Posts Tagged ‘being’

All Debian Linux package repository apt sources.list file for Debian versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12

Friday, May 31st, 2024

debian-package-management-repositories-for-all-distributions

If you have to administrate legacy Debian servers, that keeps hanging either for historical reasons or just because you didn't have time to upgrade it up to latest versions, machines that are hanging in the hangar or a mid office building Old server room, doing nothing but simply NAT (Network Address Translation), Proxying, serving  traffic via Squid / Haproxy / Apache / Varnish or Nginx server but you still want to have the possibility to extend the OS even though it is out of date / End of Life reached and out of support as well as perhaps full of security holes, but due to its unvisibility on the Internet hanging in a Demilitarized network the machine stayed on the Local (DMZ)-ed network and still for example you need to install simple things for administration reasons locally on the machine, for example nmap or netcat or some of the network tools for monitoring such as iftop or iptraf etc. you might find out unfortunately that this is not possible anymore, because the configured /etc/apt/sources.list repository mirror is no longer available at its URL. Thus to restore the functioning of apt and apt-get pkg management tools on Debian you need to correct the broken missing package mirrors due to resructurings on the network with a correct ones, originally provided by Debian or eventually if this doesn't work a possible Debian package archive URL. 

In this article, I'll simply provide such URLs you might use to correct your no longer functioning package manager due to package repositoriy unavailibility, below are the URLs (most of which that should be working as of year 2024). To resolve the issues edit and place the correct Debian version you're using.

1. Check the version of the Debian Linux

# cat /etc/debian_version


or use the universal way to check the linux OS, that should be working on almost all Linux distributions

# cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 9 \n \l

2. Modify /etc/apt/sources.list and place URL according to Debian distro version

# vim /etc/apt/sources.list


3. Repositories URL list Original and Archived for .deb packages according to Debian distro release
Debian 6 (Wheezy)

Original repostiroes (Not Available and Not working anymore as of year 2024)

 

Old Archived .deb repository for 6 Squeeze

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian squeeze main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian squeeze-lts main


​Debian 7 (Wheezy)

Original repostiroes (Not Available and Not working anymore as of year 2024)

Old Archived .deb repository for Jessie (still working as of 2024) :

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security wheezy/updates main

( Security updates are not provided anymore.)

NOTE:  If you get an error about keyrings, just install it
 

# apt-get install debian-archive-keyring


Debian 8 (Jessie)
Original .deb package repository with non-free included for Debian 8 "Jessie"

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

Old Archived .deb repository for 8 Jessie (still working as of 2024):

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie main non-free contrib
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie main non-free contrib
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security/ jessie/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-security/ jessie/updates main non-free contrib

 

# echo "Acquire::Check-Valid-Until false;" | tee -a /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10-nocheckvalid

# apt-get update

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

 

 If you need backports, first be warned that these are archived and no longer being updated; they may have security bugs or other major issues. They are not supported in any way.

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main


Debian 9 (Stretch)
Original .deb package repository with non-free included for Debian 9 "Stretch":

 

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free

Archived old repository .deb for Stretch :

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free


Debian 10 (Buster)
Origian repository URL:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main non-free contrib

 

Fixing unworking backports for Debian 10 Buster


Change the /etc/apt/sources.list URL with this one

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free


If you want to list packages installed via the backports repository only, that needs to be replaced with newer versions (if such available from the repository)

# apt list –installed | grep backports
# dpkg –list | grep bpo
# dpkg –list | grep -E '^ii.*bpo.*'

ii  libpopt0:amd64                        1.18-2                         amd64        lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  libuutil3linux                        2.0.3-9~bpo10+1                amd64        Solaris userland utility library for Linux
ii  libzfs4linux                          2.0.3-9~bpo10+1                amd64        OpenZFS filesystem library for Linux


Debian 11 (Bullseye)
Origianl repository address:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free

Debian 12 (Bookworm)
Original Repository :

 

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free-firmware non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free-firmware non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free-firmware non-free

Add Backports to sources.list

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main


Thats all, hopefully that would help some sysadmin out there. Enjoy !

Lazarus Sunday – The Resurrection from the Death of Lazarus in the fourth day as a proof for the Mass Coming Resurrection

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Saint_Lazarus_-resurrected-in-4th-day-Miracle_Icon_Sinai_12th_century

Ancient Miracle Making Icon of Lazarus Resurrected in the 4th day after being in the grave by Christ –  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Lazarus Sunday is one the a moveable feast in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Church set it to always be on the 6th Saturday of the Great Lent.
I decided to write few lines about Saint Lazarus because he is one of my favourite saints and because I hope anyone could benefit spiritually by this.

Saint_Lazarus-icon-XVI-century-the-righteous-Lazarus-Larnake-Cyprus

The name Lazarus stems from the Latinised form of the Aramic: אלעזר, Elʿāzār, cf. Heb. Eleazar —"God helped")

The raising of Lazarus at Bethany – today the West Bank town of Al-Eizariya, which translates to "the place of Lazarus" – is the climactic narrative: exemplifying the power of Jesus "over the last and most irresistible enemy of humanity: death. For this reason, it is given a prominent place in the gospel. The feast of Resurrection of Lazarus is a great feast of importance for both us the Eastern Orthodox Christistians as well as Roman Catholics.

Back in the days when I first read about Lazarus while reading the bible for a first time I've been completely wonderstruck, reading that a man who was in the grave for 4 days could come back to life. Perhaps the resurrection of Lazarus story described was a major building block which give me  enormous joy and same time fear and hope on God's mercy towards man. Of course reading about the Resurrection that is expecting each and every of us was mostly scareful especially when I remembered all my bad innumerous sins and transgressions but same time it filled me with joy that after all the life we live now is not meaningless, but after death bed another never ending life in a never dying new resurrected bodies is awaiting each human some of is to be living in never ending joy in the new body and some to be living in a new body holding the dark landmarks of their unrepented sins for eternity (the hell) about which we are constantly warned  …

The Bible story of Lazarus brings me back in the days, whenI personally have experienced "a spiritual" resurrection when 15 years ago God by his great mercy has given me the gift of faith not because I have done something but because I was in suffer and obviously he had pity on my pain and answered my call for help. Have to say It was not me that have done something special besides a whole hearted prayers to Jesus Christ to show me if he really exists and imy promise that I will serve him if he is really God and not a history fiction. The following uneartly Joy and Peace I have received as a Gift from God while being in that desperated state I would not forget my whole life. In that very moments back in the distant 2006 I still remember I was amazed on the difference of being with God feeling his presence in your soul and the emptiness of feeling alone in a cold and dark universe that doesn't care. The moment I received the grace of God not because of me but because of his great mercy was a moment of immerse joy that was consuming all the earthly suffering and cares. The "feeling" if it at all can be named a feeling was exactly like you have been death in spirit all your life or at least a big part of your life and suddenly you come to live and have breath.

