We have a number of temperature chambers – each has its own laptop running a local ELOG server, with unique logbook for each.  Using the mirror feature, these individual logbooks periodically synchronize to a single remote desktop server, which has a copy of each of the logbooks.  All of that works great, as long as each of the ELOG servers are storing the logbook(s) to their respective local hard drive.

I wanted the remote server to store its copy of the logbooks on the network file server.  I changed the global options of the elogd.cfg file, adding the following:

               Logbook dir = S:\SHARED\LOGBOOKS

That change worked fine on the remote desktop server – new logbook entries were now being stored on the network file server.

Unfortunately, I lost the ability to sync from the individual logbooks to the remote desktop server.  During synchronization, I now get the following error message: “Error sending local entry: Error transmitting message". 

Has anyone run into this? Does this make sense? Am I missing something? Is there a workaround? Is there a wrong time to drink beer?

Thanks,

Frank

Sounds really strange to me. The remote server does not "know" that "S:\" is a network drive, so the syncing process should work exactly as before. The only idea I have is that the access to the network files take pretty long, and you run into a timeout during syncing. We had this in the past (for AFS netwhor shares, not Windows shares), where sometimes we have a blocking behaviour where the file access lasted 10-20 seconds, and the server process was simply blocked. Since then I do not recommend to put logbook on network shares.

Stefan

Is it possible to include an option in the next release to have the Options list reference a text file of attributes rather than explicity listing the attributes in the Config file directly?

This would make it much easier to maintain a particular list that is referenced in several log books.

I can put it on the wish list.

Just my two cent - I would have many very good applications for that feature:

• Keep option lists identical over different logbooks.
• Keep option lists identical over different applications.
• Create option lists from a database - that allows to use the options in many applications and in the database; e.g. a list of systems with a failure database, but failure reports in the regular ELOG.
• Export extendable option lists to other applications:
  • Inform administrator about options that have been newly added to a logbook for a review.
  • Provide option lists as menu buttons in these applications.
  • Prevent other applications to submit elog entries with illegal option choices.
• Import extendable option lists from other applications (at least after next elogd restart, if no "update option list" URL/command is provided for elogd).

We recently went through the process of renaming a "system list" in several logbooks, to make it consistent over several facilities. If the "on-call service" is called "radio frequency", but the "system" is called "RF", then searching the logbook can become difficult. It was painful: half a dozen applications had to be adapted at the same time the lists were updated, because they had features to create a failure report to ELOG - assuming specific "system" names.

So I'm in favour of putting that high up in the wishlist :-)

May I slip my vote in for this, especially if it would allow more than 100 attributes (the default, and I do know how to increase it).

I even considered cutting that into two groups,. the first being words like "New", "Re-" and the second being actions.  Clunkey and binned.

Hi,

sorry for bugging you with this, but I could not find any information for making migration of elog system from one server to another.
The migration should be done from one server version (CentOS 6.10 to CentOS 7.6). Also we are talking about migration from one subdomain to another. Example subdomain1.example.com to subdomain2.example.com. Old elog application version is 3.1.2 and I would like to migrate to the latest version 3.1.4 

Is the migration from one system to another possible?  What are the prerequisites for migration?
Are there any instructions how to do it?

Thank you in advance and have yourself a lovely day,
Warmest regards
 

To move an elog instance, just stop the old server, move the configuration file elogd.cfg and the logbook directory to the new server, and start the new server. If the URL of the server changes, you have to adjust it in elogd.cfg. 

Stefan

Hello,

Somehow when replying to a log entry, a log entry was created that was referring to itself. How this happened, I have no idea. The effect was that each time this enty was loaded, the elogd started to hang, going to 100% load and not responding to any http requests anymore. This problem can be reproduced by manually creating such a self-referencing log entry (see attachment). The problem entry that leads to the crash can be made by editing any elog entry and adding a line "Reply to: X" and a line "In reply to: X" where X is the MID of this entry.

1) Maybe it is possible to add a check when writing files that ensure, that is a log entry does not reference itself.
2) Maybe when loading files are preparing the thread view, elogd can detect cycles and abort.

