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  68661   Fri Aug 18 21:16:12 2017 Reply David PilgramDavid.Pilgram@epost.org.ukQuestionWindows3.1.2Re: elogd hangs

Hi Alan,

Just to be clear (and for others) if any entry is a reply to a previous one, such as this one is to yours, then there will be "Reply to" and "In reply to" fields in the entry as found in the yymmdda.log files.  They are automatically generated as part of the elog program's internal structure, but are only there when there is a reply - so a new entry on a new topic does not have either field (at all) until there is a reply to that entry, when the fields start to appear in the log file.

David.

Alan Grant wrote:

Yes I think I recall the incident in the Forum you're talking about from previous searches I've done on hanging however so far I haven't used Reply To's in this elog instance. Nevertheless, you explained it very well and it's good points to keep in mind should I ever use them, thank you David.

David Pilgram wrote:

I have experience of elog hanging (under linux).  I'll describe my situation, although it may not apply to you.  I still use elog 2.9.2 but I am unaware of this issue ever being resolved although I have mentioned it in the past.  (Possibly because I'm one of the few who has this situation).  I certainly recall other person had this as the problem, and my reply on this forum solved their problem.  The cause is the following:

1.  A thread with a large number of replies - something over 40 I think.

2.  This long thread is deleted from the first entry.  This will crash elog,

3.  Once restarted, the later entries of the deleted thread (which survived the deletion attempt when elog crashed) are accessed.  This will cause elog to go into an endless loop and hang.  Until I learnt better, I had to reboot the computer.  Under linux kill -9 (process) does the job, but kill (process) does not.

The problem lays with the first entry that survived the attempt at deletion.  It has an "In reply to" line in the entry in the yymmdda.log file, referring to an entry that has now been deleted.  Manually editing the yymmdda.log file to remove that line does the trick, and then the surviving entries can be accessed and deleted.

A good work-around is that if you are about to delete a long thread is to delete it in sections, starting at the end.  It is useful to note the entry number or some other way to find it again after the last section is deleted, as of course it will now be back in with the even older entries.  Or have two tabs on your browser accessing the same thread.

If you want to move the long thread to another logbook, to avoid the problem, Copy the thread, and then do the deletion in stages.  Moving a long thread does the same computer crash/computer hang, although the Copying part is done fine, the deletion part is the problem.

You don't have to have a large number of replies to an entry to cause the hang in controlled conditions.  Just edit the yymmdda.log file of a new entry adding in a "In reply to" line referring to an earlier entry number that does not exist is enough to cause the problem when you try and access the thread.

If this is the cause of your issue, the problem is to find the orphan thread that is causing the hang, especially after all this time.  Also, you may have more than one orphan thread.  Even though I am aware of the problem, I do occasionally find orphan threads in my logbooks.  In my case I use the ticketing system, and searching by ticket number will find an orphan thread without hanging the computer, but if you then click on any entry found - hang.

 

There is a related issue, which I think I have now resolved.  If the entry in the "Reply to" field in the yymmdda.log file does not exist, that is a later entry (not earlier, as above), elog will cause a duplicate entry, always in bold, with entry no 0 to appear in the listings.  This entry is an artifact that appears in the listings, not a real entry in a yymmdda.log file.  Again, finding the rogue entry is the tricky bit.

Stefan Ritt wrote:

I have to figure out where elog hangs. I guess it must be some kind of endless loop, triggered by some corrupt data in one of the elog entries. Under linux this is fairly simple (just run elogd under the gdb debugger, wait until it hangs, then press ctrl-c and enter "where" to see a full stack dump where elogd is currently executing). Under Windows this is more difficult, since you need Visual C++ from Microsoft to do the debugging. One thing you can do however without VC is to check if the CPU time is consumed to 100% by elogd, indicating an endless loop.

Stefan

Alan Grant wrote:

I have a very long standing problem with elog over the last few versions where almost daily the service will hang. Cannot even Restart elogd, that just hangs. Clients experience Page not Found. I can only get the service reinitialized by rebooting the VM machine. I have Elog verbose logging On plus a number of external triage monitors running but nothing is yielding clues beyond the precise time the hang occurs. Aside from providing the Config and log files what else can I provide for you to assist, and what other triage measures can you suggest I try? FYI, there can be up to 20 users at one time doing searches (not updates), and I've trimmed the depth of log files that can be searched so that the CPU/service doesn't bog down but that hasn't helped either. Inserts happen in the background using the elog client app (about 2 or 3 inserts per batch at sporadic times).

 

 

 

 

  68670   Tue Aug 22 14:19:43 2017 Question Richard Stamperrichard.stamper@stfc.ac.ukQuestionWindows3.1.2HTML in attribute values

When one has "Allow HTML = 1" to permit HTML in attribute values, is it only a subset of HTML that is rendered?

I find that <br> and <a href="..."> tags are properly rendered, for example, but lists with <ol> and <ul> are not.

  68671   Tue Aug 22 14:26:42 2017 Reply Stefan Rittstefan.ritt@psi.chQuestionWindows3.1.2Re: HTML in attribute values
  • As you can see...
  • <UL> is possible
Richard Stamper wrote:

When one has "Allow HTML = 1" to permit HTML in attribute values, is it only a subset of HTML that is rendered?