It took me a harsh battle to find out where is Christ's Church and if really there is a Church as described in the Holy Bible (Jesus Christ promised a Church) and I was not aware where this Christ Church is even though I have been blessed to have live in a Eastern Orthodox country.  During 2006 – 2007 I have to read many many books and have the chance to meet many people in Varna's Spiritual Educational Center Saint Archangel Michail and the key person Borislav Avramov who played and continues to play a main role for the existence of the center. I've the chance to meet many other good people who already have been Christians for many days and lived in the Church,as well as many other dedicated Christians who were orthodox but did not fully lived according to Church teaching. A key role in my development as a realized Christian played the monks from Pomorie Monastery Saint Great Martyr George who I have the chance by God's providence to visit many times. They have corrected many of my erronical understanding of Christianity which has been there due to my only source for Christian living examples was books and Internet. My knowledge and understanding on Christianity, Mysterious and Truths revealed by Christ hence was chaotical mixed up (as i had red too many books without any systematics, including many non-canonical books like the The Ethiopian Book of Enoch and many non-canonical books and ancient writtings which included a lot misfacts and heretisms.  This all has led me to choose to become an Eastern Orthodox Christian being convinced by the historical facts about the Church which are still being lived to this very date in the Mystery life of the One Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.

Sarcophagus-of-Jonah-Lazarus_resurrection-engraved-3rd-4th-century

The Resurrection of Lazarus is described in the Holy Bible's Gospel of John Book
 

Chapter 11

Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

1. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

(It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.

When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.

Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.

His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?

Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.

10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

12 Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.

13 Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.

14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:

19 And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

24 Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

27 She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

28 And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

29 As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.

30 Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him.

31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.

34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.

35 Jesus wept.

36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

52 And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

53 Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.

54 Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

55 And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

56 Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?

57 Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.

Lazarus-Resurrection-place-tomb-in-Bethany-Israel-Lazarus-resurrected-in-4th-day-by-Christ

Saint Lazarus original Burial Place in Tomb Bethany Israel (The Tomb of Saint Lazarus in Bethany and the House of Martha and Mary is a famous pilgrimage location for Christians even day)
 

The_Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

The Resurrection of the Righteous Lazarus by Christ in the home of Simon the Lepper. 
Fresco of homilies of saint Gregory The Theologian of Nazianzus (Nizianzin)

Chapter 12 
1. Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Resurrection_of_Lazarus_Ravenna_Sant_Apollinare_Nuovo_2016

Sixth Century icon of Resurrection of Lazarus Sant Apollina Nuovo Ravenna

By raising Lazarus from the Death in such a manner in a public before the crowd of hundreds or hundred of thousands of people's eyes. Jesus clearly show he is the Master of Death and Life and the Only Begotten son.
Which was the ultimate proof for the Jews that Christ is the true expected Messiah described in old testament prophetic books. 
According to Jewish tradition the death bodies were lade in stone engraved tombs to preserve the bodies, as Jews (The Pharisees) the larger part of Jews has hold the believe for the Ultimate resurrection of the Death where they will be resurrected to live an ever lasting life with God the creator of all things. To preserve the body and keep it in a good shape s special oilment ritual has been conducted by every jew, more pompose for the rich and very simple for the poor pretty much like the funerals we organize today. Except that we Christians lay the death body in the ground and not in a tomb but in same way we believe in the Mass coming resurrection of the death (even though most of us has forgotten that).

Even today as we are in the situation of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemicsm, still jews continue the tradition to have multile attended funerals this year 2021 in February there was a big scandal in the news about all famous Jewish ultra orthodox Rabbi Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik whose funeral was attended by estimated 10000.

So it is no strange if Lazarus funeral has been attended by many thousands as well especially if we consider the fact that at the time of Resurrection of Lazarus Jesus was so famous that everywhere he goes he was followed by large crowds of people waiting for a healing a word a blessing to see the Messiah.

Earliest_known_Image-of-the-Resurrection-of-Lazarus_catacomb_of_Giordani

The apostolic nature of Lazarus' appointment was given by the Church tradition, which says the bishop's omophorion was presented to Lazarus by the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. Such apostolic connections were central to the claims to autocephaly made by the bishops of Kition – subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem – during the period 325 – 431. The church of Kition was declared self-governing in 431 AD at the Third Ecumenical Council.

According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, worried by the sight of unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hell. The only exception was, when he saw someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: "the clay steals the clay."

In 890, a tomb was found in Larnaca bearing the inscription "Lazarus the friend of Christ". Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium had Lazarus' remains transferred to Constantinople in 898. The transfer was apostrophized by Arethas, bishop of Caesarea, and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church each year on October 17.

Lazarus_Tomb_in_St_Lazarus_Church_in_Larnaca,_Cyprus

In recompense to Larnaca, Emperor Leo had the Church of St. Lazarus, which still exists today, erected over Lazarus' tomb. The marble sarcophagus can be seen inside the church under the Holy of Holies.

After the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Crusaders carried the saint's relics to Marseille, France as part of the booty of war. From there, "later on, they disappeared and up to the present day they have not been traced."

In the 16th century, a Russian monk from the Monastery of Pskov visited St. Lazarus's tomb in Larnaca and took with him a small piece of the relics. Perhaps that piece led to the erection of the St. Lazarus chapel at the Pskov Monastery (Spaso-Eleazar Monastery, Pskov),where it is kept today.

On November 23, 1972, human remains in a marble sarcophagus were discovered under the altar, during renovation works in the church of Church of St. Lazarus at Larnaka, and were identified as part of the saint's relics.

In June 2012 the Church of Cyprus gave a part of the holy relics of St. Lazarus to a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, after a four-day visit to Cyprus. The relics were brought to Moscow and were given to Archbishop Arseniy of Istra, who took them to the Zachatievsky monastery (Conception Convent), where they were put up for veneration.

Let by the Holy Prayers of Saint Lazarus God have mercy on the world and us the sinners and grant us salvation and grace to live out trough this temporary life!

Fix “init: Id “ad” respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes” – Reload /etc/inittab changes in memory apply without rebooting Linux server

Thursday, April 15th, 2021

inittab-logo-reload-inittab-without-reboot

During my daily sysadmin tasks I've been contacted by a colleague, reporting issues with missing logs in rsyslog on a very old Redhat Server release 5.11.
Exact version is:

root@linux-server:~# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.11 (Tikanga)

After checking the logs, I have confirmed his finding that in reality since about more than a year logs were not produced and al I could find multiple messages in /var/log/messages reading like:

init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

I've checked the status of rsyslog which seemed to be fine

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid  13709) is running…

The redhat version on the system was

root@linux-server:~# rpm -qa |grep -i rsyslog
rsyslog-3.22.1-7.el5

 

root@linux-server:~# tail -n 16 /var/log/messages
Apr 15 17:21:25 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:26:26 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:31:27 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:36:28 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:41:29 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:46:30 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:51:31 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 17:56:32 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:01:33 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:06:34 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:11:35 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:16:38 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:21:39 linux-server init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

 

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid  13709) is running…

Since the system is so old and I've seen this message and experienced this "respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" myself in the past on some old Redhat 6.0 before RHEL was born as well as on Slackware Linux. The /etc/inittab which is nowadays obsoleted in newer Linux distributions was used to keep respawing a processes which have the chance to die out for some reason. 

