It is not usual for me to pester people with tips around elog, but this
one was so helpful for me that I would like to share it.

The Mozilla based browsers, such as Netscape or Firefox
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) offer the possibility of
so-called "keymarks" or "bookmark keywords". This are bookmarks to which a
keywork can be added, making them a very powerful search tool for elog. This
can be explained most easily in an example:

Add following bookmark to your Browser:

Name: ELOG search
Location: http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/forum/?mode=full&sall=1&subtext=%s
Keyword: el

I attached a screendump of how this looks under Firefox. Now you can type

el <keyword>

in your URL address bar, and the elog forum is automatically searched for
that keyword (see second attachment), since the "%s" in the URL is
automatically replaced with your keyword. This works of course also with
your personal logbooks. The switch "sall=1" causes elog to search for the
string in the main text body and in all attributes.

The URL bar can be activated with CTRL-L, so the key sequence

CTRL-L el <keyword>

is all you need to search a ELOG logbook, even without touching the mouse.

> a) Cannot get elog utility to speak to elogd on port 8080. Even though I 
> use the -p 8080 option with elog. I was able to get it to work when I 
> moved my server to port 80.

That problem has been fixed in revision 1.16 from Feb. 19th. Please get the
newest version from release 2.5.2 issued today.

> b) I cannot get elog to work with and attributes or logbooks that contain 
> spaces. Please refer the the following example:
> 
> elog -v -h scotland.ccs.yorku.ca -p 80 -a "Station Number"="CC001" -a "Mac 
> Address"="000874fdc895" -a "Hostname"="cc001.cnscommons.yorku.ca" -a "IP 
> Address"="10.6.10.52" -a "Manufacturer"="Dell" -a "Model Line"="Optiplex" -
> a "Model Number"="GX270" -a "Monitor Manufacturer"="Dell" -a "Monitor 
> Model"="E151FP" -a "Memory"="512MB" -a "CPU Speed"="2.6GHz" -a "Hard 
> Drive"="40GB" -a "Service Count"="-" -l WSC2 -u charles xxxxx "DD/MM/YY: 
> Change Description"

There was also some bug which has been fixed, plus you need following syntax:

elog -h ... -p 8080 -a "Station Number=CC001" ...

note the "" are around the whole attribute=value string, not only the attribute.

Version 2.5.2 of ELOG has been released today. It contains CSV (comma
separated values) import and export, as well as XML export (through the
"Find" page). Since these features are new, I would appreciate some feedback
on how this works in different environments. I made sure I can import data
from Excel and Outlook (like my address book), but I have no experience with
other applications.

As with the XML export, I'm not sure if the format I chose is a good one.
People working more with XML should tell me if it should be changed.

> The only part that does not work is -l "Log Book" the -l variable has to stay as 
> one word. If I submit 2 words (in quotes) it only looks for a logbook of the first 
> word and fails.

I fixed that as well, please obtain the updated version at

http://midas.psi.ch/cgi-bin/cvsweb/elog/src/elog.c?rev=1.20

Let me know if you cannot compile the C file and need an executable.

> I was able to find the export feature under find. Could you let me know where 
> the import feature is? Or how I turn it on.

Oops, I frogot to document this, thank you for reminding me. You have to add the
"CSV Import" command manually to the list of menu commands, like:

Find menu commands = New, Find, Select, Config, CSV Import, Help

I was wondering if I should make this as the default, but many people maybe do not
have the demand of having CSV Import, so it might be annoying for them. What do
you think?

> I develop multiple client server apps and web apps deployed on intranets. I
> need my users to send me bugs with screenshots attached.

Nice idea. I was looking myself for a way to automatically attach screenshots,
but I haven't found a clever way yet. One problem with attachments I found is
that it is not possible to preset the attachment text box with a file name
because this would open up a big security hole. So a malicious web page would
preset the attachment box with a file name pointing to some local password file,
then hide the box somwhere by using a tiny font etc. So if someone presses
"submit", the secret file would automatically transferred to the remote site.
Now I don't know if this can be bypassed with JavaScript.
 
> Now apparently that wasn't fully working or at least you couldn't bring up
> multiple alerts. Has that been fixed, or is it just a problem with alerts?

The JavaScript you supply simply gets copied to the web page and executed. There
are no limitations of any kind from the elog system there. So if you have
problems, it's most likely a JavaScript problem. I found it very useful to use
the Venkman debugger (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/) which can run
inside Mozilla based browsers.

> Can I write a url that has my attributes, plus a short js script that just
> adds an attachment?

It should be in principle possible, limited maybe only with the security note I
wrote above. If you get anything working, I would appreciate if you could add
this to the "contributions" section, so that other people can benefit from this.

> Hello,
> 
> is it possible to have an guest account together with a global password file?
> 
> I tried to put the password file statement into the global section of
> elogd.cfg. But in this case every user must login and it is not possible to
> have a read only guest account. 
> But if I put the password file statemnet into the logbook sections, it is
> possible to access the logbooks in read-only mode without logging in. The
> drawback of this solution is, that you have to login into every logbook
> seperately.
> 
> Bertram

Right, guest access is not possible with a global password file. This comes from
the fact that people wish to protect their logbook selection page. What I can do
is add another flag "protect selection page = 0 | 1". If "0", the logbook
selection page can be seen without logging in. Is that what yo want?

- Stefan

> Yes, that is what I want.

I implemented a switch "protect selection page" in revision 1.318, which can be
obtained at http://midas.psi.ch/cgi-bin/cvsweb/elog/src/elogd.c?rev=1.318. If this
switch is not set to "1", the selection page can be seen without having to log in.