Archive for December, 2012

Linux webcam take pictures from tty console or terminal / How to make pictures of yourself using plain console and web-camera

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

how to take webCAM console / terminal pictures on gnu linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora)

I'm a great command line enthusiast, I share the believe of many other command line geeks thinking keyboard is the quickest way to access a computer. Historically keys were first and mouse second and I think there is definitely a good reason for that. Thus today I was curious if it is possible to take pictures from my external web-camera on my Debian GNU / Linux? I did a quick research and this little article springed out as result.

The answer is YES! It is possible and besides that there are many ways to take a webcamera picture using the console; Lastly it is very easy to achieve even for novice Linux buddies 😉 My little research on the topic show me there are 4 straightforward ways one can use to use his extended or embedded WebCam to take pictuers – using (vlc, mplayer, camshot, fswebcam and ffmpeg).

1. Taking a webcam picture using vlc

Invoke vlc with following arguments:

# vlc -I dummy v4l2:///dev/video0 --video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path /home/hipo --scene-prefix webcam-taken-picture-prefix --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1

I've prepared a little wrapper script, for the sake of simplifying the long and hard to remember vlc options. Below is the script;

#!/bin/sh
# This little script will take picture whilst in gnome-terminal / mlterm or any console tty
# As program uses vlc you need to have vlc properly configured and installed
# as well as the webcam video be properly working (detected by Linux kernel)
# licensed under GPLv2 script modified by hip0 14.12.2012
# Path where to store taken snapshots
STORE_PATH=/home/hipo
# Device locatation of webcam many webcams have default device in /dev/video0
WEBCAM_DEV=/dev/video0
# Stored grabbed picture filename prefix
FILE_NAME_PREF=image_prefix
# gets the current date and adds to set filename prefix
date_cur=$(date +%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//');
vlc -I dummy v4l2://$WEBCAM_DEV --video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path $STORE_PATH --scene-prefix $FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1
echo "WebCam picture taken and stored in $STORE_PATH/$FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur*.png";
echo '';
echo "To view picture in Gnome with Eye of GNOME type: eog $STORE_PATH/$FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur*.png";

You can also download copy of the webcam_take_picture_from_console.sh script here.

As you see the script uses, vlc's (dummy interface), and –video-filter-scene option to make the snapshot. The script can be stored in let's say /usr/local/bin/webcam_take_picture.sh and aliased through ~/.bashrc with some short alias, i.e.:

alias console-picture='/usr/local/bin/webcam_take_picture.sh'

Then at any time, when you run console-picture you will have a short way to make pictures of your room, your friends or whatever needed. One good application of script is whether you're in coffee with friends and you want to take a snapshot of them without them realizing (assuming, the webcam is embedded) 🙂

Another great application is whether you want to take a snapshot of the WebCam, from another shell script or little application using dialog ncurses interfaces etc.

Even just for the sake of fun it is so nice to take a picture from webcam, whether in plain tty console bash shell 🙂

One small note to make here is webcam_take_picture_from_console.sh should be run as non-root user (for security reasons vlc developers made smartly VLC this way), running it as root drops an err:

>VLC is not supposed to be run as root. Sorry.
If you need to use real-time priorities and/or privileged TCP ports
you can use /usr/bin/vlc-wrapper (make sure it is Set-UID root and
cannot be run by non-trusted users first).
 

By default, vlc resolution used is the automatically set to the maximum supported to the camera, with mine this is 640×480 SRGB
The quality of pictures taken is a bit low but my camera is a cheap one and even with some GUI program snapshot taking programs like GNOME's cheese, taken pictures are with low quality (though I think the brightnes of the ones taken with vlc is a bit poorer than the ones done with cheese).

Happily it is possible to correct picture brightness and lightning with v42l-ctl (v42l-ctl is not installed by default and on Debian you will have to install deb pack v4l-utils), e.g.:

apt-get install --yes v4l-utils
....

Further, check out the possible options available with:

v4l2-ctl -L - (list all possible options)

and to set a concrete option do:

v4l2-ctl -c <options>=<value> (set an option)
 

I don't have a BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) at hand, but with a working supported Webcam, correct location to the webcam /dev/  and installed VLC from ports :

vlc -I dummy v4l2:///dev/video0--video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path $STORE_PATH --scene-prefix $FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1

should be working fine as well.
If someone has access to a BSD with a working installed webcam, please test it and drop a comment to confirm if working …

2. Creating pictures from WebCamera using mplayer cmd

Theoretically mplayer, should be able to take snapshots from the Cam with:

mplayer -vo png -frames 1 tv://

There is possibility to pass output webcam picture (resolution) dimensions too:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:device=/dev/video0:width=320:height=240:outfmt=rgb24 -frames 1 -vo jpeg

 

With my "NoName" (Eltron Technology) webcam the produced images were filled up with solid green color  (maybe due to bug of my webcam used driver). Normally it should be working; I've seen many posts around claiming using both of above cmd lines to produce pictures normally, but not for me.

3. Making pictures with WebCamera (camshot) console tool

I've seen around also another tiny tool (camshot) especially written to take pictures from webcam. The tool is available only to be compiled from source (whether source is fetched through Subversion repo (SVN)). I took a minute to test it as well, e.g.:

 

hipo@noah:~Desktop$ svn checkout http://camshot.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ camshot-read-only

hipo@noah:~/Desktop/camshot-read-only$ make
....
hipo@noah:~/Desktop/camshot-read-only$ ls
arguments.c  arguments.o  camera.h  camshot  image.h  main.c  Makefile  shmem.h  shmem_test.c
arguments.h  camera.c     camera.o  image.c  image.o  main.o  shmem.c   shmem.o

hipo@noah:~Desktop/camshot-read-only$ ./camshot
Letting the camera automaticaly adjust the picture:..........Done.
Command (h for help): h

Commands:
    x    Capture a picture from camera.
    h    Prints this help.
    q    Quits the program.

Command (h for help): x
Command (h for help): q

 

Don't know why, but for me camshot did not produce, any output picture from webcam. Maybe my Webcam which is a cheap (all OS) compatible one is not detected fine by the tool? As you see from above help output there are not many options so it is definitely something with webcam detection or just it needs some kind of little "hack" in the source to make it working, I was lazy to further investigate so I leave it.

4. Making pictures from terminal using fswebcam

fswebcam is not so popular as vlc and mplayer, but is existent from default repostiries on both Debian and Ubuntu Linuces. Here is it how it is described when pkg info requested with apt-cache:

apt-cache show fswebcam | grep -i descrip -A 8
Description: Tiny and flexible webcam program
 Fswebcam is a tiny and flexible webcam command-line program for capturing
 images from a V4L1/V4L2 device. It accepts a number of formats, can skip
 the first (possibly bad) frames before performing the actual capture, and
 can perform simple manipulation on the captured image, such as resizing,
 averaging multiple frames or overlaying a caption or an image.
Homepage: http://www.firestorm.cx/fswebcam/
Tag: implemented-in::c, role::program

To use it first install it with apt-get or yum (yes it is available also for RedHat based Linux distros via yum).
Depending whether on Debian or Fedora etc. do:

apt-get install --yes fswebcam
.....

or

yum -y install fswebcam
....

fswebcam's syntax is much easier than all of rest cmd tools available around; to create picture from webcam;

# fswebcam -r 640x480 --jpeg 85 -D 1 web-cam-shot.jpg
--- Opening /dev/video0...
Trying source module v4l2...
/dev/video0 opened.
No input was specified, using the first.
Delaying 1 seconds.
--- Capturing frame...
Captured frame in 0.00 seconds.
--- Processing captured image...
Setting output format to JPEG, quality 85
Unable to load font 'luxisr': Could not find/open font
Disabling the the banner.
Writing JPEG image to 'web-cam-shot.jpg'.

I liked supports, saving in multiple formats, can set resolution and is probably the number 1 choice for anyone looking for high level of customization of cam taken picture.. Saying this I think fswebcam is definitely the tool of choice as it is written with the one and only aim to take webcam pictures from console.

5. Capturing picture from Webcam using ffmpeg

With ffmpeg, there are plenty of things possible;
Just to mention few interesting ones, I've written about earlier, ffmeg is capable of;

convert .OGG vorbis to MP3 
convert .FLV to .AVI and .AVI to .FLV
convert .AVI .MP4 and .FLV to OGG Vorbis (Free Format)
convert .OGG video to .FLV Video
extract sounds / music from .FLV to a MP3 / MP4
Add .SRT and .SUB files subtitles to Flash Videos

Along with all this, interestingly ffmpeg can get content using command line from WebCamera (nomatter if it's a VIDEO stream or just a Picture snapshot).

The syntax to take a picture with it is:

ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -i /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-Etron_Technology__Inc._USB2.0_Camera-video-index0 -vframes 1 output-picture.jpeg

The precise /dev/(v4l – video 4 linux) assigned to different cameras will differ so in order to find what kind of /dev, to use ls it:

# ls -al /dev/v4l/by-id/*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Dec 14 22:40 /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-Etron_Technology__Inc._USB2.0_Camera-video-index0 -> ../../video0

The picture resolution taken on my Eltron Technology Webcam is same like with vlc – the cam optimum 640×480, the quality and brightness gamma is also identical to pics taken using VLC.
 
Therefore if you're wondering if one tool, might make a better pictures from command line than the other the answer, according to my tests is they produce identical quality and all can be customized easily for different set of resolution. It is possible thought, this is not so with other Web Cam models, if you happen to read this post and take the time to try taking pictures with 5 methods and some of the 5 progs is making superior pictures, please drop a comment with the tool you used and the WebCam exact version as detected in dmesg or lsusb

As a sort of Outtro, from purely functional / usability point of view I think fswebcam is probably be the tool of choice for mostly all as it is most simple, easily customizable and especially crafted for creating webcam console shots. That's all Enjoy, taking pics from GUI terminal or console 🙂 

P.S. – I know there are plenty of people who have written on the topic, so this article is nothing new under the sun, but as I couldn't find a post synthesizing in one all of the 5 methods I've come up with this little article. Feedback is mostly welcome
Happy picturing 😉

The evils of the Corporate Business and the Multi National Business crimes – What is the legal status of a International Corporation Company? – The Corporation – A documentary movie on the birth of modern Corporations and Multinational businesses

Friday, December 14th, 2012

The-evil-of-corporate-business-and-multinational-business-crimes-transnational-corporations

Some 5 years ago, while I was still studying in International College Albena (International College Dobrich, Bulgaria) also historically known under the name "International College Albena", In one of my regular Logistics (lectures), we were Projected a movie by our professor Mr. Bojidar Bojkov.
Usually I take no interest in educational presentations as most of them is obsolete junk more or less not reflecting the real life reality and is some abstract "pseudo"-science concepts. This time it was different me and my IBMS (International Business Management Studies) study fellows were projected a very informative movie called The Corporation.