For those unfamiliar with inittab there is a short extract from man inittab to get idea what it is.

 

NAME
       inittab  –  format of the inittab file used by the sysv-compatible init
       process

DESCRIPTION
       The inittab file describes which processes are started  at  bootup  and
       during  normal  operation  (e.g. /etc/init.d/boot, /etc/init.d/rc, get-
       tys…).  Init(8) distinguishes multiple runlevels, each of  which  can
       have  its  own  set of processes that are started.  Valid runlevels are
       0-6 plus A, B, and C for ondemand entries.  An  entry  in  the  inittab
       file has the following format:

              id:runlevels:action:process
 

So for example the use of /etc/inittab was very handy to configure a separate TTY12 (physical console) in the text environment of Linux to log all your messages. Another good use if you had a bash / perl / python script that you wanted to respawn (resurrect itself if it does out) on OS level without adding additional software like Dan Bernstein's all famous daemontools inittab was the right thing to use. It is a pity nowadays inittab is obsoleted in modern Linux OSes but the most likely reason to remove it is if you put some broken script that overeats CPU or memory if it runs multiple times you can easily get into a hung system.

Thus the logical thing to do is to check /etc/inittab content for any strange issues with less /etc/inittab and near the end of file found the problematic process which was triggering a never ending error messages to rsyslog and the module to protect from such messages in rsyslog by values $SystemLogRateLimitInterval and $SystemLogRateLimitBurst

# configure rsyslog rate limiting
# Rate-limiting
$SystemLogRateLimitInterval 5
$SystemLogRateLimitBurst 50000

The problem causing respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Was an old version of TivSM IBM Tivoli Service Manager /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc, set in the past in /etc/inittab it seems some colleague after updating to a more recent version has either changed the location of dsmc binary either the architecture of old tsm itself required a record in /etc/inittab in case if for some reasons or bugs the dsmc during backup creation was dying.

root@linux-server:~# tail -8 /etc/inittab
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

#ad:2345:respawn:/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc sched >/dev/null 2>&1

root@linux-server:~# rpm -qa |grep -i tivsm
TIVsm-API-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-stagent-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-BA-5.3.4-0
TIVsm-API64-5.3.4-0


The logical thing to do was to check whether this binary exist at all here is the result:

root@linux-server:~$ ls -al /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc
ls: /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc: No such file or directory

Obviously someone decided to comment out the inittab support for /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc as the binary was not present and the dsmc backup was executed via a separate one time cron job or the service itself was configured to run continue, but forgot to reread its configuration so in the kernel memory inittab was still having the instruction to loop over the dsmc binary, since the Linux machine was not rebooted ages (1472 days) or 4.8 years time.

root@linux-server:~#  uname -a; echo; uptime
Linux linux-server2.6.18-419.el5 #1 SMP Wed Feb 22 22:40:57 EST 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

 19:04:34 up 1472 days,  5:20,  1 user,  load average: 0.12, 0.07, 0.06


So what really happens is <b>inittab</b> is trying to kind of re-run all the time dsmc process in a similar way like it would in a bash never ending loop;


while [ 1 ]; do 
/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc sched
done

Since the $PATH location to the binary returns 'No such file or directory' message this message floods up the rsyslog every second which triggers the LimitBurst protection of rsyslog causing rsyslog to disable completely logging for 5 minutes. The next 5 minutes when the time expires for blocking out logging due to reached limit burst.
dsmc binary sends again few ten thousand of messages for few seconds which are already waiting in a queue of rsyslog and the LimitBurst anti DDoS protection activates again. The reason for the LimitBurst is simply because if it logging is not disabled quickly the repeating message is going to fill the hard drive of the system and noone will be able to login. So rsyslog activated the good protection.

It seems noone from support colleagues, never ever noticed this init: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes in /var/log/messages. So since the syslog was continuesly blocked by overflow of non-sense messages, systems  normal logging was interruped and respectively prevented any other meaningful error messages and warnings from the system to get properly logged  and perhaps flooed the remote rsyslog logging servers @logging-servers:514 in /etc/rsyslog.conf


Fix to respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Very simply make /etc/inittab get reloaded in memory with:

root@linux-server:~# /sbin/init q

or with the linked telnet, which was so much used by us sys admins in the past

root@linux-server:~# /sbin/telinit q

To make the rsyslog suspension disabled of course we need to restart it again.

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog restart

root@linux-server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog status
rsyslogd (pid  13710) is running…

And Voila logs from services are being delivered normally via configured stuff in /etc/rsyslog.conf, to make sure this is so:

root@linux-server:~# tail -8 /var/log/messages
Apr 15 14:36:29 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:41:37 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:51:22 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 14:56:30 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 15:01:38 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 15:06:45 linux-serverinit: Id "ad" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Apr 15 18:21:49 linux-server init: Re-reading inittab
Apr 15 18:21:54 linux-server kernel: imklog 3.22.1, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Apr 15 18:21:54 linux-server rsyslogd: [origin software=”rsyslogd” swVersion=”3.22.1″ x-pid=”13709″ x-info=”http://www.rsyslog.com”] (re)start
Apr 15 18:41:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:01:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:21:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 19:41:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —
Apr 15 20:01:54 linux-server rsyslogd: — MARK —

6 of April Short Living and Death of Saint Methodius a brother of Constantin Cyril – Christian Enlighteners of the Bulgarian and Slavonic Lands

Wednesday, April 7th, 2021

Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius_Bulgarian_Enlighteners_Icon_by_Avram_Dichov,_1892

Saint Methodius was the bigger child of the two brothers enlighteners of Bulgarian Lands and the Slavonic nations Saint Cyril (known as The Philosopher) and Saint Methodius born in Thessaloniki
a region of the Byzantine empire. Thessaloniki and its regions according to manuscripts has been mostly inhabited by Slavs at IX century.

In his young age he has chosen to be a Byzantine army man. For 10 years he has been assigned to govern a region of Slavonic lands part of Byzantine Eastern Empire. 
Even though he had been a successful in his worldly career and has been taking a respectful service for the Byzantine Emperor he felt the calling of God, gave up his high position in
aristocracy and entered one of the many monasteries of the empire in mount of Olympus Asia Minor region. Soon after to the same monastery came his younger brother Constantine
Since that moment the two brothers never departed until death of Cyril who died in Rome. And even in his death has been highly venerated by the Pope and considered saint even in
time of his burial at the famous Basillica Church San Clemente where they reside for veneration by Slavs even to this day.

