I am working on a logbook for a lab.  I have two questions...
First - Some of the logbook entries should not be viewed by certain users.  
What would be the easiest way to restrict viewing some entries?  

Second - I have a welcome page for the ELOG that lists some info about the 
ELOG.  When I start the ELOG, the user sees the login page.  After the user 
logs in, the welcome page appears listing the restrictions.  Right now, I 
have a hyperlink that takes the user to new, find, etc.  But I would like 
to take the user right to the logbook and not have to come back to the 
welcome page everytime.  How can I do this?

I have attached the code I have so far.  They are in .txt format for easier 
viewing.

Thanks!

> First - Some of the logbook entries should not be viewed by certain users.  
> What would be the easiest way to restrict viewing some entries?  

The easiest way is to define two logbooks, with two different password files.
The more restricted logbook contains only those users who are allowed to see the
restricted entries. Use the commands "Move to" to move entries between the two
logbooks (see documentation).

> Second - I have a welcome page for the ELOG that lists some info about the 
> ELOG.  When I start the ELOG, the user sees the login page.  After the user 
> logs in, the welcome page appears listing the restrictions.  Right now, I 
> have a hyperlink that takes the user to new, find, etc.  But I would like 
> to take the user right to the logbook and not have to come back to the 
> welcome page everytime.  How can I do this?

Right now you need an exteral page on a public webserver. This page contains
then links to your elog server. I the next version I will implement the
possibility to server *.html files directly through elog. You can then put your
welcome page under themes/default/Welcome.html, and access it through the
starting link:

http://your.elog.server/logbook/Welcome.html

You will only see the Welcome page once, since all links in elog will point back
to .../logbook/ and not to .../logbook/Welcome.html. The config option "Welcome
page = Welcome.html" you have to remove then of course. 

I was trying to do some hard coded spaces using:

Thread display = For: $Date for Shutdown.   $DataCenter:
$short summary. Coordinator: $Shutdown Coordinator.

The spacing actually works mthe first time, but upon going back into editing
the config file, the coded spaces are gone, replaced with real spaces, and
when saved all real multiple spaces are, as one would expect, ignored.  The
spacing reverts back to normal.

I tried other html tags but these show up as literals.

Thanks

> I was trying to do some hard coded spaces using:
> 
> Thread display = For: $Date for Shutdown.   $DataCenter:
> $short summary. Coordinator: $Shutdown Coordinator.
> 
> The spacing actually works mthe first time, but upon going back into editing
> the config file, the coded spaces are gone, replaced with real spaces, and
> when saved all real multiple spaces are, as one would expect, ignored.  The
> spacing reverts back to normal.
> 
> I tried other html tags but these show up as literals.

I fixed that in revision 1.448. The problem also showed up even in normal
logbook entry displays and in replies (before this fix, the   in this text
whould not have shown up). Get the new version from CVS.

> > I was trying to do some hard coded spaces using:
> > 
> > Thread display = For: $Date for Shutdown.   $DataCenter:
> > $short summary. Coordinator: $Shutdown Coordinator.
> > 
> > The spacing actually works mthe first time, but upon going back into editing
> > the config file, the coded spaces are gone, replaced with real spaces, and
> > when saved all real multiple spaces are, as one would expect, ignored.  The
> > spacing reverts back to normal.
> > 
> > I tried other html tags but these show up as literals.
> 
> I fixed that in revision 1.448. The problem also showed up even in normal
> logbook entry displays and in replies (before this fix, the   in this text
> whould not have shown up). Get the new version from CVS.

As always - fantastic!

Thanks

Hi everybody,

several people have reported of strange problems concering the login/logout
behaviour of elog. After editing elogd.cfg, they could not logout any more
from a logbook, or they were not able to log in. Here comes some
explanation. If you are not interested in the details, skip to the last section.

The login parameters (user name and password) are sored in cookies, which of
course have to be enabled for the elog site in your browser. Each cookie can
contain an optionsl "path=..." statement, which defines for which subtree in
the URL the cookie is valid. If you use a "global" password file (one where
the "password file = ..." statement is in the [global] section of
elogd.cfg), the elogd server stores a cookie with path "/", so it will apply
to the whole site and therefore to all underlying lobooks. If your password
file is defined in an individual logbook section, the elogd server stores a
cookie with path "/<logbook>", so that it applies only to the specific logbook.

