Dear Soren,

sorry for the trouble, but it's very hard to diagnose this remotely. This forum here runs fine for many months, so in principle Elog should be stable (at least the current version 2.7.5). If you have an older version, please upgrade. If you have a way to reproduce the problem reliably, you can send me your config file and explain step-by-step how you make Elog crash. Then I can try to reproduce it here. Otherwise the only chance I see is to run elog from inside the debugger, and once it crashes record the stack trace and send it to me. If you don't know how to use the gnu debugger, I'm sure you find someone at CERN who knows. 

Best regards,

   Stefan

 No quick fix, sorry. It is also limited by a fixed number of characters per line in the configuration file and many more. I will try to increase it, but it will take time. Can you maybe set-up a mailing list at your email server? This way you send only email to one destination and it gets distributed to many people.

Can you describe what you exactly enter in this forum to produce the error so that I can reproduce it?

[Informations]
Guest menu commands = List, Back, Find, Login, Help
Guest find menu commands = List, Find, Select, Login, Help
Password file = ./passwd
Self register = 1
Logfile = elogd.log
Logging level = 3
Login expiration = 24
Admin user = testuser

Theme = default
Preset Author = $long_name
Attributes = Author, Subject
Locked Attributes = Author
Required Attributes = Author, Subject
Page Title = ELOG - $subject
Reverse sort = 1
Quick filter = Date, Subtext

 I tried your configuration and it worked as expected. Maybe you have edited the wrong configuration file, not restarted the server, or have an old page in your browser cache.

> 1) "make" fails if libssl-dev package is not installed. Documentation does not mention SSL library requirements.

I added a note to the documentation, thank you.

> 2) /etc/init.d/elogd: line 10: /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: No such file or directory (I fixed this by commenting
> out that line).
> 
> 3) Starting elogd: /etc/init.d/elogd: line 34: echo_success: command not found (Fixed by search/replace "echo_"
> to "echo ").

The elogd (or elogd.init in the distribution) is written for RedHat based systems where echo_success gives the 
typical output with a green [OK] at the end of the line. For Debian, there is (was) in principle a Debian package 
which has it's own startup script. Since the package maintainer is not active any more (I guess), the Debian 
updates are heavily old. Once elog gets managed inside Debian again, that should get better again, but until then 
one has to follow 2) and 3) from above. If I would remove it, the Scientific Linux users would complain. 

 Just run it inside gdb. When it crashes, you will see a segment violation and you will end up at the debugger prompt. Then do a "bt" to see the stack dump. From that I can guess where the problem happens.

> elogd is crashing with a segv when I try to create a new logbook by clicking the "Create new logbook" button
> with an existing logbook selected in the dropdown list as a template. I've attached my config file for
> reference. As a specific example, I'm logged in as the admin user, viewing logbook "1248", which has no entries,
> and I click "Config" -> "Change config file" -> "Create new logbook", Select "1248" from dropdown list, enter
> "1250" for the new logbook name, and click "Create new logbook".
> 
> The server crashes, and my web browser has the following as the (incorrect) URL it's trying to load:
> (Incorrect because the "/ATLAS" shouldn't be there.)
> 
> https://localhost:8080/ATLAS/1250/?cmd=Config
> 
> Nevertheless, the config file and logbook directory are properly modified for the new logbook, and on restarting
> the server, everything is fine.
> 
> Oh, just noticed that if I manually enter the URL:
> 
> https://localhost:8080/ATLAS/1250/
> 
> or actually, any text in place of the "1250", it also crashes the elogd process. So, perhaps there are two bugs?
> 
> (1) Incorrect URL being given to the web client after logbook creation
> (2) Requesting any incorrect URL of this form crashes elogd

This problems have been fixed in SVN revision 2135.

There are several methods to get the server time:

Via presets of attributes

Attributes = Author, Event time, ...

Preset Event time = $utcdate

which gives you actually the UTC time.

Via the editor

The editor toolbar contains a little clock. If you click on it, you insert the current server time (but localized, not UTC).

Hope one of the two methods work for you.

The problem with the conditional attributes in the find page is I believe fixed in the current version.