San_clemente_fresco_Saint_Cyril-And-Methodius-in-Rome.

The receiving of Saint Cyril and Methodius in Rome with the Relics of Saint Clement 4th Pope of Rome

The two God chosen man also achieved a glorious deed which was not achieved by anyone before. The creation of the Glagolic Alphabet which become the foundation of the Cyrillic alphabet
currently used of about 300 000 000 people worldwide including by us Bulgarians. The new language was developed to be able to share the high truths of Christ the Gospel and his Church services and books  and 
most impotantly the eternal salvation prepared by God The Holy Trinity The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit for all those who love him and servce him.

The_Grave-of-Saint-Cyril-in-San-Clemente

The Holy relics of Saint Cyril in San Clemente Crypt

As knowing the truth about Heaven and Hell and the Heavenly
kingdom they were highly conserned for the high see of Slavs in the Empire who still have been in darkness of idolatry and paganism. Inspired by God they soon creating an Alphabet in which  translated the whole Holy Bible (The Gospel of Christ the Epistle books and Old Testament book  and Church service books translating the Eastern Orthodox Holy Liturgy of Saint John The Crysostom and Saint John The Basil.
in language understandable for the Slavs. The glagolic alphabet has been soon translated to the Cyrillic Alphabet by the 7 pupils of Saint Cyril and Methodius and has been spread in Bulgarian lands first then in Serbia, Kiev
and rest of Slavonic nations.

Saint_Methodius-Archibishop-of-Moravia-and_Pannonia

In Great Moravia a region today situated in Chech Republic the two saint brothers teached and baptized the local Slavs , teaching them the Eternal heavenly truths of the Gospel.
The German clergy envied the two apostle equal mans mission great success and tried to rebaptize and teach the already baptized according to a Roman Rite and spread their own influence pushed by a lust for power.
Hence Methodius (also called by Western histographs Method) has been chased away from Moravia by the German clergy to the nearby Pannonia, where king Kocel  who appreciated St. Methodius great deeds for his people and
not understanding why the German-clergy is chasing such a saintly man has moved him to Rome to Pope Adrian II-nd with an enquiry to ordain him a Bishop. The Pope ordained him almost immediately and accepted St. Methodius
and St Cyrilus with all his clergy in honour, because the 2 saints were bringing a highly esteemed gift the Holy Relics who were attained by them earlier in their Baptizmal Mission to The Hazars (an assignment given to them by the Eastern Byzantine Emperor
and successfully achieved).
During their travel in Herzon the two saints has found the Holy Relics of Saint Clement Ist the 4th Pope of Rome who has been exiled and passed away to Christ as a martyr in Herzon (Today's Crimea) in the distant 2nd century.
After his consecration in Rome saint  Metho has been raised from a simple Gospel preacher to the high clergy rank of Archibishop for Pannonia and Moravia, a region who has been under the rule of the Bishop of Rome.

The fight against the clean life of the saint continued with full power even after his raise to the throne of archibishopship. The envious pseudo spiritual missioners sent by the Pope hungering not for Christ but for earthly power slandered
frequently against Method. to the local prince. because Methodius was publicly rebuke their unclean life being filled with the power of Christ spirit who detests all uncleanness in man. At other times suggested to the pope that Methodius is
against the Western Church and eagers to cut Moravia and Pannonia from the diocese of Rome and give it to the Byzantines. In parallel the German "clergy" was frequetnly sending letters slandering against Methodius accusing him in inobedience to the Eastern Christian Emperor
and the The Great Church of Byzantium the homechurch of st. Cyril and Method. and to whom they were obedient still …
Methodius being already in advanced age had to go everywhere by person and rebuke and testify about himself that all this is a far away from truth. His enemies succeeded eventually and for 2 years and a half he has been thrown in prison without the knowledge of the pope.
Finding out about this ungodly deed of his inobedient power-lust german clergy Pope John VIII issued a special order bulla for the immediate liberation of his archibishop.

Saints-Cyril-Methodius-Zahari-Zograph-1848.

Icon of Saint Cyril and Methodius painting from 1848 y.

Even in this hardships saint Methodius never stopped to preach the Gospel to the Slavs and spread the Good news of Jesus Christ The Son of God enbodiment, life, Crucifix for the sins of all mankind anf Glorious Resurrection through which all those who believe are saved if they persist in the good deeds of Christ and stick to the trutfullness  of the Church of Christ which at the time of St. Cyrilus was before the Great Schism in year 1054, when the Roman Catholics has fallen away from the One Church who kept and preserved the head of the Church Jesus Christ teaching the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.
Being even in prison Saint Methodius continued to translate The Holy books from Greek to the new language invented and adjusted for the Slavs talk. 
He left us as a heritage the Translation Copy of All Books of Holy Bible except the book of Maccabees which is today only present in the Orthodox Bible and considered one of the non-canonical but God inspired books, as well as the Nomocanon (the book with rules and Church laws of the Church and the clergy).
Nomocanon comes from .(Greek: Νομοκανών, Nomokanōn; from the Greek nomos – law and kanon – a rule). It is  a collection of ecclesiastical law, consisting of the elements from both the Civil law and the Canon law.
Nomocanons even today forms part of the canon law of the Eastern Catholic Churches (through the Eastern Catholic canon law) and of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Sveti_Sveti-Saints_Kyril-i-Metodij

Saint Methodius the Slav-Bulgarian enlighter passed silently to Christ full of God''s Grace in saintship on 6th of April year 885 A.D. His burial was in Velegrad Chech Republic, and according to the Church tradition about his living  he "lays in the Great Moravian Church in the left side of the wall behind the alter dedicated to the Mother of God the Holy Theotokos Virgin Maria". A church service dedicated to him is still presented in the Bulgarian Church's manuscripts and a copies of it in preservation museums in Russia.

The deeds of Saint Methodius and Saint Cyrilus has a mark on the whole world's events. Even to this day as in Bulgaria, we have a translation of the Bible based on the Cyrillic language named after saint Cyrilus the brother of Methodius based on his started work to translate Glagolic alphabet to Cyrillic, continued by his pupils and fully completed by Saint Clement (Kliment) of Ohrid, who was warmly accepted by Saint Apostle equal King Boris I of Bulgaria. Thanks to him the deeds of Saint Methodius and their pupils and we have the cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian Orthodox Church and spirituality even today. The deeds of Saint Cyrilus and the Cyrillic are recognizable worldwide in the face of the strange for the Western and the Asians Cyrillic language used by Russians.

