kept in multiple sub-directories). To count recursively lines of programming code for any existing filesystem directory use find in conjunction with xargs:::
  
server:/var/www/wp-website1# find . -name '*.php' | xargs wc -l

1079 ./wp-admin/includes/file.php

2105 ./wp-admin/includes/media.php

103 ./wp-admin/includes/list-table.php

1054 ./wp-admin/includes/class-wp-posts-list-table.php

105 ./wp-admin/index.php

109 ./wp-admin/network/user-new.php

100 ./wp-admin/link-manager.php

410 ./wp-admin/widgets.php

108 ./wp-content/plugins/akismet/widget.php

104 ./wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/wp-gdata/wp-gdata.php

104 ./wp-content/plugins/cyr2lat-slugs/cyr2lat-slugs.php

,,,,

652239 total


  As you see the cmd counts and displays the number of source code lines encountered in each and every file, for big directory structures the screen gets floated and passing | less is nice, e.g.:
  
find . -name '*.php' | xargs wc -l | less


  Displaying lines of code for each file within the directories is sometimes unnecessery, whether just a total number of programming source code line is required, hence for scripting purposes it is useful to only get the source lines total num:::
  
server:/var/www/wp-website1# find . -name '*.php' | xargs wc -l | grep -i '\stotal$'


  Another shorter and less CPU intensive one-liner to calculate the lines of codes is:::
  
server:/var/www/wp-website1# ( find ./ -name '*.php' -print0 | xargs -0 cat ) | wc -l


  Here is one other  shell script which displays all file names within a directory with the respective calculated lines of code
  For more professional and bigger projects using pure Linux bash and command line scripting might not be the best approach. For counting huge number of programming source code and displaying various statistics concerning it, there are two other tools –  SLOCCount
 as well as  clock (count lines of code) 
  Both tools, are written in Perl, so for IT managers concerned for speed of calculating projects source (if too frequent source audit is necessery) this tools might be a bit sluggish. However for most projects they should be of a great add on value, actually SLOCCount was already used for calculating the development costs of GNU / Linux and other projects of high importance for Free Software community  and therefore it is proven it works well with ENORMOUS software source line code calculations written in programming languages of heterogenous origin.
  sloccount and cloc packages are available in default Debian and Ubuntu Linux repositories, so if you're a Debilian user like me you're in luck:::
  
server:~# apt-cache search cloc$

cloc - statistics utility to count lines of code

server:~# apt-cache search sloccount$

sloccount - programs for counting physical source lines of code (SLOC)


  Well that's all folks, Cheers en happy counting 😉
 
 Tags: Auto, blabla, code, cron, curiousity, cyr, directory level, Draft, expression, file, file names, header php, index, info, information, level, mail php, middle, number, opml, personal use, php, programmers, project, project evaluation, project managment, quot, rdf, script, show, SLOCCount, software, software project, something, source code, source file, source lines, statistical information, system administrator, totalThe, website server, Wordpress, wp
 Posted in Business Management, Programming, System Administration | 2 Comments »
 
  How to convert file content encoded in windows-cp1251 charset to UTF-8 (with iconv) to be delivered properly encoded to browsing end clients
 Wednesday, May 16th, 2012  
  I have a bunch of old html files all encoded in the historically obsolete Windows-cp1251. Windows-CP1251 used to be common used 7 years ago and therefore still big portions of the web content in Bulgarian / Russian Cyrillic is still transferred to the end users in this encoding.
  This was just before the "UTF-8 revolution", where massively people started using UTF-8,
 Well it was clear the specific national country text encoding standards will quickly be moved by to UTF-8 – Universal Encoding format which abbreviation stands for (Unicode Transformation Format).
  Though UTF-8 was clear to be "the future", many web developers mostly because of their incompetency or using an old sources of learning how to writen in HTML continued to use windows-cp1251 in HTMLs. I'm even convinced, there are still developers out there who are writting websites for Bulgarian / Russian / Macedonian customers using obsolete encodings … 
  The smarter developers of those accustomed to windows-cp1251, KOI-8R etc. etc., were using the meta tag to specify the type of charset of the web page content with:
  
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=windows-cp1251">
  or
  
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=koi-8r">
  Anyhow, still many devs even didn't placed the windows-cp1251 in the head of the HTML …
  The result for the system administrator is always a mess – a lot of webpages that are showing like unreadable signs and tons of unhappy customers.
 As always the system administrator is considered responsible, for the programmer mistakes :). So instead of programmers fix their bad cooking, the admin has to fix it all!
  One quick work around me as admin has applied to failing to display pages in Cyrillic using the Windows-cp1251 character encoding was to force windows-cp1251 as a default encoding for the whole virtualhost or Apache directory with Apache directives like:
  
<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin some_user@some_host.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

AddDefaultCharset windows-cp1251

ServerName the_host_name.com

ServerAlias www.the_host_name.com

....

....

