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Message ID: 68830     Entry time: Tue Aug 7 10:53:45 2018
Icon: Warning  Author: Andreas Luedeke  Author Email: andreas.luedeke@psi.ch 
Category: Info  OS: Linux  ELOG Version: elog-3.1.3 
Subject: Problem with eloglang.german_UTF8 

I had a problem with restarting ELOG since about a year, and finally I found the culprit. I just want to share it here, to prevent anyone else to make the same mistake,

Apparently the files resources/eloglang.* are rather sensitive to the syntax. But it doesn't tell you: no warning or error message comes up.
The file eloglang.german_UTF8 contains some "missing translations" at the end - and it looks like they produce some problems.
If you don't follow the instructions to create eloglang.german_UTF8 from eloglang.german, but use the file as it is, then the language handling will be corrupted:
some (very few) language strings will point into some void and display garbage strings.
In very rare cases this will even crash "elogd", in all other cases it will confuse your users.
Sometimes ELOG commands like "?Cmd=New" were affected, which makes ELOG unusable.
What made it very hard to debug was the fact that with every restart a different string was affected.
Everything looked fine, and later you see a string in the configuration page is wrong. Restarting fixed that string, but then some other string is gone.
 
So if you see such a behaviour, check your language file for "unusual syntax".
I haven't checked if the problem is limited to UTF8 - I only saw the problem with the eloglang.german_UTF8 file.
 
Cheers, Andreas
ELOG V3.1.5-3fb85fa6