Two Saints Cyril and Methodius has were officially proclaimed as a protectors of Europe recently by Pope John Paul II, for a reason as the ex-Pope has seen and experienced the powerness of prayers of the two saints while he was a cardinal in Bulgaria before his raise to the Roman Popeship throne about little know nowadays.

The Memory and veneration of Saint Methodius and Cyrilus logically are mostly observed in Bulgaria logically as Bulgaria was the first Empire country historically to accept the spiritual fruits the new language.  Many Schools and institutions, streets are named after the two saints.
The official Church veneration of St. St. Cyril and Methodius is on 11 in Church and  May in secular tradition. The Bulgarian Orthodox church has established a number of feasts connected to the two saints as they''re the prime patron saints thanks to whose prayers the Bulgarian Church has been established survived through centuries and conitnues its triumphal march towards the kingdom of heaven.

Let by the two saints Methodius and Cyril Bulgaria and Europe have Peace, Faith and Love and Enlightenment about the true teaching of Christ the Holy Orthodoxy!
 

Changing ’33 days has gone without being checked’ automated fsck filesystem check on Debian Linux Desktops – Reduce FS check waiting on Linux notebooks

Saturday, November 17th, 2012

Increasing default setting of automatic disk scheck on Debian Linux to get rid of annoying fsck waiting on boot / Less boot waiting by disabling automated fsck root FS checks

The periodic scheduled file system check that is set as a default behavior in Debian GNU / Linux is something very wise in terms of data security. However in terms of Desktop usability (especially for highly mobile users wtih notebooks like me) it's very inconvenient.

If you're a Linux laptop user with Debian GNU / Linux or other Linux distro, you certainly many times have experienced the long waiting on boot because of the routine scheduled fsck check:

/dev/sda5 has gone 33 days without being checked, check forced
/dev/sda5 |====== .....

In this little article, I will explain how to change the 33 mount times automated fsck filesystem  check on Debian GNU / Linux to avoid frequent fsck waitings. As long as I know this behaviour is better tailored on Ubuntu as Ubuntu developers, make Ubuntu to be targeting users and they have realized the 33 mounts auto check is quite low for 'em.

1. Getting information about current file system partitions with fdisk and mount

a) First it is good practice to check out all present system mountable ex3 / reiserfs file systems, just to give you an idea what you're doing:

noah:~#  fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2d92834c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         721     5786624   27  Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *         721        9839    73237024    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            9839       19457    77263200    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9839       12474    21167968+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           12474       16407    31593208+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           16407       16650     1950448+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8           16650       19457    22551448+  83  Linux

 

Second, find out which one is your primary root filesystem, and  whether the system is partitioned to have /usr , /var and /home in separate partitions or not.

b) finding the root directory mount point ( / ):

noah:~ # mount |head -n 1
/dev/sda8 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)

c) looking up if /usr /var and /home in separate partitions exist or all is on the / partition

noah:~# mount |grep -i -E '/usr|/var/|/home'
/dev/sda5 on /home type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)

2. Getting information about Linux mounted partitions filesystem parameters ( tune2fs )
 

noah:~# /sbin/tune2fs -l /dev/sda8

tune2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          8e0901b1-d569-45b2-902d-e159b104e330
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              1411680
Block count:              5637862
Reserved block count:     281893
Free blocks:              578570
Free inodes:              700567
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Reserved GDT blocks:      1022
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         8160
Inode blocks per group:   510
Filesystem created:       Sun Jun 22 16:47:48 2008
Last mount time:          Thu Nov 15 14:13:10 2012
Last write time:          Tue Nov 13 13:39:56 2012
Mount count:              6
Maximum mount count:      33
Last checked:             Tue Nov 13 13:39:56 2012
Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)
Next check after:         Sun May 12 14:39:56 2013
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:              256
Journal inode:            8
First orphan inode:       595996
Default directory hash:   tea
Directory Hash Seed:      2f96db3d-9134-492b-a361-a873a0c8c3c4
Journal backup:           inode blocks

 

noah:~# /sbin/tune2fs /dev/sda5

tune2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          26aa6017-e675-4029-af28-7d346a7b6b00
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              1324512
Block count:              5291992
Reserved block count:     264599
Free blocks:              412853
Free inodes:              1247498
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Reserved GDT blocks:      1022
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         8176
Inode blocks per group:   511
Filesystem created:       Thu Jul 15 18:46:03 2010
Last mount time:          Thu Nov 15 14:13:12 2012
Last write time:          Thu Nov 15 14:13:12 2012
Mount count:              12
Maximum mount count:      27
Last checked:             Sat Nov 10 22:43:33 2012
Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)
Next check after:         Thu May  9 23:43:33 2013
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:              256
Required extra isize:     28
Desired extra isize:      28
Journal inode:            8
First orphan inode:       1032306
Default directory hash:   half_md4
Directory Hash Seed:      8ef0fe5a-43e3-42bf-a1b9-ae6e1606ecd4
Journal backup:           inode blocks
 

As you see from above paste from my notebook, there is a plenty of options you can tweak in a filesystem.. However as the aim of my article is not to be a FS tweaking guide I will stick only to the important for me  which is Mount Count:

noah:~#  tune2fs -l /dev/sda5|grep -i -E 'mount count|Last checked'
Mount count:              12
Maximum mount count:      27
Last checked:             Sat Nov 10 22:43:33 2012

As you see 'Mount Count: 12', indicates there are 12 mounts of filesystem /dev/sda5 since the last time it was fsck-ed.
'Maximum mount count: 27' set for this filesystem indicates that after 27 times mount is done more than 27 times, a fsck check has to be issued. In other words after 27 mounts or re-mounts of /dev/sda5 which mostly occur after system reboot on system boot time.

Restarting system is not a common on servers but with the increased number of mobile devices like notebooks Android tablets whatever 27 restarts until fsck is too low. On the other hand filesystem check every now and then is a necessity as mobility increases the possibility for a physical damage of the Hard Disk Drive.

Thus my person view is increasing 'Maximum mount count:' 27 to 80 is much better for people who move a lot and restart laptop at least few times a day. Increasing to 80 or 100 times, means you will not have to wait for a file system fsck every week (6, 7 days),. for about at 8-10 minutes (whether on newer hard disks notebooks with 500 GB space and more), it might even take 15 – 20 minutes.
I switch on and off my computer 2 to 3 times a day, because I move from location to location. Whether maximum mount count is 80, this means a FSCK will be ensued every 40/2 = 40 days or so which is quite a normal timing for a Scheduled filesystem integrity check.

noah:~# tune2fs -c 80 -i 80 /dev/sda8
tune2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Setting maximal mount count to 80
Setting interval between checks to 6912000 seconds
 

-c argument sets (-c max-mount-counts)

-i sets interval betweenchecks (-i  interval-between-checks[d|m|w] - days, months, weeks)

You can consequentially, check approximately, when the next ext3 FS check will happen with:

noah:~# tune2fs -l /dev/sda8 |grep -i 'check'
Last checked:             Tue Nov 13 13:39:56 2012
Check interval:           6912000 (2 months, 2 weeks, 6 days)
Next check after:         Fri Feb  1 13:39:56 2013
 

For people, who want to completely disable periodic Linux FSCK chcks and already use some kind of Backup automated solution (Dropbox, Ubuntu One …), that makes a backup copy of their data on a Cluster / Cloud – as Clusters are fuzzy called nowadays):

noah:~# tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 /dev/sda8
tune2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Setting maximal mount count to -1
Setting interval between checks to 0 seconds

Again if you don't do a regular backup of your filesystem NEVER EVER do this BEWARE !