The Corporation is a movie containing elements of propaganda as it is trying to proof (convince) the public – that modern society should be much more critical and active in measures against the bad-ness of multi-national corporations and many of the Fortune top 500 profitable businesses

As every kind of movie it is more-or-less manipulative and the author tries to impose his idea about "the evil corporations". The topic of Corporate Citizenship is a modern topic in Business and every large size businesses is claiming to hold a very high standards of "corporate citizenship" and being loyal or green and environmental friendly Green and environment friendliness "buzz-word mantra like words" are everywhere, from the littlest company operating on a single Country Market to the largest and most "respected" companies like BP – (British Petroleum).

It is a public "secret", that most of the succeesful business organizations (be it profit or non-profit) is a dirty and devilish undertaking driven with the one and only goal to enrich the shareholder/s wealth. The organization is usually not governed by the shareholders but assigned management is assigned to supervise the organizations and take the management decisions concerning the org. wealth and power increase.

It is evident noticable fact, that the bigger a business or company is the more likely it is to be functioning efficiently and to provide lower product prices on the market. The reason is middle and big size corporations dispose themselves with "BIG MONEY" – huge financial investments (many of which are with doubtful origin) ….

The expension of USA and UK (English), model of business gave a collapse to any alternative forms of company functionining except – the western model. However the severe economic crisis clearly indicates – "The Western Business Model" which is backboned by such a solid and good theoretical base is not working as expected in practice. Though with the worsening crisis over the last few years it is more and more evident that something need to change fundamentaly on global scale in how private businesses and organizations (westerned) model organizations function, still there is nearly noone doing anything. Instead America is continously following their 'good old' well known "Create Wars and Conflicts Strategy". Where mostly all non western modelated countries or any kind of "untracked" business out of the western model is deliberatily being killed by creating (financing) internal conflicts inside countries (like it happened recently in Egypt), like it happens with the war in Syria and like happened in Vietnam some years back.

There are still some countries in the world, trying to fight-back the broken western unified (international one system) model tendency of the west like Russia and Belarus and hopefully some other Countries whose economics are showing negative results, but in general it seems the 'Western Corporate model' will take over in short future.
There is an easy solution to the problem 'raise awareness' of the corporate badness, limit corporations on a local governmental basis and foster a business climate, where start-up and little and middle sized companies are encouraged to rise-up, parallely with dramatical rise in taxation over large corporate multination-business entities …
But in order for this to happens it is necessary the majority of people to realize about the Corporations problem and deliberately and peacefully work each on individual base (and according to his abilities) against the 'Evil Corporations Structural (New-World Order) like Empire'

One of this Raise-UP Awareness against the badness of Business-es of the High Scale is The Corporation movie. I'm sure anyone who is interested in knowing how stuff works and how modern economy works would definitely learn a lot from the movie.
 

 

The Corporation- A Documentary Movie on curious facts about evils of Multi-National Corporations and "International Businesses"

It is rather paradoxically that the movie came to see the light of day by the University of British Columbia. A movie which criticizes the Western Corporate model was done by a Western (British) University. The movie was primary conducted and made by a law professor Joel Bakan

The documentary examines the modern-day corporation, considering its legal status as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person.

It is rather interesting fact to learn, that probably most not know that in modern times in most countries (if not all), the Corporation is being perceived from a Legal stand-point as 'An ordinary person (citizen) Entity'. Yeah that's right, non-human "being" is legally perceived as human and has all the rights and duties of an ordinary citizen. The big problem with this is the impact is has on general cotiety. An ordinary human could "kill" someone blow off a bomb and kill hundreds but cannot be blamed for killing few millions or leaving a billion of people poor or on the threshold of starvation, but Corporation as having the legal status of a Country Citizen sadly can ….

In the end of the movie after a few typical corporations are examined – a psychiatry diagnosis is set the Corporation (Multi-National) Business Model is diagnosed as Psychopat. The movie also gives a very interesting information concerning some Top Brands and products – like Coca Cola, Fanta, IBM etc. etc.

It is worthy to mention just of them – Fanta used to be invented and was known as 'The Nazis Drink' as in Nazist Germany it was drinked as Substitute for the American way drink (TM) – Coca Cola.

Other interesting facts is back in the day and even probably to this day Coca Cola placed – real quantity of Cocain in their drink leading to addiction – and tried various methods to manipulate the minds of the Consumer in Advertisements of their products. What striked me personally the most was the fact IBM (International Business Machines), were selling identification systems to Hitler and the Nazis in order to number the Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. Noone cares nowadays and still IBM – known also as (The Blue Elephant) is still operating profitably and one of the most important players in the field of IT and Computer Equipment, nevertheless the unhuman crime they did by selling systems which were used by German Officers whose killed millions of Jews and other non-Aryans …

It is rather uneasy to think that the same Corporation which helped indirectly for killing millions helped and played kill role of development of the Personal Computer – The Laptop, the Mobile Phones, Modern Genetics, Implants, The Internent and well you name it …

Here is also a short explanation of the Movie from Wikipedia:

" The film features interviews with prominent corporate critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Vandana Shiva, Charles Kernaghan, and Howard Zinn as well as opinions from company CEOs such as Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company), the viewpoints of Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman, and think tanks advocating free markets such as the Fraser Institute. Interviews also feature Dr. Samuel Epstein with his involvement in a lawsuit against Monsanto Company for promoting the use of Posilac, (Monsanto's trade name for recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) to induce more milk production in dairy cattle. "

Though the movie outlines so much important facts, that should be known by any Business Student out – there or any person somehow involved in Business, I have the impression most of the people out there never watch it. Thus I hope my little article will make it a bit more popular and bring some more people to realize, that Corporations Culture and Evils should be opposed and mitigated on individual and society level!

Fix to sfc /scannow (System File Checker) error “The specific code is 0x000006ba [The RPC Server is unavailable.] “

Friday, December 14th, 2012

I had to fix one Windows XP computer today. The computer was in a terrible state (meak to say), the system was hanging during boot,

None of Windows recovery modes worked,  except when running it through:

Windows Safe Mode (With Command Prompt) mode (pressing F8 before Windows boot with Windows flag screen).


I followed some Usual commands to repair broken Windows XP, as the system was hanging during boot there was obviously some issues with corrupt by Viruses and Malware system binary (.exe) files or some .DLL was substituted in (C:WindowsSystem32 and C:WindowsSystem32DllCacache) with a trojanned version by some "bad ware". 

Thus the logical thing to do was to try:

sfc /scannow


from Safe Mode's cmd prompt. Instead of starting its work as usual System File Checker spitted an error:
 

Windows File Protection could not be initiate a scan of protected system files.  
The specific code is 0x000006ba [The RPC Server is unavailable.]

You can guess my amazement as I see this error for a first time in my life. Actually I don't remember if I run System File Checker scan from a Safe Mode With only Command Prompt ever so I'm not sure if this error was caused by some Virus activity which broke up the Win host, or it is due to the fact RCP Services are not loaded in Safe Mode – With Command Prompt Only.

As the message implies RCP Server is not running and sfc depends on it.

The reason for the error is Windows File Protection (WFP) was disabled by some of the Spyware or Viruses which infested the poor Win PC.

As the problem consisted in unworking RPC Services I tried launching RPC manually with command:

> net start rpcss  

This unfortunately did not succeeded (dunno why).

I've later seen another fix pointed on a couple of forums around, which is using Registry to enable SFC.

Re-enabling SFC is done by:

1. Launching regedit

2. Once launched go to the following reg settings (sub-values)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon

Use modify on it and change value to be "0"
3. Restart windows and launch again Safe Mode With (Command Prompt Only)

There execute:

> sfc /purgecache
> sfc /scannow

This solves it however, as you never can be sure if the Install time .DLLs are not already rootkited by the Virus-es and Spywares which "posessed" the computer. It is generally a good idea to Launch the Windows Install CD, recovery console and launch SFC using it, or even try using the Windows CD (Repair) mode. Though this is a temporary work around, this system will need a re-install in very short future, or it will most likely came in the same broken state in a very while – I don't believe such an infested computer can be "cured" except with a clean CD Windows re-install.
If this method didn't work for you but something else worked for you, whether you had to fix a Win PC please drop a comment with the solution.

My long lasting study university dilemma is it really worth Investment to study in University? Don’t study – invest your money in something more meaningful

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

I'm trying to graduate for a really long time, so far. Let me in short perephrase my story, as I'm sure there are probably plenty of people out there who are into the same shitty situation as I.

I graduated school while being 17 years old (one year earlier than supposed), studied in a Mathematical oriented High School with majors Informatics and Mathematics with itensified English language studying. 

While turning 17 I had my regular fancy-dress carnival (ball) as we have it each year near the end of May and beginning of June in Bulgaria, in those joyful times plenty of High School graduates has their celebrations. I don't know how it is in other countries but in Bulgaria, graduates are often mislead and does not have clear idea what exactly they want to study, because schools do less to properly orientate the student on what kind of study stream field or what kind of sphere of life he would like to be employeed (maybe it was just my alumni) or the alumnis student generations that emerged just 10 years after Communism regime fall, maybe it is just my individual case. Or maybe it was like this everywhere? Anyways I graduated desiring only to study informatics for the only reason, Informatics was fashionable and it was thought the future of existence will be fulyl pre-dominated by informatics. Therefore in my school me and many classmates thought graduating in informatics is the best thing one can do. Computers back in the day was not so heavily spreaded (every person did not have a computer), so still computers were perceived by Bulgarian people with high dose of mysticism and interest. And those interested in computers were much more interested into learning something and much less consumer oriented society … but doesn't matter, I can write a lot of this but will stop here as this is not the ultimate goal of this article ….