The problem arises now if one moves the password file statement from the
global section to the logbook section or back. The browser might still have
old cookies, whic can override any newly set cookie.

Long story short conclusion: If you observe this behaviour, just delete all
cookies in your browser and you should be fine. I added some additional code
to version 2.5.4 which catches a few cases but unfortunately not all.

Hello,

For some reason if I define a "login user" that is allowed the configure
option he is also allowed to change the configuration file. According to the
documentation it seems like this should NOT be the case. Any ideas as to
what the problem might be? 

Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

Ralph 

> For some reason if I define a "login user" that is allowed the configure
> option he is also allowed to change the configuration file. According to the
> documentation it seems like this should NOT be the case. Any ideas as to
> what the problem might be? 

Unfortunately I cannot reproduce your problem. This leaves few possibilites:

- any login user CAN change his/her full name, email address etc. but only admin
users can change ALL OTHERS as well. Admin users should see a "change elogd.cfg"
button on the config page, whil normal users will not

- are you sure you logged out as admin user and loggin in again as non-admin
user? Under some circumstances, the browser keeps old cookies which can confuse
things. Best is if you delete all browser cookies and try again (Tools/Internet
Options/Delete Cookies in IE).

- Stefan

Hi, 
I also have this problem, when a non admin user logs in he does not have access to
the config file but if he logs out he can then access the config file as non logged
user.
I also tried to upgrade to version 2.5.3 but running under this version does not ask
for passwords so I reverted to 2.5.2.

Besides these few details, your software is great !

Thank you,

Alexandre

> > For some reason if I define a "login user" that is allowed the configure
> > option he is also allowed to change the configuration file. According to the
> > documentation it seems like this should NOT be the case. Any ideas as to
> > what the problem might be? 
> 
> Unfortunately I cannot reproduce your problem. This leaves few possibilites:
> 
> - any login user CAN change his/her full name, email address etc. but only admin
> users can change ALL OTHERS as well. Admin users should see a "change elogd.cfg"
> button on the config page, whil normal users will not
> 
> - are you sure you logged out as admin user and loggin in again as non-admin
> user? Under some circumstances, the browser keeps old cookies which can confuse
> things. Best is if you delete all browser cookies and try again (Tools/Internet
> Options/Delete Cookies in IE).
> 
> - Stefan

> I also have this problem, when a non admin user logs in he does not have access to
> the config file but if he logs out he can then access the config file as non logged
> user.

If he logs out, how can he access a logbook at all? He should be presented a login
screen, nothing else...

> I also tried to upgrade to version 2.5.3 but running under this version does not ask
> for passwords so I reverted to 2.5.2.

Better first let's fix this problem. Under what circumstances does 2.5.3 not ask for
passwords? Maybe you can get the newest version from CVS (see download page) and try
again, I had problems when using the -DHAVE_CRYPT functionality, but I guess you did not
have that, do you?

So once you tried the latest snapshot, and still have problems, describe them carefully,
send me your configuration file, and I will have a look.

- Stefan

Dear Stefan,
I eventually tried the latest version from the CVS. 
And it is odd because like when I tried version 2.5.3, it is like it ignores
the passwd file. I guess I must have a problem in my cfg file.
So I can't really test if 2.5.3 or 2.5.4 have the same problem.

Right now I'm still using 2.5.2 which works fine, if i log out and click on
the logbook tab. I get the page which ask for the username and password. The
thing is I don't get returned to the username/password when I hit log out. I
arrive in the state you can see in the unlogged.jpg.
From here if can go into all the logbooks as long as I don't hit the
logbooks tab and worse I can access to all the config files.

Is there something really badly configured in my config file ? I guess it is
not supposed to work that way.

Thank you,

Alexandre

I just see your [global] part of elogd.cfg, could you send me the complete file?

What you also could try is to delete all cookies stored in your browser. The way
cookies are formed changed between 2.5.2 and 2.5.3, so the system could be
confused by old cookies.

- Stefan

The elogd.cfg is attached in the previous message as attachement 3. Sorry it is a
little bit buried between pictures.
The reason I put the picture of the global elogd.cfg is to show that the not logged
user has access to elogd.cfg which is some kind of trouble...