To be 100% sure, /dev/sda8 periodic filesystem will not happen again issue:

tune2fs -l /dev/sda8 |grep -i -E 'mount|check'
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Default mount options:    (none)
Last mount time:          Thu Nov 15 14:13:10 2012
Mount count:              6
Maximum mount count:      -1
Last checked:             Tue Nov 13 13:39:56 2012
Check interval:           0 (<none>)
 

By the way it is intestesting to mention Mount Count and Maximum Mount Count FS variables are set during initial creation of the filesystem with mkfs.ext3, in Debian and derivative distros this is done by the Debian Installer program. On Fedora and CentOS and most of other RPM based distros except SuSE by Anaconda Installer prog.

As of time of writing this article, for custom created filesystems with mkfs.ext3 Maximum mount count is     27.

BTW on CentOS, developers has by default set the Maximum mount count to beset to infinitive value:

/sbin/tune2fs -l /dev/sda1|grep -i 'mount count'
Mount count:              39

Maximum mount count:      -1
The same 'deskop wise' behavior of Maximum mount count: -1 is set by default also on Fedora and RHEL. Meaning RPM distro users are free of this annoyance.

3. Remove fsck filesystem check on boot in /etc/fstab
 

Usually Desktop and laptop Linux users, would not need do that but it is a good information to know.

/etc/fstab by default sets  the filesystems to be checked for bad blocks in case  if the system was shutdown due to electricity failure or hang-up, left without proper un-mounting. Though, sometimes this is very helpful as it fixes improperly complete writing on the HDD, those who administrate servers knows how annoying it is to be asked for a root password input on the physical console, whether the system fails to boot waiting for password input.
In remotely administrated servers it makes things even worser as you have to bother a tech support guy to go to the system and input the root password and type fsck /dev/whatever command manually. With notebooks and other Desktops like my case it is not such a problem to just enter root password but it still takes time. Thus it is much better to just make this fsck test filesystem on errors to be automatically invoked on filesystem errors.

A standard default records in /etc/fstab concerning root filesystem and others is best to be something like this:

/dev/sda8       /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       1
UUID=26aa6017-e675-4029-af28-7d346a7b6b00       /home           ext3    errors=remount-ro 0     1

The 1's in the end of each line instruct filesystems to be automatically checked with no need for user interaction in case of FS mount errors.

Some might want to completely disable, remount read only and drop into single user mode though this is usually not a good idea, to do so:

/dev/sda8       /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       0
UUID=26aa6017-e675-4029-af28-7d346a7b6b00       /home           ext3    errors=remount-ro 0     0

 

4. Forcing check on next reboot in case you suspect (bad blocks) or inode problems with filesystem

If you're on Linux hosts which for some reason you have disabled routine fsck it is useful to know about the existence of:

 /forcefcsk file

Scheduling a reboot nomatter, what settings you have for FS can be achieved by simply creating forcefsck in / i.e.:

noah:~# touch /forcefsck

 

5. Force the server to not fsck on next reboot

noah:~# /sbin/shutdown -rf now

The -f flag  tells to skip the fsck for all file systems defined in /etc/fstab during the next reboot.Unlike using tune2fs to set permanent reboot behavior it only takes effect during next boot. 

Being Orthodox Christian in the Netherlands or how to regularly attend Orthodox Christian Holy Liturgy while living in Arnhem, The Netherlands

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

Being Orthodox Christian in the Netherlands or how to regularly attend Orthodox Christian Holy Liturgy while living in Arnhem, The Netherlands

As I'm trying to Regularly going to Orthodox Church, here near Arnhem Netherlands. The only place where one can go each Sunday for an Orthodox Holy Liturgy is in Nijmegen (A city 40 km away from Arnhem, The Netherlands). The Church building used there is very near to a Roman Catholic Cathedral. The Church itself is not built 100% according to Orthodox buildings Church architecture "standards", but the Holy Liturgy is served in a Byzantine Chapel. One of the many movements in Roman Catholic Church seems to be serving closer to Eastern Orthodox Christian service and they do their services in Churches which are built similar to old Byzantine Churches. The Church in Nijmegen, where one can regularly go for Holy Liturgy is one of this Byzantine Chapels.
Currently the Church is used only by Orthodox Christians. As the Church alter was previously "opened" in the fashion of Roman Catholic tradition. Because we Orthodox did have a special barrier between Alter and rest of Church (where non layman people pray), a barrier was built in order to make the Church canonically compatible with our Eastern Orthodox Churches. Currently the Church building is hired from Roman Catholics and every Saturday or Sunday there is a Holy Liturgy served there. Two local Orthodox Churches Western Europe eparchies are serving Holy Liturgy there:
 

  • Russian Orthodox Church
  • Serbian Orthodox Church

The usual services goes like this:
 

  • One Sunday the Holy Liturgy is served by Russian Orthodox Church priest (Father Sergii)

and

  • 1 (Saturday or Sunday) a Holy Liturgy is served by a serbian Priest (Father Dushan).

An important note to make here is Russian Orthodox Church priest and hence Nijmegen Church parish belongs to Russian Orthodox Church and not Foreign Russian Orthodox Church – I make this clarification because in Arnhem there is a Russian Orthodox Church too but the Church there belongs to the "Schismatic" Russian Orthodox Church which choose not to reunite with the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchy.

It is a a kind of Church tradition here in Netherlands after the end of Church service people gather together in the small Kitchen room located in Church and Eat together and have a chat (a post communion). This supper is something that is not well known in most "native traitional" orthodox Countries like in our Church in Bulgaria as well as in most if not all Russian and Belarusian Churches. This eating together with brothers and sister from Church is something great that I believe most if not all city Orthodox Churches must practice in some form. It a good way to share the love and joy of Christ's resurrection after Church service completes.
Thus if you're in situation like me, where you're trying to be a devoted Orthodox Christian living in Arnhem Netherlands and you're looking for a way to attend Church services every week Sunday or Saturday, one of your "cheap" options is to just go regularly from Arnhem to Nijmegen (only 40 km away from Anrhem). The most cheap way is to travel by train. Two way ticket from Arnhem to Nijmegen (Retuur Ticket as called in Dutch) costs as of time of writing (8.10 EURO) which for living standard in Netherlands is not so high price. There is also transportation by bus to Nijmegen, but as long as I know bus ticket costs a bit more so probably if you're trying to travel cheap, train is better.

