Dear ELOG users,

this is to announce an important security update. As proposed by Lukasz Olejnik (CERN/PSNC), ELOG has now switched to strong encryption of password. So everybody concerned in security is advised to update to the new version 2.8.0. Existing password files for Windows users and Linux users not using HAVE_CRYPT are automatically converted. Those installations which used HAVE_CRYPT in the past under Linux have to ask their users to re-enter their password (via the link "Forgot password") after the upgrade to version 2.8.0.

Best regards,

  Stefan Ritt

I just realized that the command line elog utility did not yet use the new encryption. So automatic elog submissions using passwords are broken in version 2.8.0. I made an intermediate version 2.8.0-2 which fixes that. However you only need to update it if you use the elog utility and have problems with the 2.8.0 version.

Hi

I am trying to use this line from the documentation:

Execute new = echo "New message wiht ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host" >> /tmp/elog.log

It does not seem to have the intended effect (of printing a line with the message id, etc in the file /tmp/elog.log
)

How can I make this line work ?

Soren

Execute new = echo "New message wiht ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host" >> /tmp/elog.log

It does not seem to have the intended effect (of printing a line with the message id, etc in the file /tmp/elog.log
)

How can I make this line work ?

Soren

Have you started the server with the "-x" flag as written in the documentation? 

Execute new = echo "New message wiht ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host" >> /tmp/elog.log

It does not seem to have the intended effect (of printing a line with the message id, etc in the file /tmp/elog.log
)

How can I make this line work ?

Soren

 Thanks a lot for replying despite the heat. Yes, I executed with the "-x" flag.

It is just a quoting problem, I guess. This line works:

Execute new = echo New message with ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host >> /tmp/elog.log

It evaluates to:

SHELL "echo New message with ID 24706 of type elogtype from Soren Poulsen on 137.138.22.11 >> /tmp/elog.log"
 

So next step is to replace "new" with "edit" and "delete".

That works as well.

Soren

Execute new = echo "New message wiht ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host" >> /tmp/elog.log

It does not seem to have the intended effect (of printing a line with the message id, etc in the file /tmp/elog.log
)

How can I make this line work ?

Soren

There is sometimes a problem with substitutions like "Execute delete = echo $message id".

It seems the problem is that if you delete a logbook entry that is not created with the current logbook attributes, the substitution variables are replaced with the variable name, and not the variable value.

In this example, according to the log file it becomes SHELL "message id" instead of SHELL "234", if the logbook entry is 234.

Soren

I tried to reproduce it, but it always worked for me. So I need a step-by-step instruction from you on how to reproduce the problem, ideally starting from the demo logbook from the distribution. Only if I can reproduce the problem, I will be able to fix it. 

 It is of course my job to reproduce it (and explain how-to).  Thanks for your consideration.

 Hi Stefan,

I'd like to request a feature: automatic alphabetization of the items in the Quick Filter menus.

We track quite a few detector assemblies, which are produced with non-sequential designations. It would be useful if the Quick Filter list was automatically sorted alphabetically to make it more convenient for folks to find a particular item.

I know people can always search by designation but it would be handy to have this alpha sorting feature. Would it be possible to include that in a future release?

Thanks again for a *very* useful logging system!

Dennis

The order of items in a Quick Filter menu is exactly as in the configuration file. Like if you have items

Options Type = C, D, A, B

they are shown like that in the quick filter menu. If you want to sort them, just do the sorting yourself in the configuration file like

Options Type = A, B, C, D

I have not implemented automatic sorting since some people want a different order, like some main topics at top. So by following the order from the configuration file, everybody can be satisfied just by chaning the order in the config file.

- Stefan 

 Yes, I have been manually sorting and resorting. We have extendable attributes and the list keeps growing so I have to resort every so often. I thought perhaps a simple alphanumeric sort as an option would be popular with most users so I thought I'd ask for it. It would really simplify things for me. Users who want to sort manually could do so by disabling the option. It never hurts to ask!

Ok, I implemented

Sort attribute options = 1

in the current SVN revision. 

 I've tried adding this statement to my cfg file but the attributes are still unsorted in the QuickFilter menus. Was this implemented in 2.7.7?

You need revision 2252 or later. So you have to upgrade to 2.7.8. 

 We have upgraded to 2.7.8 but this still doesn't seem to work. The quick menus are still unsorted. Does it work for you?

Sorry, there was a typo, you need

Sort attribute options <attribute> = 1

where <attribute> is the name of the attribute to be sorted (in case you want some attributes sorted, but not all). 