Once graduating in PMG Ivan Vazoff – The High School where i graduated, I tried to apply for a student by following the standard student entrance exams for the study stream of Computers and Information Technologies as this was my primary field of interest back in the day. Back in the day the only way to enter for study stream of Computer Engineering was lay exam solving 4 mathematical complex problems, mathametics. I'm a very bad mathematician and bad in counting, since my childhood I guess I had some bad teachers which didn't spend enough time explaining, I was lazy or just I don't have the talent to be good in mathematics, so following the exams in few mainly Technical Universities in few Bulgarian cities produced no good results. Because of my bad exam marks (my best one was 3 out of 6, where 2 is negative and 6 is positive – yeah the standard education system in Bulgaria is from 2 (poor) to 6 (excellent), I was not accepted in any of the universities to study informatics. You can understand my high disappointment, I was so keen to study informatics really! but the stupid system never allowed me to do so! Hoping I will be able to transfer to another study stream I signed in Varna TU (Technical University) in a study stream called "Machine Building and Instruments Construction". I was received in student with a very low mark of just 3 out of 6, there was practice back in the day that the students with worst marks entered into the Machine Building and Instruments Construction or Automation specialties. I was a total user, as the name of the specialty sounded not so bad and I hoped the specialty should be closely related to Informatics, I had hope. Spending just the first semester in the University I realized this specialty – as it was taught back then has almost nothing to do with Computing; besides that it had plenty of Engineer Drawings. As a graduate from a High School where accent was Mathematics, I never did even one Engineer Drawing! So it was a complete, mess I tried hard to learn  it but it was not possible, even though I tried my best I couldn't properly Draw. After all I never had the habit and even the basic knowledge on How Engineer Drawing is done. It was sad and stressful times, besides that I had to follow two University Higher Mathematics (Chapter 1 and 2) in 1st semester and University Technical Mathematics (Chapter pt. 3 and 4). First semester I couldn't pass Mathematics exam  1 and 2. Because of the reason the teacher was mostly terrible in explaning and also the level of mathematics required to know was very high; for me it was even harder as I never ever had good understanding or knowledge in mathematics. I failed the exams I hardly passed 2 out of 4 exams, I had troubles with few subjects certification (in those university studyign students, had to be certified by the teacher to go to the exam – if you don't attend the lectures you don't get certification and you can't go for the exam). It was a mess. After the end of 1st year I realized, I cannot in any way make it, to move myself to study in some study specialty that has to do more with Computer Science, so I stopped studying. 

During the summer I visited some private Mathematics lessons and tried my best to apply again to study for informatics this time for another University (The Economic University of  Varna). Though my hard attempts to learn a set of model mathematical tasks to solve, on the exam in June I only could achieve again a low mark 3.80 out 6. I needed at least 5 in order to be approved to enter the pre-selected number of students which would study Informatics. Here a note to make here is most of the students who studied informatics did not hold even basic understanding in computers or did not even been keen on computers ….

So in practice again I couldn't enter the study stream I wanted so I was accepted in a study stream called Commodity Knowledge (which consisted of a lot of Chemistry doing chemical analysis of products testing, if they're suitable for putting in store things like this). As a bad mathematician my knowledge in Chemistry was also not good, not to mention I had a very short life memory, so sciences with a lot of formulas (and a lot to remember) are so unsuitable for me …. Anyways I was trying to be very diligent in this Commodity Knowledge study, and I could even pass all my  exams in the first year with not so bad overall marks of around 4.30 out of 6.

I should say I spoke with administration and in first semester I was told it is possible to transfer in Computer Technology specialty if I have relatively good marks, they blutantly lied to me, since after talking with them in the end of the first year I was told the two study systems of Commodity Knowledge and Computer Technology has difference, so the only option is to start again from year 1!!!!! I was mad and disappointed, but decided to just study Stock Knowledge for the reason I already started it with hard intention this time I will graduate. Somewhere in the middle of year 2 in University, I was totally pissed off the studies, besides that at home there were plenty of family problems, so I was devastated. My mother and father was hardly urging me to find a job immediately because they cannot (or will not)  financially support me anymore. After some search on the Internet I was referred by a friend (from my school years who lived in Sofia) about a company called Design.BG which is looking for a Linux system administrator. I already had plenty of experience with Linux and Operating System as this was my hobby and most of my free time was invested in learning Linux, advancing my knowledge in Operating Systems, learning Computer Programming etc. etc. I went to the interview and was approved !!! Hooray I had job but I was paid a very funny money 250 lv (125 EUR) – of course I was just starting in this job but come on 125 EURO for a system administator responsible for 6 servers – 125 EURO per month was meakly ridiculous….

I worked in this company Design.BG for overall of 7 years. After 4.5 year of working and a working sallary of 450 lv I just quit, they were plainly using me as a Robot is used, ridiculous and stupid. I had some good times in the company made some friends, advanced my knowledge this is true. But after all after 4.5 years working in an office I had neither savings, neither achieved something and living on rent – working month by month for my rent and monthly food (very similar to people in Africa). A friend of mine who lived in Dobrich and also was very disappointed from his started Education and quit, told me he will be signing to study in a (comparatively new College) located in Dobrich (Holland-Dutch College ICA – International College Albena). I went to this college and signed up for the studies, usually the students were asked to study 1 preparation year, because they need to advance their English (all subjects were taught in English). As I had a relatively normal English I went to an interview in the College and to one Intelligence test exam and I was approved to start studying immediately without following preparation year 1.

The days while being in the College was relatively good, as somehow I managed to pass two years there in the specialty of International Business and Management (IBMS). After year 2 it appeared there was not enough students in my student group, so there couldn't be year 3. We were only 6 students in IBMS and 3 of them had plans to transfer to continue their studies in another Business School (Arnhem, Business School) in the Netherlands. I was again in a difficult situation, from one side I wanted very  much to go and see how living is abroad from Bulgaria, since I never went out of Bulgaria, but from other side I didn't have enough money to do it, so I had to ask for financial support from my parents, I went to banks asking for Student Credit but since my parents had little of earnings, the banks were not willful to provide me a student credit of 10000 lv. (5000 EUR) which even will not be enough for graduating; however I was dreaming to go and study abroad so I make plans that I can gradute with maybe only 7500 EURO. It was just after I realized how my plans are wrong I needed much more to graduate. The good news I had job as I continuously worked for Design.BG (as remote system administrator). so I was earning 650 euro – a money I hoped will be enough to support my studies, as well administrating few other Servers for Winner Ltd (a smal.l company started and owned by my best friend from my youth years). After a lot of "disputes" with my family

I was able to convince them to help me with money to go to the Netherlands.. I went here in Holland, thinking it is all like a bed of roses. I thought here I will be able to find a good job make a good earning. But guess what it was nothng like this. I realized it is pretty hard to find a good job in Netherlands, besides that Bulgaria was not in Shengen so we Bulgarians could only work if we have a special issued work permit document – the Employer however issues this only in case if there is no suitable Dutch person for the job + issuing this document is often seen as problematic by employeer. Thus as a consequence most of Bulgarians even if they find job have to "work in the dark" in the grey economy without being officially employed with a contract or paying a social security or taxes. Such kind of jobs are mainly provided by Turkish or Kurdish and often even those who get job are underpaind or the employeer lies him with money, and you have nothing to do since officially you have no employment contract ….

I signed up for itjobboard.nl a website providing some resources for people who are involved in IT searching for job but nothing decent poped up.

In Arnhem Business School I signed up under Human Resources and Quality Management specialty – this was one of the biggest mistakes in my life (from current perspective) – was always interested in social studies, so I thought HR will be good. However it might be, but the people I meet in face of teachers in University of Arnhem and Nijmegen (ABS) in HRQM was a hell. They were even worser than the ones in Bulgaria (and I always thought in Bulgaria people are narrow minded), here in Holland they were even more narrow minded. They were preaching what they believe, trying to impose themselves on the student constantly trying to manipulate you. Trying all kind of techniques which are against the normal people code of ethics. Experimenting hardly with experimental Psychology, Hypnosis, NLP – what can I say just a bunch of totally crazy ungodly people. Education, here in the Netherlands was a hell.

Teachers didn't care for the student even more than they don't care in Bulgaria. Teachers failed to identify brilliant minded students, but was forcing ahead only students, which somehow was pretending to be smart. Besides that my colleagues in study group's IQ and experience was far from the even minimal for a serious study and scientific thinking (of course this are just my 5cents), I had troubles with money. What made it even more of a nightmare was the fact in Netherlands people though being smiling and ethical was not too much believing in God and there was no regular Orthodox Church services. There is just one Orthodox Church here in Arnhem and they had 1 Church service per month  …. I have studied plenty of Bullshit subjects in Arnhem Business School. The only so-so reasonable was Counceling and International Labour Law. What made my studying situation even more hellish was the fact. The subjects taught here in Arnhem Business School are not identical as content to the ones I was taught over the 2 years I studied in Holland-Bulgarian College (International College Albena). The style of teaching was also very different. Here the student is left on his own to spend his nerves on shit issues, most of which are caused by the badly architectured university system and the unwillingness of teachers to be helpful to students. From my overall experienced in Arnhem Business School in HRQM. I urge you don't sign and Study for HRQM. This might be the biggest mistake you will make. The nerves,. the lost times and the brainwashing you're about to get with a shit content is not worthy the time and the price of tuition fee of 1672 euro per year. I've studied 1 year here in Arnhem Business School somehow managing it and I was totally devastated for the reason I spend 1 year with Teacheres who constantly practice brainwashing techniques doing lecture over the students. Besides that all system in the specialty is centered around a false Philosophy of Brainwashing. The teachers claim, they do all to help the student – they even have a study-buddy system but in practice it is totally opposite. Teachers do opposite to what they speak, acting often totally devilish. It is not a place for ethical people with high morale. Besides that I was amazed about the stupidity of information system in Arnhem Business School, all is built very complex and hard for the student; Whole information system is based on Proprietary Microsoft software. Even the wireless access to the Internet from the University is not officially supported for Free Opearting systems like GNU / Linux or FreeBSD. This  is a good indicator on how narrow minded the whole university is …. well it is the same old story with almost all education I have faced in my life. You pay and you get "shit" for your money, if hopefully you graduate you're not prepared so it is just like spending a lot of money on almost nothing.

The investments one does for his whole studying is another story, very often you spend about lets say 10000 to 15000 EURO for studies and the ROI could come someday or maybe not. With the harsh economic crisis and the reduce of management positions and increase of technology, the likeness of not getting a job or getting a shit underpaid job with or without Higher Education is quite high. Even the knowledge you get in moment of graduating is already out date due to the high dynamics of economics throughout the world and globalization. 