<Directory>

AddDefaultCharset windows-cp1251

>/Directory>

</VirtualHost>


  Though this mostly would, work there are some occasions, where only a particular html files from all the content served by Apache is encoded in windows-cp1251, if most of the content is already written in UTF-8, this could be a big issues as you cannot just change the UTF-8 globally to windows-cp1251, just because few pages are written in archaic encoding….
 Since most of the content is displayed to the client by Apache (as prior explained) just fine, only particular htmls lets's ay single.html, single2.html etc. etc. are displayed with some question marks or some non-human readable "hieroglyphs".
  Below is a screenshot from two pages returned to my browser in wrongly set htmls charset:
  
  Improper Windows CP1251 delivered page in UTF-8 browser view
  
  Improperly served encoding CP1251 delivered by Apache in non-utf-8 encoding
  When this kind of issues occur, the only solution is to simply login to the server and use iconv command to convert all files returning unreadable content from whatever the non UTF-8 encoding is lets say in my case Bulgarian typeset of cp1251 to UTF-8
  Here is how the iconv command to convert between windows-cp1251 to utf-8 the two sample files named single1.html and single2.html
  
server:/web# /usr/bin/iconv -f WINDOWS-1251 -t UTF-8 single1.html > single1.html.utf8

server:/web# mv single1.html single1.html.bak;

server:/web# mv single1.html.utf8 single1.html

server:/web# /usr/bin/iconv -f WINDOWS-1251 -t UTF-8 single2.html > single2.html.utf8

server:/web# mv single2.html single2.html.bak;

server:/web# mv single2.html.utf8 single2.html


  I always, make copies of the original cp1251 encoded files (as you see mv single1.html single1.html.bak), because if something goes wrong with convertion I can easily revert back.
  If there are 10 files with consequential numbers naming they can be converted using a short for loop, like so:
  
server:/web# for i $(seq 1 10); do

/usr/bin/iconv -f WINDOWS-1251 -t UTF-8 single$i.html > single$i.html.utf8;mv single$i.html single$i.html.bak

mv single$i.html.utf8 single$i.html

done


  Just as earlier mentioned if single1.html, single2.html … has in the html <head>:
  
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251">


  You should open, each of the files in question and wipe out the line either by hand or use sed to wipe it in one loop if it has to be done for lets say 10 files named (single{1..10})
  
server:/web# for i in $(seq 1 10); do

sed '/<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text\/html; charset=windows-1251>/d' single$i.txt > single$i.txt.new;

mv single$i.txt single$i.txt.bak;

mv single$i.txt.new single$i.txt


  Well now,
 
 Tags: Anyhow, apac, Auto, bak, character encoding, charset, charset windows, content type, Draft, end users, format, HEAD, host, html files, htmls, incompetency, mess, meta tag, page, programmer, programmers, quot, revolution, Russian, russian cyrillic, system administrator, tag, text, text html, Transformation, transformation format, type, unhappy customers, Universal, UTF, utf 8, Virtualhost, web content, web developers, web page content, work, writen
 Posted in System Administration, Various, Web and CMS | 1 Comment »
 
  « Older Entries

Posts Tagged ‘system administrator’

1. Set up your bashrc server / command aliases

2. Set mobaxterm presistent directory / persistent root directory and default text editor

3. Change default settings for Opening / Closing Terminal tabs just like in gnome-terminal

4. Make MobaXterm to automatically open a terminal to not Start local terminal every time

How to make Mobaxterm automatically open local Terminal Tab on every boot?

5. Make menu buttons to appear smaller

6. Disable auto start of XServer to prevent a port listener on the machine on TCP port

7. Change the mobaxterm Default theme to Dark

8. Install additional set of common Linux tools to mobaxterm to use on Windows

9. Mobaxterm.ini the settings storage file that can help you move your configurations

10. Change terminal colors and curor type and enable blinking (customizations)

Settings -> Configuration -> Terminal -> (Default Terminal Color Settings)

11. Use very useful moba Tools

Network Port scanner such as Nmap with GUI

list open network ports (GUI interface to netmap)

SSH tunnel tool

Moba Diff

Wake on Lan

Network Packet capturer (such as tcpdump)

List running processes (such as taskmgr in simple form)

List machine hardware devices (such as Windows Device manager)

12. Remote monitoring of opened ssh session

13. Play some mobaxterm console games

Then the question comes how to determine whether A remote Installed Linux is Physical or Virtual ?

1. Using the dmesg kernel log utility

2. Detecting the OS platform the systemd way

3. Detect concrete container virtualization with systemd-detect-virt

4. Install and use facter to report per node facts

6. Use lshw and dmidecode (list hardware configuration tool)

7. Detect virtualziation using virt-what or imvirt scripts

Conclusion

General keyboard shortcuts

Dialog box keyboard shortcuts

Microsoft natural keyboard shortcuts

Accessibility keyboard shortcuts

Windows Explorer keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard Shortcuts for Character Map

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) main window keyboard shortcuts

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) window keyboard shortcuts

Remote desktop connection navigation

Microsoft Internet Explorer navigation

Daily Bible quote

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