Each Russian and Serbian Orthodox Church has its own community and besides that there are some native Dutch (some of whom come for both Russian and Serbian Divine Liturgy. Curiously some of the Dutch even sing in the Russian Church choire 😉

It is amazing too see that here in Holland, there are native Dutch (wow!  🙂 ) who somehow by God's great providence managed to find true Christ Church – the Orthodox Church  in this whole great (faith) confusion of the days.. This is really a miracle, really !
Some of Dutch people attending the Church services are very dedicated, they even can speak some Russian / Serbian or Macedonian. Within both Churches brothers and sisters one can find very interesting people from all spheres of life. As I'm involved in IT, I could meet and speak few person from Russian Orhodox Church who just like myself are involved in IT jobs. Even more curiously one of those IT persons (a Bulgarian and a Programmer) is responsible for selling candles and orthodox books and in the Russian Orthodox Church 🙂

It is rather interesting for me as Bulgarian Orthodox Christian to see how same Holy Liturgy as our Bulgarian Holy Liturgy is served in Church Slavonic by our brotherly nations Russians and Serbs.

It is interesting that the Church service is almost 100% comprehendable and contains the same prayers and order just like in our Bulgarian Orthodox Church – well this is normal since we're Orthodox, but still seeing it with your own eyes and experiencing some other nation Holy Liturgy is an experience to remember.

Each of the Russian and Serbian Church has their local tradition uniqueness too and though the Holy Liturgy and For "rememembrance of the dead" service is equal all along all Orthodox Christian local Churches there are little specifics in both Russian and Serbian Church which make the services even deeper and gives me better understanding of our Orthodox Christian faith.
As Serbs are very near to Bulgaria and just like us Bulgarian Orthodox, they're serving and singing and serving in the Church in the "Byzantine style", the Serbs Church service is maybe a little bit closer to how Holy Liturgy and the Mysticisms in the Church are served by priest in the Church. Main thing that mains serbian Church more close to how currently the Holy Liturgies are served in Bulgaria is the fact that on the "Klir" (clergy) in serbian Church there is one or two person, whether in Russian for contrast there is a whole Choire of about 6 / 7 person with a choir conductor. Mentioning of the Choir Conductor and the Russian Choire I should say they sing really beautiful angelic, though the choire sings in the Russian little modernized so called "Western" singing style (as it is sung in most if not all Russian Churches nowdays). The Western singing however is not a problem and the experience one gets from choire singing is bringing the soul high to heavens! The Church choire leader in Nijmegen's Russian Church is a kind lady which is Matushka (wife of the kind and Graceful Priest Father Sergii).
The Russian Church does not have "Verchernaja" (evening Service), because of Holy Liturgy, maybe because father Sergii, his wife, the deacon and ipodakons (under deacons), travel every 2 Sundays to Nijmegen to participate in the Divine Holy Liturgy. Many of the other Russian and Serbian "flock" also has to travel for a nearby cities in order to be able to present and pray together with the Church. Here in Netherlands life of the Orthodox Christians is not and easy. Though it has its pros, like for example the overall high standard and richness of Holland, being an Orthodox Christian in holland usually means a lot of time spend in traveling and a lot of vigilance. Every non-Orthodox should know well Holland is not officially Orthodox Christian, but one part of Holland is mainly predominated by Roman Catholics and other part by Protestants, meaning Orthodox Christian here are usually 1st or second generation emigrants, students or people from Orthodox countries who now temporary  work to earn some better money in Holland. it is interesting that the fr. Sergii himself is local ( Dutch ), the deacon of the Russian Church is dutch and one of the Ipodeacons is also dutch. In Serbian Church I haven't seen so far a deacon, the alter helpers (ipodeacons) are however from Croatia and Serbia and fr. Dushan is born in Serbia and living in Holland since 3 years from the time of moment of writing. Just recently the Serbian Church in Holland marked its 20 years from existence and there was an evening service in Nijmegen, the 20 years of the Church was combined with the Great feast of the Birth of Saint Constantine and Helena Serbian Orthodox Church feast. St. Constantine was the first Emperor who allowed Christianity to be considered equal to rest of worldly beliefs. St. Constantine also stopped severe persecution against Christians. For the feast the head of Serbian Eparchy for Western Europe – Bishop Luka (Kovačević) was present increasing the joy of the feast of present.

Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop for Western Europe Episkop vladika Luka Kovacevic
 

I was only for the Evening Service and presentation (which I can partially understand as it was given in Serbian) but it was interesting and most importantly I get the blessing of  Bishop Luka. More information about bishop Luka's visit to Nijmegen and Nijmegen Parohija (Eparchy)  is found on Serbian Orthodox Church Nijmegen website here

Along with Bishop Luka a guest was Bishop (Episkopa) Remezijansko G. Andrea Епископа ремезијанског Г. Андреја (Ћилерџића) – a bit more about his biography here

 

Bishop Episkop Andrei Vikarni Bishop Episkop Remezianski photo

It might be useful to mention, the website providing regular news on Russian Orthodox Church in Nijmegen Church life is – www.orthodox-nijmegen.nl

 

Hope my article is of help to someone out there. I will close the article with the well known and prayed glorification proclaim:

Glory be to the Father and the Son and The Holy Spirit Now and unto Ages of Ages !

What happened during the last week

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

I’ve decided to use my blog in the end. The Last week we were with Habib for some time. He is a nice company we speaked about his Grand Father who did some miracles through the power of 2 Gins.

A lot of people with various diseases were cured with the help of 2 Jins he has power over. P.S. In the Quran Jins are spirits created from fire after God created the Angels due to the quran Jins are spirits which are with free will just like us humans and they could go for good or bad,

From Christian perspective so far as I’m Christian the Christians think Jins for Demons but are they Demons or not only God knows, because his Grand Father did a lot of nice things for the people was praying and fasting a lot and was trying to love everybody, well he was a muslim but I guess God can save everybody through Christ Jesus in his own way.

Then We talked about what the bible the life. Habib explained something very interesting of what the muslim myth says about why people do cough. Myth says that when God created in the beginning everything he put (soul/spirit) when breading to the body of soil, before that the soul was happily living with God in Heaven and the soul is not being conforted by living in a dying body because you know it can hurt, you feel cold stuff like that, so often when a born to human being is being given an Angel from God comes and puts the soul in the body through the nose then locks the entrance to be sure the soul won’t try to go out, and because the soul tries to get out we cough :]].