I have planned to complete Arnhem Business School for just 2 years of time, but the teachers and subjects make me stumble, so it is already almost 4 years and I still haven't graduated. Where I'm a position where I had to take two accounting exams. Here the subjects in Arnhem Business School has all fuzzy names like ILLW / (ACF1, ACF5Z0) / HRA. What makes situation even worser is this code names are changed with time. As I didn't studied for an year and half I had issues re-signing for studying. Even after I was said I can continue my studies from the moment where I stopped, there was plenty of issues that might be because the fact they changed the HRQM study content and even the specialty name HRQM was changed to IBS. Now I'm in a situation, where I need to pass two accounting exams they were used to be called under the fuzzy names ACF5 and ACF7 (Accounting and Finance). Again I'm a big troubles because I'm so bad with numbers and the university is so unflexible so they don't give you any alternative option to following the two accounting Exams. After all there are plenty of HRQM Managers out there which have not a good idea about numbers, besides that being an HR does not require you to have the knowledge of a professional accountant. But according to the exams I have to follow I have to study from a book which seems like for professional accountants ….. Passing the 2 accountings would have not been such an issue but the big problem is this two accountings ACF5 and ACF7 are a continuous ones from a previous ACF1,2,3,4 and I never studied ACF1,2,3,4 in Bulgaria but instead studied a different kind of accounting, which besides that was poorly taught by the teacher who didn't speak a good English and the Exam content has nothing as prior said nothing to do with the Accountings in ABS. Even though I spoke with the teachers and explained my situation numerous times, noone wants to take my big issue seriously and now I'm suffering trying to learn for this exams, but with my knowledge it seems hardly possible to pass the exams. Besides that which is mostly ridiculous is just for passing this 2 exams the university wants to charge me to pay them for a whole Study Year enrollment (via StudieLink – an online based system through which the student Sign ups for studying in Holland Universities – in Holland there is a commission of people who approves if one will study or not). It could be my bad luck, maybe my temper which is freeedom loving or the complexity of modern life, but I didn't like it.

Even if I graduate after some time find the enormous sum of about 1650 EURO, I don't know if I will be able to find job after that. Just to give you an idea about the approximate sallary in Bulgaria is about (150 to 200 EUR) MAX. Where only the IT jobs and some managers take like 1000 EUR of sallary. It is ridiculously high, what is even more ridiculous I forgot to mention is even though in year 2011 (January – June) I didn't studied or attended even one lecture the university required me to pay the Semester Tuition fee of 836 EUR (the second part of the normal study year). My explanation that I couldn't go to school because of health issues and financial reasons was not taken in consideration at all. I come to the conclusion that all studying are just made to drain your money and nobody really cares of you. And even at the end who cares what kind of diploma you have you only find Job in 80% of cases only if you have a person to refer you , recommend you  and place you in company. It is just sad how stupid and fragile the education system is in the EU.

Moreover this stupid European Union helps me nothing, they just say they help the countries but what I see happening in Bulgaria and across most of the European Countries speaks the opposite. 

Some Apache performance optimizations to do on brand new installed Linux servers – Apache performance tuning tips

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

good tips to optimize Apache webserver on Debian CentOS and RHEL Linux for better performance and faster website openings

It is a good idea, on any productive server which is supposed to run Apache + PHP on Linux to do some initial Apache configurations which will guarantee a better WebServer performance and improved Apache client thoroughput. On every each and other new configured Linux server planned to server as an Apache + some database backend, I routinely make this tune ups even without thinking. The reason I do it is time and experience proofed this optimizations works like a charm and almost in 100% of cases they can only improve situation with the server, decrease the general expected load and thus save costs for potential hardware. Besides that the few config options which I'm about to suggest in this article guarantee improved WebPage opening times and most of times overall Apache response times. The consequence of embedding the optimizations has a straight influence on Google / Yahoo PageRanking as it is not a secret most (if not all) Search Engines, rank with a Higher PageRank webpages which load up for lower opening times.

 

1. Change values for KeepAlive, Timeout and KeepAliveTimeout

First thing to change in Apache default config is reduce the default value set for KeepAliveTimeout and KeepAlive and TimeOut

a. Reducing  KeepAliveTimeout

  a.In Debian, Ubuntu servers this value has to be changed in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

b. in RHEL, Fedora and other RPM based distros check in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

By default KeepAliveTimeout is set to 15 – KeepAliveTimeout 15. 15 Seconds is a long delay and on a by Apache servers it is very likely you will have hundreds if not thousands of Apache forks or internal threads, keeping still open for clients which already navigated off from the website or websites hosted and served by Apache.

Taking this in consideration, most of the times I prefer setting the KeepAliveTimeout value to 7 secs – i.e.;

KeepAliveTimeout 7

even to some hosts, where you have a well tested PHP Code or just serving static files it is a good idea to decrease it to 5 secs (this is much more risky and likely to create problems, I set it to 5 secs in a vary rare occasions, anyhow you might want to experiment)

Bear in mind that in some cases, where page execution (lets say a PHP script) takes longer to execute than 7 seconds clients might end up with empty pages as Apache will drop off the opened TCP / IP connection to remote client. Thus for some people who run badly written websites with PHP scripts which take long time to execute lowering default KeepAliveTimeout might have negative results. Therefore as a rule of thumb if you reduce the KeepAliveTimeout, be sure to monitor closely with the website testers team or via some website feedback form if the website continues to perform okay for end clients, if not just tune up KeepAliveTimeout to a value with which the website works fine. Other reason why KeepAliveTimeout is so good in almost all cases to reduce is by simply closing quicker opened network connections, less Apache childs keeps loaded in memory and therefore more memory is available for eventual new clients  connecting.

Here is also KeepAliveTimeout explained as pasted from a Debian apache2.conf:

#
# KeepAliveTimeout: Number of seconds to wait for the next request from the
# same client on the same connection.
#
#KeepAliveTimeout 15
KeepAliveTimeout 5

b. Turn on KeepAlive

By default most Linux distros came with KeepAlive setting turned off, switch it on;

#
# KeepAlive: Whether or not to allow persistent connections (more than
# one request per connection). Set to "Off" to deactivate.
#
# KeepAlive Off
KeepAlive On

c. Reduce the amount for TimeOut of client inactivity

Default TimeOut setting is set to 300 seconds!
A good value to reduce it to is 40 or 80. 80 value is less likely to create content serving unexpected interrupts. On most servers I just set to 40 as so far this value works well for me.
 

#
# Timeout: The number of seconds before receives and sends time out.
#
#Timeout 300
Timeout 40
 

2. Enable Apache mod-expires – WebServer content caching

debian:~# ln -sf /etc/apache2/mods-available/expires.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/expires.load

Depending on Deb or RPM based Linux distro in Apache config (apache2.conf or httpd.conf), add following mod_expires directives;

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A86400
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A2592000
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/css A2592000
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType image/png A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A604800
</IfModule>

One note to make, here that on some websites based on Smarty, Zend PHP Framework etc. PHP frameworks mod_expires might cause some troubles, however in 70-80% of the cases just enabling it causes no harm to the overall website functionality. Be sure to test it well if you enable it and don't blame me if it cause you issues.


3. Set ServerRoot and  Raise-up ServerLimit and MaxKeepAliveRequests  directives

By default the value set for ServerLimit is too low for productive servers (256 mpm_prefork Apache childs maximum), thus for servers which are expected to get in parallel few hundreds of unique IP clients I usually set it along with ServerRoot like so;

#
# ServerRoot: The top of the directory tree under which the server's
# configuration, error, and log files are kept.
#
# NOTE!  If you intend to place this on an NFS (or otherwise network)
# mounted filesystem then please read the LockFile documentation (available
# at <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mpm_common.html#lockfile>);
# you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
#
# Do NOT add a slash at the end of the directory path.
#
#ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"
ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"
ServerLimit 10600

Another good practice is to set MaxKeepAliveRequests which will be handled by Apache forked child to a high value but not to 0 (which will make once forked Apache childs to never die – making them likely to mess up assigned memory due to memory leaks or Apache bugs). On a productive servers I set values from  5000 to 50000.

#
# MaxKeepAliveRequests: The maximum number of requests to allow
# during a persistent connection. Set to 0 to allow an unlimited amount.
# We recommend you leave this number high, for maximum performance.
#
MaxKeepAliveRequests 50000

4. Enable mod_rewrite Apache support

This step is not optimizing Apache performance but it is useful to enable mod_rewrite, as there is almost no website today which doesn't use mod_rewrite via .htaccess passed directives.

debian:~# ln -sf  /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load

5. Adjusting default values of StartServers, MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild  for mpm_prefork

Default config values set for mpm_prefork, are for a tiny home server, depending on  the server amount of memory and CPU power – StartServers, MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild – should be carefully tailored and tested with Apache Benchmark little tool and Siege or any other benchmarking tool before WebServer is made publicly accessible.

Default values from apache2.conf are like so:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          5
    MinSpareServers       5
    MaxSpareServers      10
    MaxClients          150
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0
</IfModule>

A good configuration for a productive server with 24GB of Memory and 8 CPUs x 2.13 Ghz (about 17Ghz Computing Power) would be for exmpl.:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          2000
    MinSpareServers       600
    MaxSpareServers      800
    MaxClients          3600
    MaxRequestsPerChild   10000
</IfModule>

5. Intall and Enable Eaccelerator

On almost all servers I install I install immediately after basic Apache + PHP + MySQL packages, Eaccelerator. Eaccelerator helps utilizing better server free memory and significantly accelerates Apache pages serve time

I've earlier blogged on How to install Eaccelerator to decrease server CPU load and increase page serving performance here

6. Disable Server Side Includes ( SSI ) support

I've earlier blogged how to disable Apache SSI on Debian Linux – you can read here. The change SSI will make whether off is not so big so even leaving it on  is not a big deal.

7. Remove and Purge Suhosin apache module

suhosin is useful module that tightens Apache security, however for me it has earlier create a lot of issues and it is my personal view that life is better without suhosin. I've earlier stumbled on a weird issue causing Apache to mysteriously crash – removing suhosin solved it all. I'm not sure if suhosin is installed by default on Debian, but it is often installed a a package dependency to some php-devel packages, so I find it wise always to check if it is present on the system and remove it if it is.
 

8. Enable Apache mod_deflate (gzip) compression to speed up delivery of CSS and Javascripts

Archiving with gzip and de-archiving CSS, JS and HTML is very useful, as it reduces the size of transferred content. This however might impose a bit of higher CPU load, so I only enable this one whether I target increase in network thoroughput, however for people concerned of CPU load it is better to keep it off as it is by default.

For a bit more on how mod_deflate is enabled on Debian check my previous article – Speeding Apache hosted websites with mod_deflate gzip compression

CentOS and RHEL users who need to enable mod_deflate – check here

9. Change the way logrotate handles log rotation (disable log gzip compession) or disable Apache logging completely

On Linux servers with Apache where 30000 to 50000 of unique IP visitors requests are served, the access.log becomes enormous. Things become even worser as by default Apache logs are configured to be rotated once a week instead of daily. Thus once logrotation takes place, a huge log has to be processed – for instance 20 GB. This puts extra load on the server and often makes the normal Apache operation bloated. To get rid of this problem I suggest you check my previous article – Recommended access.log logrotate practices on heavy loaded servers

Alternatively it is sometimes, better to completely disable Apache access.log logging to reduce a bit the Apache load – though from security and statistical point of view it is bad practice. I've disabled it however, as on some servers logging is implemented on PHP scripts level instead. I've earlier blogged how disabling access.log and error.log is done here

10. Disable Apache version reporting

This is more of a security than performance optimization, but also has neglectful effect, as on requests one line less is reported by Apache 🙂
To disable Apache version reporting check my previous article here

11. Switch from mpm_prefork to  mpm_worker Apache (threaded) engine

For some new Apache configurations, which doesn't need exec(); or system(); or any other PHP embedded external code execution functions, from performance point of view it is much better to just switch to the much more sophisticated performance efficient and less memory hungry Apache2  mpm-worker engine – the downside of it is you will have to configure PHP to be executed via php5-cgi apache module.