> I just see your [global] part of elogd.cfg, could you send me the complete file?
> 

Hi I tried to remove the cookies and it still did not ask for password under 2.5.4.
Has the password file format changed between 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 ?

> What you also could try is to delete all cookies stored in your browser. The way
> cookies are formed changed between 2.5.2 and 2.5.3, so the system could be
> confused by old cookies.
> 
> - Stefan

Ok, now I see your problem. You defined a "Guest menu commands" which explicitly allows
not-authorized access (that's what it's for). If you only want to allow authorized
access, remove the "guest menu commands" from the logbook sections and also from the
[global] section.

Please note that if an option is not preent in a logbook section, it is looked for in
the [global] section. I see that most of your logbooks have similar settings. Just put
them into the [global] section, and override it in the logbook section if they are
different.

Thank you, I misunderstood how the "Guest menu commands" worked I thought I had to specify
a limited set of commands to actually limit guest users.

Thanks again for your wonderful work on this program too.

Regards,

Alexandre

> Ok, now I see your problem. You defined a "Guest menu commands" which explicitly allows
> not-authorized access (that's what it's for). If you only want to allow authorized
> access, remove the "guest menu commands" from the logbook sections and also from the
> [global] section.
> 
> Please note that if an option is not preent in a logbook section, it is looked for in
> the [global] section. I see that most of your logbooks have similar settings. Just put
> them into the [global] section, and override it in the logbook section if they are
> different.

Elog is a great program, but it can be slow.

I noticed that the gcc compiler options in the tarball Makefile were not
conducive to speed.  There, I tried changing the gcc options to:

CFLAGS = -O3 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -W -Wall

for version 2.5.3, the compile worked, and the program appears to work as
normal, but a bit faster.   I have not benchmarked it, but I think it should
offer a nominal increase in speed.

In particular, I removed the "-g" profiling option, which is not needed for
production code, and can be safely removed. In addition, I put in slightly
aggressive optimization settings, so if this doesn't work for you, you can
first try removing the -f setting, and then backing off the optimization to -O2.

Other may want to post other settings that work for them.

> I noticed that the gcc compiler options in the tarball Makefile were not
> conducive to speed.  There, I tried changing the gcc options to:
> 
> CFLAGS = -O3 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -W -Wall

Thank your for this hint, I changed my Makefile for the production code. However, I
could not feel any difference between the two options. The real problem is the
function getcfg(), which gets called many thousand times internally and has to parse
elogd.cfg each time. Once I implement a hash table for that function, elogd should
become faster by at least a factor of two.

> > I noticed that the gcc compiler options in the tarball Makefile were not
> > conducive to speed.  There, I tried changing the gcc options to:
> > 
> > CFLAGS = -O3 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -W -Wall
> 
> Thank your for this hint, I changed my Makefile for the production code. However, I
> could not feel any difference between the two options. The real problem is the
> function getcfg(), which gets called many thousand times internally and has to parse
> elogd.cfg each time. Once I implement a hash table for that function, elogd should
> become faster by at least a factor of two.

Yeah - What's up with that?

I have seen this discussed before - Seems like it should be a priority to get this
fixed, as doing a hash table is straightforward, and the speed increase should be pretty
health - there are several c libraries available - check out "man 3 hsearch" for the
POSIX hash table management that already available.  Other c library searches that you
could use include bsearch (binary tree), tsearch (tree searching), btree (b+ tree). 
However, the easiest and most obvious one to use for elog appears to be a simple hash
table search (hsearch).

Is there something else  which is making this difficult to do?

> Is there something else  which is making this difficult to do?

Not really, but hsearch() & Co. are not available under Windows, so I have to extract the
source code from the GNU C libarary or so. Since the last discussion I had lots of other
topics on my to-do list, such as mirroring and cloning, but the speed issue is getting more
and more up on the priority list.

> > Is there something else  which is making this difficult to do?
> 
> Not really, but hsearch() & Co. are not available under Windows, so I have to extract the
> source code from the GNU C libarary or so. Since the last discussion I had lots of other
> topics on my to-do list, such as mirroring and cloning, but the speed issue is getting more
> and more up on the priority list.