I find that <br> and <a href="..."> tags are properly rendered, for example, but lists with <ol> and <ul> are not.

 

  68672   Tue Aug 22 14:36:46 2017 Reply Richard Stamperrichard.stamper@stfc.ac.ukQuestionWindows3.1.2Re: HTML in attribute values

Isn't that list in the message text rather than as an attribute value?

Stefan Ritt wrote:
  • As you can see...
  • <UL> is possible
Richard Stamper wrote:

When one has "Allow HTML = 1" to permit HTML in attribute values, is it only a subset of HTML that is rendered?

I find that <br> and <a href="..."> tags are properly rendered, for example, but lists with <ol> and <ul> are not.

 

 

  68673   Tue Aug 22 14:37:44 2017 Reply Stefan Rittstefan.ritt@psi.chQuestionWindows3.1.2Re: HTML in attribute values

Sorry, I misread your question. Only following HTML tags are allowed in attributes:

<a>
<img>
<b>
<i>
<p>
<br>
<hr>

This is for some internal reason. Probably you can mimick <ul> with bullets and <p> tags.

Stefan

 

Richard Stamper wrote:

Isn't that list in the message text rather than as an attribute value?

Stefan Ritt wrote:
  • As you can see...
  • <UL> is possible
Richard Stamper wrote:

When one has "Allow HTML = 1" to permit HTML in attribute values, is it only a subset of HTML that is rendered?

I find that <br> and <a href="..."> tags are properly rendered, for example, but lists with <ol> and <ul> are not.

 

 

 

  68674   Tue Aug 22 14:58:09 2017 Smile Richard Stamperrichard.stamper@stfc.ac.ukQuestionWindows3.1.2Re: HTML in attribute values

Exactly the information I was after - thanks!  I'll simulate fancier markup as necessary.

Stefan Ritt wrote:

Sorry, I misread your question. Only following HTML tags are allowed in attributes:

<a>
<img>
<b>
<i>
<p>
<br>
<hr>

This is for some internal reason. Probably you can mimick <ul> with bullets and <p> tags.

Stefan

 

Richard Stamper wrote:

Isn't that list in the message text rather than as an attribute value?

Stefan Ritt wrote:
  • As you can see...
  • <UL> is possible
Richard Stamper wrote:

When one has "Allow HTML = 1" to permit HTML in attribute values, is it only a subset of HTML that is rendered?

I find that <br> and <a href="..."> tags are properly rendered, for example, but lists with <ol> and <ul> are not.

 

 

 

 

  68686   Fri Sep 15 00:56:38 2017 Question Alan Grantagrant@winnipeg.caQuestionLinux3.1.2Elog System Requirements

In response to an elog-hang issue I've been having on the Windows platform, I am building a new Unbuntu 14 TLS VM machine to host the identical configuration so that I can more easily debug when the hang happens again. I don't mind beefing up the hardware resources to either eliminiate that as a factor or resolve the problem. I'll have a higher end CPU to deal with 20 to 50 clients doing searches through the data (since the elog configuration currently does not provide a setting to limit how far back it can search with Quick Filters - pretty please add this basic setting!), but the main question I have now is what is a good amount of memory to add to the VM? I suspect even with 30 concurrent searches going CPU power will have more impact than memory in the case of elog. Can someone please confirm my suspicion and also recommend a suitable amount of memory I should install? My data volume is about 25 MB, all textual (no attachmemts), and the number of daily files goes back about 5 years. Any other tips for the build is very welcome.

  68687   Fri Sep 15 15:16:42 2017 Reply Andreas Luedekeandreas.luedeke@psi.chQuestionLinux3.1.2Re: Elog System Requirements

Hi Alan,

we run our ELOG server (38 GB Logbook data in about 50 logbooks dating back up to 16 years) on a virtual Linux box.
The memory is important, since ELOG scans through all entries and creates an index at start-up. But we have only about 6% used out of 2GB: ELOG is not very demanding. If you have many and large pictures attached, then "convert" needs a bit of memory to work with.
Since "elogd" is a single task, you will not gain much from many CPUs. File IO is often a limiting factor: we've tried a while to run the logbook data on an AFS directory, and that did not turn out well. A local disk is best, an NFS disk works fine as well (in our case).

Cheers, Andreas

Alan Grant wrote:

In response to an elog-hang issue I've been having on the Windows platform, I am building a new Unbuntu 14 TLS VM machine to host the identical configuration so that I can more easily debug when the hang happens again. I don't mind beefing up the hardware resources to either eliminiate that as a factor or resolve the problem. I'll have a higher end CPU to deal with 20 to 50 clients doing searches through the data (since the elog configuration currently does not provide a setting to limit how far back it can search with Quick Filters - pretty please add this basic setting!), but the main question I have now is what is a good amount of memory to add to the VM? I suspect even with 30 concurrent searches going CPU power will have more impact than memory in the case of elog. Can someone please confirm my suspicion and also recommend a suitable amount of memory I should install? My data volume is about 25 MB, all textual (no attachmemts), and the number of daily files goes back about 5 years. Any other tips for the build is very welcome.

 

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