12. Tune up (increase) PHP memory_limit variable

This is not Apache optimization, but most servers need it as they run Apache and PHP in a line. Default PHP memory_limit is set to the low 16 Mb it is good to raise it to 64 or 128MB (but be careful as this might make Apache easier to DoS or DDoS)
I've blogged on the topic of memory_limit and timezone issues I experienced earlier here

13. Make sure you have a good quick DNS set in /etc/resolv.conf

An usual /etc/resolv.conf which I use for new servers with Apache looks like so:

debian:~# cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
 

The first line is set to use 127.0.0.1, as I find it very useful and to improve overall system efficiency and make it much fail proof, if the server is configured to run a custom DJBDNS server on localhost.

As you see further DNS set in my usual resolv.conf's are Google's Public DNS 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and OpenDNS's 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

I highly recommend you follow my practice and install DJBDNS local caching DNS to speed up resolving efficiency and hence speed up Apache client interactions (of course this is useful only if Apache or some PHP scripts use DNS requests, but as most do it is a  good practice)

After all changes, to take affect I do the usual Apache restart with;

debian:~# apache2ctl -k restart
.....

That's it, if you know of other optimization tips, Please drop a comment 🙂

Get Hardware System info on Debian Linux / How to detecting hardware and servers model on GNU / Linux

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

hardware-info-getting-on-linux-howto

Users who are novice to Linux should be probably interested on how to get a decent Hardware System Information. Getting system info on Windows is quite straight forward, however on Linux and especially on Linux servers it is a bit confusing at first and even for people who spend years administrating Linux servers, or even have a Linux desktop it is very likely after a period of time to forget how exactly last time got the hardware system information. I'm administrating Linux servers and running a linux desktop for already almost 11 years and often it happened I'm away from configuring a new server for a year, or even when configuring a new server I don't need to get exact system information from command line, as I know it already from the server hardware manual. However whether managing a bunch of dedicated servers or purchasing new systems which are physically away and someone pre-configured the server with some basis Linux install, often a very raw info is provided by the Dedicated Provider on exact server metrics. Other situation, where it is good idea to have a precise system hardware vendor information on a server, is if you just joined a company with a bunch of existing dedicated servers, whose exact hardware configuration is no documented anywhere and suddenly some RAID or piece of hardware located on 1 of the 100 dedicated servers starts misbehaving causing hour down-times and client important data loss.

In any of those cases it always takes me few times of research to find out what exact methodology I used to get the hardware info last time. To make my life for future times easier and not loose the few minutes of research and reading on how to get Linux server system information I decided to write this short article, which might hopefully be useful to others out there who face similar periodic questioning on what was the command to get hardware system info.

Of course the general commands to get some general overview on a Linux server as anyone knows are:

a. dmesg
b. cat /proc/cpuinfo
c. lspci
d. lsusb
c. free -m

A note to make here is that in order to have lsusb and lspci commands present you will have to have installed the deb packs lsusb and pciutils.

However as I prior said, this tools output is not enough or the output is not enough systematic and hard to read and understand especially for lazy or short memory admins like me. Thus it is worthy to mention few others which can be installed as a separate packages and gives more structured and very precised information on what kind of machine hardware you're accessing through ssh.

Here is the list of all of profiled hardware detection progs and scripts:

1. dmidecode

2. lshw

3. x86info

4. hwinfo

5. hardinfo

6. biosdecode

 

To install all of them in a raw with apt-get do:

debian:~# apt-get install --yes dmidecode lshw x86info hwinfo hardinfo superiotool
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
dmidecode is already the newest version.
hardinfo is already the newest version.
lshw is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libhd16
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  hwinfo libhd16 superiotool x86info
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 827 kB of archives.
After this operation, 4,506 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main libhd16 amd64 16.0-2 [696 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main hwinfo amd64 16.0-2 [46.6 kB]
Get:3 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main superiotool amd64 0.0+r5050-1 [43.0 kB]
Get:4 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main x86info amd64 1.25-1 [40.9 kB]
Fetched 827 kB in 2s (378 kB/s)  
Selecting previously deselected package libhd16.
(Reading database ... 85783 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libhd16 (from .../libhd16_16.0-2_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package hwinfo.
Unpacking hwinfo (from .../hwinfo_16.0-2_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package superiotool.
Unpacking superiotool (from .../superiotool_0.0+r5050-1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package x86info.
Unpacking x86info (from .../x86info_1.25-1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up libhd16 (16.0-2) ...
Setting up hwinfo (16.0-2) ...
Setting up superiotool (0.0+r5050-1) ...
Setting up x86info (1.25-1) ...

Next just try to launch the tools one by one and check the content of the output, in my view  the most useful one and maybe also the most popular is dmidecode, the rest however might be useful to get specific hardware debug info.

1.  hwinfo

debian:~# hwinfo |tee -a server-hardware-info.txt
....

hwinfo will provide you a very long list of very thoroughful information on hardware. A lot of the info it shows however is not so useful for regular admins, but will be of high value to people who need to develop a new Linux driver for respective hardware.

2. lswh

debian:~# lshw > linux-hw-info.txt

lshw provides long list of debug information and if the output is not redirected to a file the screen gets flooded, if not piped to less. For that reason I will not paste output here.

3. x86info

debian:~# x86info

x86info v1.25.  Dave Jones 2001-2009
Feedback to <davej@redhat.com>.

Found 2 CPUs
————————————————————————–
CPU #1

EFamily: 0 EModel: 2 Family: 6 Model: 42 Stepping: 7
CPU Model: Unknown model.
Processor name string: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G630 @ 2.70GHz
Type: 0 (Original OEM)    Brand: 0 (Unsupported)
Number of cores per physical package=8
Number of logical processors per socket=16
Number of logical processors per core=2
APIC ID: 0x0    Package: 0  Core: 0   SMT ID 0
————————————————————————–
CPU #2
EFamily: 0 EModel: 2 Family: 6 Model: 42 Stepping: 7
CPU Model: Unknown model.
Processor name string: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G630 @ 2.70GHz
Type: 0 (Original OEM)    Brand: 0 (Unsupported)
Number of cores per physical package=8
Number of logical processors per socket=16
Number of logical processors per core=2
APIC ID: 0x2    Package: 0  Core: 0   SMT ID 2
————————————————————————–
WARNING: Detected SMP, but unable to access cpuid driver.
Used Uniprocessor CPU routines. Results inaccurate.

As you see x86info, mainly provides information on CPU Cache, exact model, family AND APIC (don't mix it with ACPI – advanced power management interface)
APIC is a chip that remaps IOs and IRQs of your computer to the CPU(s), thus in most cases it is more of not so needed debug information.

4. biosdecode

debian:~#  biosdecode
# biosdecode 2.9
ACPI 2.0 present.
    OEM Identifier: LENOVO
    RSD Table 32-bit Address: 0xBCD9C028
    XSD Table 64-bit Address: 0x00000000BCD9C068
SMBIOS 2.6 present.
    Structure Table Length: 2233 bytes
    Structure Table Address: 0x000EBB70
    Number Of Structures: 59
    Maximum Structure Size: 184 bytes
PNP BIOS 1.0 present.
    Event Notification: Not Supported
    Real Mode 16-bit Code Address: F000:BC66
    Real Mode 16-bit Data Address: F000:0000
    16-bit Protected Mode Code Address: 0x000FBC8E
    16-bit Protected Mode Data Address: 0x000F0000
PCI Interrupt Routing 1.0 present.
    Router ID: 00:1f.0
    Exclusive IRQs: None
    Compatible Router: 8086:27b8
    Slot Entry 1: ID 00:1f, on-board
    Slot Entry 2: ID 00:1b, on-board
    Slot Entry 3: ID 00:16, on-board
    Slot Entry 4: ID 00:1c, on-board
    Slot Entry 5: ID 02:00, slot number 21
    Slot Entry 6: ID 00:01, on-board
    Slot Entry 7: ID 00:06, on-board
    Slot Entry 8: ID 00:1d, on-board
    Slot Entry 9: ID 00:1a, on-board
    Slot Entry 10: ID 03:00, on-board
    Slot Entry 11: ID 00:02, on-board
    Slot Entry 12: ID 00:00, on-board

As you see biosdecode, also provides a lot of hex addresses, also reports on the exact CPU architecture on the system.

The line   XSD Table 64-bit Address: 0x00000000BCD9C068, indicated the host is running a 64 bit CPU, most of the rest info like Slot entries IDs etc. is not so useful.

The most useful info that biosdecode provides is the exact type of BIOS (Basic Input Output System) bundled with the system in my case the BIOS is running on a Lenovo host and is vendored by Lenovo, thus it shows in the cmd output:

OEM Identifier: LENOVO

5. hardinfo

debian:~# hardinfo | tee -a hardware-info.txt


hardinfo gnome screenshot debian gnu / linux

HardInfo is the GNOME GTK+ program which displays robust and thouroughful info in same was as Windows System Info does on  GNOME Desktop. If however you run it under console or via ssh it does display what it detects as: 

Computer hardware, operating system, kernel modules, supported system languages, existing filesystems, Display, set environment variables, Existing system users, Processor type, Memory, PCI and USB devices, Printers (if attached), Battery type (if run on laptop), Storage, Other Input devices

hardinfo, does a few benchmarking tests using CPU stress test algorithms to do Blowfish encryption, CryptoHash, Fibonacci, N-Queens, FPU FFT and FPU raytracing. This benchmark values, if run on a couple of hosts can be used to compare different hardware performances.

6. dmidecode

debian: # dmidecode > system-hware-info.txt

The output from dmidecode is very very detailed and verbose. Though along with the useful info there is plenty of debug information, the debug information it provides is much user friendly / user comprehensible than the rest of tools, thus I guess dmidecode is nowadays preferred by me and probably most of the Linux sys admins.

debian:~# dmidecode |head -n 34
# dmidecode 2.9
SMBIOS 2.6 present.
59 structures occupying 2233 bytes.
Table at 0x000EBB70.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: LENOVO
    Version: 9QKT37AUS
    Release Date: 02/14/2012
    Address: 0xF0000
    Runtime Size: 64 kB
    ROM Size: 2560 kB
    Characteristics:
        PCI is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        BIOS ROM is socketed
        EDD is supported
        5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        3.5"/720 KB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Targeted content distribution is supported
    BIOS Revision: 0.37
 

Though it is the most useful tool on some hardware configurations it might not display any data because the BIOS is lacking a DMI implementation.