Speaking of windows I'd like to note that when I moved my call tracking config from a slow BSD
system (PPro 200Mhz) to a faster windows system (P3 733M) I noted a huge slow down in the
interface.  Talking about perhaps 1-2 seconds before to 10-15 seconds after.  Using
sysinternals file monitor I see that elogd is hammering each log file in the directory.  Not
sure what else is going on.  309 log files - only 1.25Meg.  

Anything I can do short of pruning down the files?

[Edit:  In both cases above my default view is filtered and sorted - so that I only see things
with a specific status.  Taking away the filtering resolves this hit - but does not explain the
speed difference between platforms.]

-D

Everything after curly parenthesis is ignored in attribute entry boxes 
like 'Subject' above

What I typed in the subject line was exatcly this:

  'curly parenthesis problem {abc}'

> Everything after curly parenthesis is ignored in attribute entry boxes 
> like 'Subject' above
> 
> What I typed in the subject line was exatcly this:
> 
>   'curly parenthesis problem {abc}'

Just don't use curly brackets (;-)

Nevertheless I fixed it in the current version (see subject)

Using the COMMENT feature to add guidance to an ATTRIBUTE works great, but
is it possible to add a TOOLTIP <ATTRIBUTE> = so as to save screen space? 
For a complex entry form it is desireable to try and have everything in a
single window and this, I think, would help.

Thanks

> Using the COMMENT feature to add guidance to an ATTRIBUTE works great, but
> is it possible to add a TOOLTIP <ATTRIBUTE> = so as to save screen space? 

Where should the tooltip appear? In the entry form or when an entry is
displayed, or even in the tabular listing? I can put a title arround the
attribut names such as

<div title="Please enter some subject here">Subject:</div>

which gets interpreted by most browsers as a tooltip. However it's not
apparent to the user that leaving the cursor on top of "Subject" opens a
tooltip, especially since the cursor is displayed as the text cursor (vertical
bar), not as an arrow over the attribute. Do you have a link to a public web
page which uses tooltips?

> For a complex entry form it is desireable to try and have everything in a
> single window and this, I think, would help.

Aiming for running elog on you PDA? Let me know if you succeed...

> > Using the COMMENT feature to add guidance to an ATTRIBUTE works great, but
> > is it possible to add a TOOLTIP <ATTRIBUTE> = so as to save screen space? 
> 
> Where should the tooltip appear? In the entry form or when an entry is
> displayed, or even in the tabular listing? I can put a title arround the
> attribut names such as
> 
> <div title="Please enter some subject here">Subject:</div>
> 
> which gets interpreted by most browsers as a tooltip. However it's not
> apparent to the user that leaving the cursor on top of "Subject" opens a
> tooltip, especially since the cursor is displayed as the text cursor (vertical
> bar), not as an arrow over the attribute. Do you have a link to a public web
> page which uses tooltips?
> 
> > For a complex entry form it is desireable to try and have everything in a
> > single window and this, I think, would help.
> 
> Aiming for running elog on you PDA? Let me know if you succeed...

In the Entry form I am thinking, as this is when most people need some help. 
Perhaps the user could be clued in with a "Mouse-over each attribute for Help"
COMMENT at the top.

As for the PDA, no, it's just that some people around here get confused if they
have to scroll down.  Not a big thing . . . ;-> Hmmm, PDA . . . 

Ok, I added the option

Tooltip <attribute> = ...

I apply the HTML "title" tag to the whole table row, so the tooltip appears on the
whole line, not only the attribute name. I guess this is much more intuitive. Give
it a try. New version under CVS and available as a snapshot.

> Ok, I added the option
> 
> Tooltip <attribute> = ...
> 
> I apply the HTML "title" tag to the whole table row, so the tooltip appears on the
> whole line, not only the attribute name. I guess this is much more intuitive. Give
> it a try. New version under CVS and available as a snapshot.

I like the implementation, especially with the tooltip popping up anywhere in the
area.  Thanks.

according to the users guide,

http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Database/?cmd=New&pType=PC

should create an entry with the type value set to PC, but this doesn't work

> according to the users guide,
> 
> http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Database/?cmd=New&pType=PC
> 
> should create an entry with the type value set to PC, but this doesn't work

Now it works. Updated elog version under CVS and as a snapshot (see Download Page)

> according to the users guide,
> 
> http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Database/?cmd=New&pType=PC
> 
> should create an entry with the type value set to PC, but this doesn't work

Thanks!