In Friday night or the Saturdays I can’t exactly we went to mino with Mitko we saw Gosho/Geni there he was drunk this time he did not repeat “on my head” like a parrot, this time the saying was “baba yaga”;]. I’m thinking again about stopping the cigars but we’ll see.

Yesterday I was in Mitko and we was able to run WarCraft 3 under GNU/Linux Fedora Core 6. His brother was extraordinary happy he will be able to play WC3 :]. During the day there was tons of work for me. There were problems with one of our mail servers mail.design.bg.

One of the ValueWeb’s Caching DNSes was down the other was resolving hosts awfully slow. So I read some about djbdns as a caching DNS and installed it on two of the servers on (backup-serv1.design.bg and backup-server2.design.bg). then switched all the NSes our servers in USA use to my new djb caching dnses, I was amazed djbdns is really a nice bit of soft it’s really a fast caching NS. I use it for first time and I really like it from the beginning. I experienced some problems before starting daemontools properly on two of the machines because of the errorno-patch that redhats and fedoras should apply to compile successfully daemontools. I thought our problems with the mail server was mainly because of the slow DNS resolves, but after setting up the new djbdns and configured all the servers to use them still the response of the mail server when there are connects to port 25 was very slow. I was able to isolate the problem in the evening I spoke with a guy (greycat) in irc.freenode.net in #qmail. About my problem and he pointed me to the RBLs I use at my qmail-smtpd run. So using the method of exclusion. Removing all the RBLs and started putting them one by one I discovered one of the RBL Hosts I used was lagging dnsbl.antispam.or.id (maybe due to slow DNS resolves). If you’re using it my advice is not to. When Removed it from my run file all started working perfectly. The last days I’m doing a lot of stuff around the qmail. I loaded some custom spam rules from SARE (SA Rules Emposium) to reduce spam and wrote some my own custom rules due to the spam I receive in my Mailbox.

More and more I realize how hard is to be a good mail server administrator. Oh yes I almost forgot I ran my own qmailmrtg two days ago it graphs nicely lot of very precious info about the mail server’s load, queue, pop3 concurrency etc. etc. and I also ran qsstats nice qmail-scanner statistics grapher program. Because of all the work I missed shool yesterday. I need to read now about this business plan and know more about it I can’t even imagine how I’ll graduate ever :].

Triumph of the Nerds – A documentary about the rise of Personal Computers

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Triumph of the Nerds movie cover

Triumph of the Nerds is 3 parts documentary movie on how the Personal Computer was developed. The movie features interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Allan Paul and many other IT veterans who played key roles for the development of the Personal Computer ,

The movie is an interesting watching for people interested into Information Technology and gives some minor insights on the starred interviewed people and their life philosophy. It was interesting times back then and it seems many of the guys who could participate in the PCs were very lucky, where others who made key developments which are de-facto standards today went into history without much being remembered.

Now the trends which these man set in world’s development is not nice. Even though PC brough a lot of fun in our every lives it suddenly started taking over our privacy and made the humanity divided.
The movie is a story of a man motivated by greed arrogancy and exploitation. Even though the movie has historical value it doesn’t even mention about Free Software Richard Stallman and the free software movement.

The movie talks about the development of CP/M the predecessor of Quick and Dirty DOS (QDOS), MS-DOS Windows 1,2,3, Windows 95 etc.

It also tries to picture the events around the raise and fall of IBM and OS/2.

The most notable parts for me in the movie are the showing off of some old computer hardware and Mainframe servers as well as the quick explanation on how Mainframes irons predecessed the PC. Another interesting moment in the movie is displaying Steve Jobs demonstrating the Xerox’s Alto graphical interface. Talking about Jobs it was quite shocking for the world his sudden death just 3 days ago so (R.I.P).

The movie author Robert X. Cringery stress out in the movie the great struggle between the so called “the blue Elephant” IBM and the just emerging early Microsoft Corporation

Triumph of the Nerds slightly mentions Digital Equipment Corporation / DEC or COMPAQ as later known. DEC is company less known in todays world which had historically great impact on computer market, so its a pity the movie part mentioning DEC is so short.

What the movie misses is to aforemention About’s Digital Equipment VMS operating system known under the code name OpenVMS. OpenVMS even of today is believed by many to be the most secure Operating System ever developed.
The movie part that talks about DEC is the second part of movie it shows a nice COMPAQ portable computer.

DEC Compaq portable II Computer

One should admit COMPAQ portable Computer is a really trendy for its time, Also the way it sticks the keyboard to the screen does remind seriously the opening and closing of a modern laptop 😉

The movie includes some interesting, so called crash courses where the movie author gives some insight on elementary computing, so for those new to informatix the movie will surely be educative as well, though for a UNIX gurus this elementary computing scenes will look kinda ridiculous 😉

One serious flaw with this movie is the complete lack of interviews with Richard Stallman and the importance of Free Software for the development of modern PC and the influence of the free software culture on todays latest Macintosh and PC developments.

A related movie which probably most IT geeks already know / seen is Pirates of the Sillicon Valley
, hence large chunk of Triumph of the Nerds gives another point of view on the ideas and stories presented in Triumph of the Nerds

Triumph of the Nerds brings back some good memories of the glorious PC computer past for all of us who had been a DR-DOS/MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 / 95 users.

How to fix wicd 1.7.0+ds1-5 Connection Failed: Bad Password on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Merkaaat)

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

I’ve been struggling with fixing a nasty error with wicd network manager for about 2 hours.
The exact error message I faced was:

Connection Failed: Bad Password

The issue occured after some suggested updates from the Ubuntu graphical update tool.
The wireless network to which it was connected was a WPA-PSK (WPA2) Passphrase authentication.
The network key was properly typed in and was working well on another system so the error Connection Failed: Bad Password made no sense.

There was nothing unusual in /var/log/wicd/wicd.log , that made me even more curious about what might be causing the error.After a lot of try outs and a lot of readings and tests I finally got the cause of the weird Bad Password errors produced by wicd

Weirdly enought, somehow the Ubuntu package update tool has installed the default gnome network-manager package.
The installed network-manager package has mismatched somehow the way wicd connects to wireless networks and as a cause the wpa_supplicant binary was not properly invoked.

As a consequence of the network-manager being present on the system the wpa_supplicant process which made the exact connection to the wireless network was not launching in, the exact wpa_supplicant invocation missing was:

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /var/lib/wicd/configurations/0022b0aa424a -D wext

Luckily the solution to the notebook wireless device unable to connect to the Wireless network was simple.

All I had to do is completely remove all occurance of network-manager packages installed on the Ubuntu system, by issuing the commands:

ubuntu:~# apt-get remove --yes network-manager
ubuntu:~# dpkg --purge network-manager-pptp-gnome network-manager-pptp network-manager

The reason for issuing the a dpkg –purge command was my desire to completely get rid of all kind of network-manager related configurations.

Now after re-connecting with wicd wireless manager, it worked fine 😉