In almost all cases dmidecode is enough to check what kind of hardware you have ssh-ed to. dmidecode is available also not only on Debian but on Fedora and almost all (if not all Linux distros), through default repositories.

Father Sergii 1917 (Otec Sergii) – Last Russian movie before communism and the rise of Russian Cinema

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

 

otec Sergii Movie cover Last Monarchy movie one of first anti Tsarist movies last movie before communism in Russia

I'm in a "quest",  getting to know Russian Culture and as Cinema is an important part of every nation Culture. I've heard of Father Sergii Movie. The movie is following a plot by a book witten by Leo Tolstoy who is considered as one of the most influential Russian and Worldly poetrists of the 19th century 'till now.

Original book story was written Leo Tolstoy in 1890.  The screening of the movie is just few years before, beginning of the Russian Civil war in 1923 and thus it is an unique piece of cinema to see. The movie still reflects the all Tsarist (Monarchic Spirit) of Russia before the Communist total take over the Monarchic Power in 1923. Besides that the movie is one of the first Russian movies ever produced.

 As watching it, I came to the conclusion the movie is of a great quality.
It is evident the Russian Empire was not so undeveloped and future-less as communist Bolshevik's painted it with the many proceeding years of communist propaganda after they did the terrible sin of killing the Russian Tsar with all his family (The Russian Royal Family) in y.  1918. The Tsar was brutally killed with his wife his family and the family doctor and few servants, being shot by Bolsheviks (Communist Guerillas) – with no trial and respect.
Later Tsar Nicolas II and all the Royal Family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox.

Watching the movie one should take in consideration, Leo Tolstoy  himself was preaching anti-Orthodoxy (Anti Orthodox Christian believ) and thus his books – (including the one used as a storyline for the movie)  is preaching a bit of  Anarchistic ideas. His idea about religion was close to certain modern "Protestants" who hold beliefs rejecting Jesus Christ's divine nature. In Church language Tolstoy was a type of Arian in the 19th century.

 

Here I include the movie in the 6 parts as provided by youtube. Anyone who held serious interest into World Cinema development and more specificly into Russian Cinema history will surely enjoy.


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 1 of 6


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 2 of 6


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 3 of 6


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 4 of 6


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 5 of 6


 

Yakov Protazanov's FATHER SERGIUS (1917) part 6 of 6

  Otec Sergij / Father Sergius movie storyline

The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things.
He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I.
The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk.
Many years of humility and doubt follow. He is ordered to become a hermit.
Despite his being removed from the world, he is still remembered for having so remarkably transformed his life.
One winter night, a group of merry-makers decide to visit him, and one of them, a divorced woman named Makovkina, spends the night in his cell, with the intention to seduce him.
Father Sergius discovers he is still weak and in order to protect himself, cuts off his own finger. Makovkina is stunned by this act, and leaves the next morning, having vowed to change her life.
A year later she has joined a convent. Father Sergius' reputation for holiness grows. He becomes known as a healer, and pilgrims come from far and wide.
Yet Father Sergius is profoundly aware of his inability to attain a true faith.
He is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust.
He fails a new test, when the young daughter of a merchant successfully beds him. The morning after, he leaves the monastery and seeks out his cousin Pashenka (Praskovya Mikhaylovna), whom he, with a group of other boys, had tormented many years ago.
He finds her, now in all the conventional senses a failure in life, yet imbued with a sense of service towards her family. His path is now clearer. He begins to wander, until eight months later he is arrested. He is sent to Siberia, where he now works as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant.

Just few closing impressions to share about – The movie soundtrack which is constituting only of piano. Though the soundtrack is exceptionally simple it is  totally amazingly beatiful! The actor play of father Sergius is also very real something we rarely see in modern cinema. One thing I've noticed of the movie is the ending part, which pretty much in the "spirit of Russian" cinema which follows for many years even to this day is ending with a feeling of "incomplete" (open) ending.

Enjoy the movie 🙂

Currency converter Free Desktop Software for Microsoft Windows

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

Business or not a business entity, in the mostly globalized world it is almost inevitable to go on at least monthly basis without a need for some kind of currency convertion. Of course there are plenty of websites allowing Free Money Convertion services out there. However as I'm not a big fan of the Software as a Service (SAS). I don't like other people to be able to sniff what kind of money, amounts I'm intending to convert as well as I don't like google or other search engine to profile me how frequently I'm converting or intending to convert money. Thus today I did a quick research what kind of Free and  Open Source Software FOSS is available to do the money convertion operation custom on my own webserver or my desktop PC. Though It was not exactly what I was looking for I found a Windows Desktop Software -CConverter which is capable of convertions between mostly if not all Currencies around the world. I'm not a m$ Windows user myself, but I was glad to know a Free Software exists for the task. CConverter is definitely a piece of soft useful for Businesses and People. In future if I do my own business it would be nice to know of this little handy soft existence and I will put it in action (to save costs) and add confidentiality to my business money transaction / convertions. Below is the two screenshots of CConverter I found on the project's sourceforge website:

Desktop Currency converter program cconverter windows desktop currency converter program

cconverter money desktop currency converter m$ windows software in action $$$

An Orthodox Christian view of Roman Catholicism / My Orthodox Christian perspective on Roman Catholicism

Friday, December 7th, 2012

 

Roman catholic Church from Orthodox Christian perspective Emblem of the Papacy

Last Sunday  ( The day of the Resurrection – Voskresenie ) – as called in the largest Orthodox Christian country Russia), I've attended a Roman Catholic Holy Mass.

The reason for me to attend a Holy Mass in the Roman Catholic Church  Saint Martinus  Kerk in Arnhem, the Netherlands, was my desire to have a better understanding on Catholicism.

 st Martinus Roman Catholic Church view picture

I should add I'm firmly Orthodox Christian and I know pretty well the evils Roman Catholic initiated Crusades have done I have no intention to be in any prayer or Eucharistic Union with Roman Catholics ever. Besides that I went to the Holy Mass service with the blessing of my priest, as I've asked him if he will bless me to go and be their with only educational aim.

The reason I don't want to pray or commune with them is pretty simple Roman Catholic Crusaders with their aggressive attempts tried to convert Bulgarian nations to Roman Catholicism on a multiple times.

Just to mention few of the other historical reasons which make me look with scepticism to Roman Catholics is the fact that  on Holy Mount Athos where we Bulgarian Orthodox have our strong spiritual fortress the monastery of Zographus under the patronage of Saint George the Glorybringer , Roman Catholic crusaders killed 26 of our monks with no evident reason coming and burning all of them, while they were all together in a prayer to the Lord. Nowadays the 26 Martyrs for Christ are saints in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – as the 26 saints from Zographus (Zograf). Along with the 26 Zographus martyrs was also the monastery abbot who in advance is known to have been notified by the Holy Theotokos (Virgin Mary) about the coming of the Crusaders (Cross scoffers – as they were called by our country priest fr. Veliko in Dobrich once).

It is known fact by every Orthodox Christian who seriously considers his faith and research in it about the erroneous nature of Roman Catholicism. We the Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics are no longer in Eucharist Union since the great schism. It is true the consequences around the West and East Church were very complex and partially two-fold, as it happened in times where the Country Government (Empire Government) was more or less bounded with the Church. However even though that it is a fact we Orthodox stayed keeping the decisions of the Holy Fathers taken priorly on the Ecumenical Church Councils in this number keeping  the Necene Creed of Faith intact, where Roman Catholics changed it. It is also a fact in the Roman Catholic Church a supremacy of one person over the whole Christiandom was claimed a doctrine now recognized by early Church. The problems with Roman Catholics after the Schism and their division from the Christ truth has progressed severely as one can see in some events like the Witch Huntings / The Inquisition, The Crusaders marches, the doctrine of the infallability of the Pope and many many other doctrines which are ridiculous and out of truth and away from the teachings of the early Church Holy Fathers.

Just to name a few of the huge mistakes of Roman Catholics in their understanding of faith;

  •  The layman in Roman Catholic Church is administered in communion only the Flesh of Christ (The Bread which mystically gets transformed to Christ's Body), where only priests receive holy communion of both the Blood and the Flesh of Christ – Even the simplest reading of the Holy Gospel shows clearly this is a big mistake; We read in Holy Gospel Christ instructing us his pupils to eat his flesh and drink his blood which are being shed for our sins. Christ further says in the Gospels, whoever did not drink his blood and eat his flesh he is no one with our saviour Christ (The Messiah).
     
  • A multiple times of Holy Liturgy is served on the same alter, again breaking Church dogmatical truths decided in assembly during the few early Church Ecumenical Councils.
     
  • The wrong understanding of supremacy of saint Apostle Paul and interpreting erroneously parts of the Holy Gospels and chapters from Holy Bible's New Testament. Roman Catholics says the saying that the keys to the kingdoms of heaven will be given to saint Paul means saint Paul is the person who allows people enter heaven and he is given spiritual authority and the Grace of the the Lord Jesus Christ to spread his salvational grace to the rest of layman (the newly baptized members of the Church)
     
  • The erroneous understanding that the Priest within the Roman Catholic Church is a mediator between God and man. In orthodox Church the priest is considered an unworthy servant just like he multiple times says both during Holy Liturgies (like Holy Mass Church services) and even during people's confession.
     
  • The confession practice in Roman Catholic mistakes, in Roman Catholic Church the person does not openly confess to the priest eyes to eyes like in our Orthodox Church, the person has to confess in a special room, where both of the sides the Layman and Clergyman does not see each other. The priest symbolizes God who hears the confession in secret. The problem with this is again the same the priest is there just a "substitute for God". Just as a frame of comparison in Orthodox Church, we always confess openly in front of the priest face to face and most importantly in front of a Christ's icon which is always put near. In orthodox Church it is Christ's icon which Symbolizes God and actually it is just a symbolism and the icon itself is not representing God. During Orthodox Confession we know God and his Holy Angels is present and listen to the confession with no any representative. One more general problem with Roman Catholic Confession is the fact that if the confessing person does not see the priest face to face, his guiltiness of having confessed in front of a person is much lessened. According to our Orthodox Christian Church it is exactly those guiltiness during confession of layman to priest face to face which often makes us experience shame and is 1 barrier during next time we're thinking or willing to do the same sin. It is much to be said here probably but as the aim of this article was completely different I will stop here with Roman Catholic errs.

