I have a crontab set-up for root:

crontab -e

* * * * *       if ! ps -C elogd >/dev/null;then /sbin/service elogd restart;fi

The script just checks if elogd is still running and if not, it'll restart it. We run Centos, but I'm sure it'll be easy to adapt for Ubuntu (I don't know much about Debian).

This will only help if elogd really crashed; in case it is still running at 100% cpu load this won't help.

In our case (~30 logbooks, > 100 entries per day, ~ hundred users) elogd is crashing about once a week. With the help of this script it means 1 minute downtime a week: that's acceptable.

See https://midas.psi.ch/elog/config.html on how to use a logfile with elogd. Here's the relevant excerpt:

• Logfile = <file>
  This option specifies a filename which logs all login/logout activities and successful user connections for logbooks with user level access. The the logging level (see below) is larger than 1, also read and write accesses can be logged.
• Logging level = 1 | 2 | 3
  Specifies the logging level. The higher this value, the more information is logged. Default is 2:
  • 1: Log only logins and logouts
  • 2: Log also write accesses
  • 3: Log also read accesses