 That did the trick. That was a good idea, to give us the option of which attributes to sort, too. Thanks again for adding this feature!

I wondered if there was a config line that enabled/disabled the forward and backward navigation keystrokes that were implemented in 2.7.0?

The current definitions (Control-PgUp/PgDown/Home/End) interfere with those keys I use to navigate between tabs in Firefox.  It'd be nice if they could either be turned off.. or redefined.

They are defined in

<ELOG directory>\scripts\elcode.js

Just go to the browse(evt) function and redefine or remove them there. 

 Got it to work as desired.

Thanks for your help and your quick response.

We have been hosting logbook far (geographically and in internet hops) from our experimental site. Recently we have (finally!) gotten reliable on-site internet, and would like to host the log book on-site.

I have a suspicion that some combination of the -C, -m, and -M flags will allow me to migrate the logbook automagically and with a minimum risk of trouble from concurrent operation on the logbook, and to maintain the existing version as a mirror of the new official on-site version. But documentation is not being very helpful. Can someone say a few more words about what these options do?

I've been experimenting as I compose this and have a suggestion for language that might be useful somewhere in the documentation:

In this context "to clone" means to copy the configuration file and all data files associated with a log book so that I can host an identical logbook on a new host (that is this is the command to migrate a logbook).  After cloning the two installation are identical, but no effort is made to keep them so: if you continue to run both copies post made to one will not be reflected in the other.

Is this correct?

I'm still not clear on what the -m and -M options do.

Yes this is correct. But actually you do not necessarily need that. If you want to migrate a logbook to another server, you can just copy over the elog directory containing the configuration file and the logbooks. That's it. Mirroring now means manually triggered or periodic synchronization between two servers to keep the logbooks in sync. Like if an entry is entered on one server, it gets copied over to the other server automatically. That works in both directions. The periodic mirroring can be done using the options "Mirror server" and "Mirror cron" in the configuration files. It can be manually triggered using the "-m" and "-M" flags. But I guess in your case it's enough to copy over the elog tree just once. 

Stefan,

Everything has been working great since we last spoke (Version 2.7.8), until InfoSec decided to change how the Certs were created.  Now they come with a little bit of code in the .key file before the Hash.. when I put the new .CRT and .KEY in the SSL folder I am asked on starting Elogd to provide a "PEM PassPhrase".  As you can expect, if you do not enter one, or the incorrect one, it does not just turn off SSL, it exits the program.  The key begins like this in the new versions:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED
DEK-Info: DES-EDE3-CBC,ACF4A8B263EAA51D

(that little encode piece on the end is not the actual one in the key.  I am assuming it is a passphrase key so it will know what the right passphrase is that should be entered.

We are assuming that this is the "Install password" they have set up to use to install the certs on all of the IIS servers we have.  If that is indeed the case.. Does elog save this passphrase somewhere?  does Elog save it in the registry? does it save it encrypted? Or with access security permissions set on the keys?  I have a feeling that the answer to most of this is probably "no", but to know where we go from here, that is the place to start.

Thanks

Chuck

The pass phrase should not be stored anywhere for security reasons. Actually ELOG cannot stored it encrypted, because strong encryption is a one-way encryption which cannot be reverted, so ELOG would have to store it in plain text, which is not good. Actually all SSL web servers have this problem. See for example:

http://www.akadia.com/services/ssh_test_certificate.html

In Step 3 they tell you how to remove the pass phrase for Apache. The same holds true for ELOG.

Hi,

Is it possible to set a timestamp on an elog entry say for about 5 days in the future, when it is expired and there are no modifications with the entry you will get a mail.

I cannot find it with search in this forum or is the guides.

It can be very handy when it is possible.

When it is not available, is it possible to make a feature request for it.

Thank you,

Johan

This is not possible at the moment. Sounds to me more like a calendar function. What you could do however is to define an attribute of type "datetime", which you can populate with the expiration date. Then you can do a search to look for entries which are past the expiration date. But you have to do that manually like once per day or so. 

Thank you for your reply and the tip.

People can allways use another app (mail) for this, it would be nice,nothing more.

Is it possible to use a drop-in replacement for the FCKeditor? 

What is a drop-in replacement? 

 A configuration option to specify a different/alternate javascript based editor.

Then the answer is no. 

 There is an firefox addon "It's all text" that allows you to call your own editor for all textarea fields in the browser.

If you then choose "plain" or "ELCode" encoding in ELOG for a new entry or to modifiy an existing entry, you can use your favourite editor to edit the entry by an new "EDIT" button associated with the textarea input field. It works simply by temporary files.

Not really a "drop-in" replacement, but similar.