Even all its problems we cannot simply reject the importance of Roman Catholic Church easily and we should say through the ages even though not possessing the Grace of Christ in fullness as our Orthodox Church has it, still a lot of the ancient understandings and beliefs (but again not all) concerning our Christian faith are present in Roman Catholics. After all Roman Catholic Church is the closest to belief and Christian liturgical practices to the Orthodox Church. However the problem with it again is that what the Roman Catholic Church offers is not complete and from perspective of the many saints in our Orthodox Church, the teachings of  the Roman Catholic Church is not salvational.

Now after having all this, I will go back to the topic of my article, which was to give ,my personal Orthodox Christian perspective on Roman Catholicism. What I say may not be all truth and I'm not a representative of Orthodox Church in any way but it is my just observations based on my knowledge about our Orthodox Christian faith and my common sense, I'm just a layman in Orthodox Church, so i'm prone to sinfulness and mistakes. Thus if I'm mistaken forgive me.

I. What I've noticed in the Roman Catholic Church to be wrong from perspective teaching of the Holy Fathers and practice in our Orthodox Church

1. First thing noticable in the Roman Catholic Church was on the entrance of the Saint Martinus Church (which btw is located in Steenstraat just 2 minutes walk from the city center)

st_Martinuskerk_-_Arnhem_The_Netherlands-Christ-on-a-throne

On the entrance there is a huge statue of Christ the saviour surrounded by Angels. We know well that in orthodox Church we rejected statues as they profane understanding of the depicted person and along with that are in no difference to idols. Some might argue the situation with the Holy icons is also like with statues, but in reality it is not due to the fact the icons are the icon painter best attempt to display Christ and the Holy Theotokos the saints, the martyrs and all that is in heaven. With Stone Statues instead of icons the depiction is much more profaned and even looking grotesque to the observer (profaning the person it illustrates, also it is fact that many of the worldly rulers like Napoleon and many ancient kings ordered creation of Stones, even in old testament it was a stone statue which was ordered to be venerated instead of God, also in the old testament it was the Golden calf which is again a statue which served to be an idol for people …. there probably hundreds or even thousands of reasons one can easily see, by simply reading the Holy Gospels).

Another thing about the statues is the material of statues is usually a stone or a variation of stone the stone is hard or impossible to burn and does not have heat or hardly possesses heat, also it never used to be a living matter but is indifferent. All materials in icons is just for a contrast made of organic substances.


2. The enormous size of the Cathedrals and the General Church architectures

The Cathedrals size is subject of praise and admiration. It is really a miracle that such a majestic buildings occur, I or anyone sane person canno simply skip that.
However this enormous sizes of Cathedrals makes the person feel little and insignificant for God. Where in fact we read in the Holy Gospels; I recite by memory "…. for God so much loved the Lord so he gave his only begotten son so nobody perish but all be saved through faith in the name of his only begotten son our Lord ….". The sharp architecture of domes (coupols) in the Roman Catholic Church I find rather (impudent) / bold to God,  and in my view it spills lack of humility.

3. The benches in the Church, though it is great to have benches in the Church having benches for everyone doesn't seem like something too good. After all one has a week time to stay on his chair at home and usually the time spend in Church service is about 1.5 to 2 hours time. It is good to have some benches for the old people whose health does not allow them to stay right, but having a bench for all is just an extra confort which brings the heart and mind back to the earthly thoughts.

4. The Crucifix of the Lord Jesus Christ – on the crucifix in Roman Catholic Churches we see our Lord Jesus Christ crucified being in torture on the Cross.

In Orthodox Church Christ is on the Cross but already peacefully given the spirit – as the Lord Jesus said – "Lord in your hands I command my spirit". Having depicted Christ torturing might trigger in non-believers and even in believers a thoughts on the topic of sadism.
Other error noticable was on the Crucifix itself, in Roman Catholic Churches the Lord's legs are pierced by one nail. Whether we know in Orthodox Church tradition, both of the legs of our Lord Jesus Christ was pierced with 2 nails.
Actually in the few other Cathedrals where I've been and all across the Roman Catholic art I've seen I see this kind of inclanation to depict moments of the suffering and death of Christ. Nothing bad with that but I think this is too much. After all even though all the Crucifix is the center of our Christian faith, we should not forget the rest of the Holy Scriptures. It is my view by concentrating on Christ's suffering to Golgotha (Christ's trial) and our Lord's Crucifix, we tend to forget about the rest of the Holy Scriptures. For comparison in the Orthodox Church every fresco icon painted and icons reminds is in much bigger details to events from Holy Gospels and life events of the saints. The "visual information" provided in our Orthodox Church through frescos and holy icons is much more and better selected reminding us always of all the Holy Scriptures just like every Holy Liturgy is a remembrance of Christ's eathly life,  crucifix for our sins, Glorious Resurrection, descendance to Hell and Ascendance to Heaven …..


5. The Priest's position towards people; heading most of the time backwards the Holy Alter and backwards the Alter Crucifix and the 12 apostles.

In the Orthodox Church during our Holy Liturgy the priest most of the time is praying and heading his face to the East (In our Churches the alter should always be headed East). In Roman Catholic Church, I've noticed a lot of alters are positioned South, West, North. During most of the Holy Mass goes the priest is staying with his back towards the Holy Alter …. in a way looks like turning back to God. As the layman pray towards his face it symbolically seems like the laymen are praying to him like he being a mediator. I know according to Roman Catholicism dogmatism this is not so, but really for me it looks like so.
 

6. 6 candlers burns on the Alter instead of the usual 7 or 8 in our Orthodox Churches

6 in itself is not a bad number, but I really see no reason for 3 candles to burn on one side of the Crucifix and 3 more to burn on the other side (overall numbering 6).
Even in Jewish old testament tradition the Menora is burning a 7 candles, ancient Church followed some of the old times tradition just we can see even to this day. According to Ancient even pre-Church existence faith tradition it was never 6 candles to burn on the alter.
 

7. The position of "icon" depicting the Last Supper.

Maybe it is just in st. Martinus Kerk in Arnhem and not all practice in all Roman Catholic Church parishes, however on those one it rather striked me. The Last Supper showing the Lord Jesus eating with the 12 Holy Apostles is positioned on parallel hight with legs. Really it looked like pure mockery with Christ and the Holy Eucharist. It is common sense that tells me this painting can only go over the head of the Priest or layman. It is exactly like this in our Orthodox Churhces. Above the head of us above the Dveri (Alter Portals) is located an icon with the Last Support…


8. The too much talking by priest and clergy during the service.

I had the impression that the overall prayers and singing in glorification of God is less than the General "talks" which seemed like a lecture by the priest right during the service. I don't speak Dutch so I could not understand all but the gestures of the priest and the overall face expression and intonation was clearly showing he is definitely not reading prayers or from the Gospel. Here is good time to say he also read from the Holy Gospels, as far as I could understand (at least it looked l ike this I don't speak Dutch so don't know for sure), here I liked that whether there was a Gospel Reading there was silence and there was no priest or deacon with the incense-burner (censer) disturbing the Holy Gospel readings. This is something good, but on the other hand in some of our Orthodox Churches (in smaller ones) though the incense  incense-burner is making noises still it is hear-able for the layman, so this is not really a big issue in our Orthodox Church. Something else here that rather striked, me that along with the clergy a woman was reading or even talking things on a microphone right on the middle of the Holy Mass !
 

9. The side alters which even didn't have a Crucifix on it

st. Martinus Cathedral is with 3 Alters, one central and 2 side on left and right. On the left side Alter I clearly remember on the top of the Alter was (Mother Mary? holding a Cross). I've longly heard that in Roman Catholic Church there are wrong doctrines about  Virgin Mary (like the doctrine that Mother Mary was sinless), but having an Alter like this in my view is wrong. On the Center of the Alter the only proper thing that seems to fit my understanding is a Crucifix. We also have an icon of Mother Mary on our Orthodox Church alters, however it is an icon positioned on the left side and not on the center of the Alter. In the Center of the Alter is always Christ on the Cross who completed our salvation and redemption on the Cross for us all.
 

10. The late time in which the Church service started

The Church service started about 11:10 or 11:15. I have not heard or know any Orthodox Church that starts the Holy Liturgy after 10:30. Actually if I'm not mistaken there is an ancient church rule  saying  the Holy Liturgy should over no later than 12:00 oclock? I heard this and did not investigated so I'm not completely certain if it is true or not? If any orthodox brothers and sisters knows drop a comment.


11. The feeling impression of incompleteness of the Holy Mass

I didn't have the temper to stay until the end of the Holy Mass. I stayed maybe about 45 minutes. It all started nice music, Organs sounded peaceful and beautiful. It felt a bit like a symphonious orchestra concert, but it was peaceful so in beginning I like it. Later when the Priest and clergy came it all changed, especially when the priest and the Lady started speaking to people on the Microphone. This was like an interruption of the prayer and the natural way it all go. This happened on a few occasions so it was a mixture of harmoneous Organ Instrument sounds  with the (Church choire accompany) and the priest and lady interfering. I respect all so I don't want to offend any of the devoted Roman Catholics but I just tell how it looked like to me. So if you're a Roman Catholic insulted please Forgive me
 

12. Donations demand before the end of the Service and before distributing the Holy Communion

I stayed in the Church until the moment, they asked for donations. I'm not Roman Catholic and don't agree or wanted to help Roman Catholic Church, as it is not my Church and besides that it preaches incomplete Christianity. I stand up and went out of the Church. Moreover I'm a poor person, and can't afford to help them so but anyways as I said even if I could have possibility I would not give them donation but would rather give my donation to the mostly poor Orthodox Church. Later I've figured out the donation part is followed by the Eucharist Liturgy part, as I've studied a bit about Roman Catholicism as explained by a devoted Roman Catholics. The problem with asking for donation right before the Eucharist and the transfiguration of the eucharistics – holy gifts is the layman's attention is totally distracted from the main purpose of the service – the Holy Eucharist.

II. What I liked (enjoyed)  in the Roman Catholic Church

st-Martenius-Arnhem1816-organ-above-Church-entry-door

1. The Choire and the Organ

I liked the quire and the organ, it felt like peaceful to listen to that, but that's all it was  more human symphology than divine one. However, an instrument existence during the service sacrifices part of it is spirtiuality. The organ is not spirited (Not a living soul), and thus from purely spiritual point of view it is much better that we don't have any musical instruments in the Orthodox Church. There is a believe in the Orthodox Church, that we use only people's voices (singing) to glorify the Lord for the reason, man was the most higher creation of God and therefore it is righteous that God is glorified by using the voice of his most magnificient creation the man.

2. The meditation idea in the Roman Catholic Church

I liked those partially but same time I rejected the idea. The idea that they speak of meditation might implant in the unknowing non-Christian the idea that in the Church people go to meditate instead of praying. It gives the idea the goal of Christianity is to just be in some kind of  "inactive" peacefulness. The heroism of attending the Grace of Christ is somehow missing all this 'meditation'. It is also rather easy for people to think that Buddhist meditation is like Christian meditation. The Church had an entrance on the Right Corner, which I liked. There was a fresco remake of an Orthodox icon depicting the Holy Theotokos with Christ. It was a quite place like Paraklis (small chapel), where one can spend some time alone and pray to God asking for help and forgiveness of sins. In this little room I saw a notebook, where different people have written petitions to the Holy Theotokos, for physical healing, life blessing and all kind of petitions we humans have. I really liked that a lot in some form there is a similar "non written" tradition in our Orthodox Church, as people write their petitions on small piece of papers and put them under icons or near the Alter walls or just leave them somewhere in Monasteries and Church buildings. However though I liked that after thing for it I realized this is not 100% inline with faith, for the reason God knows every person on earth's heart and his presence is virtually everywhere, we know he even knows our thoughts before we think them. So what would be the reason to place them on piece of paper, where we can pray it simply with few words – he already knows it


3. What else I liked about the Roman Catholic Church (Synthesized)

I liked in the Roman Catholic Church, a lot of the well organized brochures, Church singing notes papers, leaflets and general organization in the Church. If we talk about simply organizing, they definitely beat us Orthodox. Everything in the Church seemed well coordinated. The Church choire sing very well and obviously well coordinated too. This however is also something which might be put to trial. Such a well coordinated organization that is in the Roman Catholic seems to human. If we look in the nature, we see the coordination of things are there but not to the moment of perfection. The strive of Roman Catholics for perfection in both buildings and general organization is therefore I think not in consonance with the natural life as God created it. Also the lack of such "strict" organization in the Orthodox Church is an evidence of people's free will and unique identity.

4. The many people attending Holy Mass (people have faith)

Another thing I very much liked is the Roman Catholic Church was mostly full with people including a lot of young people under 30 years old.Maybe 1/6 of all people in the Church was from 15 to 30, 35 years. I don't know if the Sunday 1 of December 2012, when I attended the Church it was a big feast for Roman Catholics as I'm not aware of their Gregorian Church calendar, however it seems like a normal Sunday and still there were plenty of people attending, meaning people had faith.Sadly as of time of writting in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, one can very rarely see people under 40 or 50, most of people attending Church services are over 50, though sometimes young enter our Churches to light up a candle and for private prayer.

Conclusion

I will close this post with a video, I've searched on the Internet aiming to explain Roman Catholicism. It is not a critical but made by Roman Catholics, still the info it presents is interesting and partly what is said of symbols discussed is valid for Orthodox Christians priesthood too. After all the Roman Catholic Church though it has went away from the source is still preserving some general patterns of original true Christian faith kept and preserved in the Orthodox Church through the centuries.

With all said I pray and Hope God will turn back Roman Catholics to the True One Holy Apostolic Church – The Orthodox Church, but I realize for this happen it will be very difficult if not impossible. But wondrous are the deeds of the Lord

Roman Catholic Mass explained

The video is probably taken from a Roman Catholic Monastery and probably served under the old Roman Catholic Rite, this is the reason why the priest and the "server" (The Ipodiaconus) is all the time praying and headed to the Holy Alter. The Roman Catholic Holy Mass has nothing to do with what is on the video. Probably in Roman Catholic monasteries the Spiritual life is in a much higher state than in the regular country Churches. Notice on the video, where the Dove (bird) symbol of The Descending of the Holy Spirit is placed it is on the level of the knees of the priest, just like I saw the Last Support in the Roman Catholic Church in Arnhem, it seems this error is repeated is in many if in not all Roman Catholic Churches.

As a conclusion I should say, I'm glad the Roman Catholic Church is existent here in the West. After all Roman Catholics do pray the Lord's prayer and surely there are people among them who are trying to live a true Christian life. I've noticed many Roman Catholic Churches has an Orthodox Icon or some kind of copy of an Orthodox icon. Being out on the street and walking, it is good to see the sign of the cross on a Church building, even if this building is not orthodox. Also all Roman Catholic Churches just like us Orthodox do embed a particle of a saint inside the Church alter. With the reason the Eastern and Western Church was one in the past it is likely big number of the Roman Catholic Churches has a saint Relic particles in their alter and by this the whole building is sanctified. Also it is not rare to find a  an Eastern Orthodox Church saint Holy Relics somewhere kept across Roman Catholic Churches. Though we the Orthodox Christians are prohibited to pray together and take communion in an Roman Catholic Church it is always nice to enter a Roman Catholic Church and experience few minutes of silence and see a Cross and images reminding us for Christ, Virgin mary the Martyrs, the eucharist and God's greatness.

Saint Nicolas’s feast day in the Netherlands / Sinterklaas – Saint Nicolas protector of Amsterdam, SinterKlaus and the origin of Santa Claus

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Saint Nicolas feast in the Belgium Holland and Germany - Sintaklaas Sinta Klaus with Zwarte Piete (the lblack helper of saint Nicolas)

Today 6-th of December in Bulgaria we celebrate Saint Nicolas's day (Nikulden) in our autocephalous Orthodox Church – Bulgarian Orthodox Church. As I'm in the Netherlands it was interesting for me to find out in the Netherlands, there is a tradition to celebrate the memory of one of the greatest saints of the One Holy Apostolic – The Orthodox Church Saint Nicolas Bishop of Myra (Myra is nowdays located near to Bulgaria in the territory of modern Turkey and back in the day when Saint Nicolas was a bishop Myra region was part of the Byzantine (Greek) Empire. Saint Nicolas is considered the patron saint of Sailers also being venerated as a patron of the people who travel and just as I found today he is a considered heavenly protector of children in Roman Catholic parts of Holland, French and Germany.

saint Nicolas as being depicted in western europe - Sinta Klass kids protector in Roman Catholic Church

As of time of writting the Holy Relics of Saint  Nicolas, are located in Bary Italy, after Italy attacked Myra and carried away his relics to Bary. they were transferred there a while after his passing to Christ. It is interesting fact that Saint Nicolas (Sinter Klaas) is being venerated in almost under some form in all European Country. It seems his memory and veneration is stronger on countries neighboring a Sea or Ocean and Rivers. The reason why saint Nicolas is considered as heavenly protector of Mariners and all who travel by Water vessels is  he rescued sailors in the Aegean Sea during his lifetime.

What is the origin of Santa Claus Sinterklaas Zwarte Piet origin of Santa Claus picture

On above picture, you see SinterKlaas (Sinter Klaus)'s still "living memory in tradition" in the Netherlands. In this year 2012, (probably by the Holy prayers of Saint Nicolas), here in Holland it snowed, making up the usual snowy Christmas which surronds Santa Claus 🙂

As Saint Nicolas was a Bishop of Myra he holds the Bishop stick and the Bishop's Mytra ( cap ), as long as a costume which even to this day can be seen worn almost identical in Eastern Orthodox Church in West in Roman Catholic Church – the priests cassock nowadays has evolved so is not so similar to Sinta Claus's dressing. The Black guy on the left of SintaClaas is called Zwarte Piet [The Black Piet (Zwarter Piet) – or Black Peter ]. According to some legends, the Black Piet was a slave who was bought and let to freedom by Saint Nicolas, as a courtesy the ex-Slaved black person stayed and was helping to Saint Nicolas in all his deeds until the Saint's passing to Christ.

According to our Orthodox Christian Church tradition Saint Nicolas played a key role and was in his God inspired polemics defending the True Orthodox faith against the heresy of Arians at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea.
His popularity  in Russia, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia is of great esteem. Where it is interesting in Russia almost all Church or Shrine (Paraklesos) has a holy icon of saint Nicolas.

It is rather interesting that for some not very clear reasons (people legends and mixture between local traditions and Christian believes) his veneration in Western Europe from being a saint protector of Mariners changed of being a saint who looks after Sailors to saint who brings gifts to little children.
On 5th of December the night before 6th of December in similar same way as in America and across a lot of other Christian countries on Christmas (24 December), the kids leave empty shoes (traditionally near chimney) waiting for SintaKlaas to bring them a gift. Differently from the 24th Christmas gift tradition, for SinterKlaas kids shoes are filled with small things, cookies chocolate or fruit and is not so common for Sinta to leave "bigger" gifts like Santa Claus on Christmas eve. It is a custom here in the Netherlands that on SinterKlaas's day a Gingerbread biscuits are eaten in big quantities (this seem to be the most traditional "meal for the feast"). In Bulgaria a bit differently it is our local tradition that each family eats fish on saint Nicolas's day. Here in Netherlands, there are plenty of children song being sung on SintaKlaas's day – most of them secular.

Sinter-claes-SinterKlaas-saint-nicolas-Amsterdam-dam

The memory of the saint is very strong in the Capital of the Netherlands Amsterdam. There is a big Roman Catholic Cathedral dedicated to memory of Saint Nicolas. By Amsterdam inhabitants st. Nicolas is considered as a heavenly saint protector.

saint Nicolas Church Amsterdam SinterKlaas Amsterdam

Later when immigrants from Europe mostly (Roman Catholics) moved to America the Sinterklaas (Sinta Klass) changed to the kids favorite good old man  Santa Claus who brings them gift. Rather sadly Santa Claus tradition profanization mainly due to commercialization and globalization and "Coca-Cola culture", nowadays made Santa Claus to more remembered person than our Lord and Saviour of the world Jesus Christ whose birth should be the main accent of Christmas.

Nowadays believing and atheist families know and remember Santa Claus, but there are only few of them who tell their kids about Christ's birth in the inn (cave).
Saint Nicolas's miraculous living  is on OrthodoxWiki's site check it here.

Saint Nicolas / Sveti Nikolaj Orthodox Church holy icon

Here is the Church Troparion and Kontaktion sung in the Orthodox  Church as translated to English:

 


 

Church glorification Hymn to Saint Nicholas – begging st. Nicolas's prayer intercession to the Lord Jesus Christ

Troparion  (Tone 4)

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,
an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;
your humility exalted you;
your poverty enriched you.
Hierarch Father Nicholas,
entreat Christ our God
that our souls may be saved.

Kontaktion (Tone 3)

 

You revealed yourself, O saint, in Myra as a priest,
For you fulfilled the Gospel of Christ
By giving up your soul for your people,
And saving the innocent from death.
Therefore you are blessed as one become wise in the grace of God.

 In Russian and across the Orthodox Churches who are still following unrevised Church calendar for most feasts, the memory of the saint Nicolas of Myra is commemorated 13 days later.

Let by the Holy Prayers of Saint Nicolas of Myra, The Lord Jesus Christ be merciful on all of us Christians.

Holy God servent Nicolae pray the Lord our souls be saved!