I'm having a minor issue that were getting double entries due to the user is using the "submit" button more than once.

I seems like when there is a lag either on the machine or on the network it is possible to tap the "submit" button more than once resulting i a double or triple entry containing the same text and a almost identical timestamp.

Is there a way to aviod this?, my "solution" so far has been to select the entries and manually delete them. I'm using Elog version 3.14

Kind Regards Finn

I too have this as an occasional issue, although in my case due to a dodgy pointer.  I too manually delete the entries.

Interestingly, it gives double entries - and thus the start of a branch - even in logbooks were branches are not allowed.

I just committed some code which disables the "Submit" button after the first click and replaces the text with "Please wait...". So double submits should not be possible any more.

I'm also happy to see this change implemented as we've had to deal with the same issue at times as well. Will this change be incorporated into the latest version (314-2, aka elog-latest.exe), or will there be a new version release (that is not in Changelog yet)? If so, can you give any ETA on this new code availability?

Also I noticed that the Elog Home page still says "Current version is: 3.1.2". I assume that only means it hasn't been updated, not that it means it's the current STABLE version and subsequent releases are beta -- please correct me if I'm wrong. I just want to make sure I understand how the versions and releases work.

Endless thanks for this product and all your work Stefan.

"I committed" means that the change is sent to the GIT repository. People who compile from the source code can pull and compile immediately. Windows users have to wait until I do the next release. I'm developing on a Mac and have to boot a special (old) Windows machine to compile the .exe which each time takes me about one hour including documenation updates, changelog updates, upload of zip files etc. Since my main job is heading a research group, I only can devote this hour once in a while, depending on my work load. Sometime even the weekends are too short.

Thank your very much for your work on this - as i mentioned this is a minor issue.

Kind Regards Finn

Hello,

I am using Elog v3.1.1. When entries contain embedded images, these images are attached to the email notifications but are not properly displayed in the body of the email.
Is it expected?
For example, with an image file myimage.png the email source code contains <img alt="" height="150" src="190208_143305/myimage.png.png" width="200">
Maybe the email should make use of the Content-ID of the attached image?

Your observation is correct. The mailer inside elog should scan all email bodies and replace all <img> tags correctly. I put that on my todo list.

Stefan

Hi,
  I'm using elog 3.1.3 and I have an elogbook with an attribute with name 
Attributes = Author, CO2 Temp [deg], ...

If I add this attributes to quick list, 
Quick filter = Author, CO2 Temp [deg]

it does display on web page, but the search fails with "ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" if I leave the default value in the corresponding quick filter box.

My understanding is that the presence of a "[]" in the default search value is the reason for failure and if I remove them the search works fine.

Is there a workaround?

I don't want to change the attribute name, since I do have quite a large number of entries in the elogbook, and I'd like to keep the attribute in the quick search if possible.

Thanks,
  Stefano

No, there is no quick workaround. The only way is to go through your logbook files manually (or with a script), and replace all occurrences of that attribute.

Stefan

I have a setting which makes ELOG a perfect solution, but there's a situation that I'm struggling to get my head around. We have 3 separate laboratories, each one containing a number of temperature chambers, which run almost constantly over a number of shifts. Each temperature chamber has it's own logbook (laptop). So far, pretty simple.
My dilemma is, our network goes down for maintenance/updates (more often than I'd like), but our operation cannot afford to stop during network interruptions.
With that said, I thought about whether I could run a "local" logbook on each laptop/chamber, and somehow mirror the local logbook to the main ELOG server.
Perhaps I'm over-thinking this...do you have any recommendations?

Sure that's easy. Install elog on each laptop separately, so they run without network. Then, set up a central elog server, and use "mirroring" as explained in the documentation at https://elog.psi.ch/elog/config.html#mirroring

So when ever the entwork comes back, you execute a manual mirror operation, and your new entries will be pushed to the central elog server.

Best,
Stefan

Thanks Stephan! I guess I was making it harder than it is.  I'm still a little fuzzy -- in this instance, am I correct in saying that each laptop would be considered a "master", and the remote (network) server considered the "slave"?  Also, I'm not sure quite sure -- which server should be assigned responsibility for performing periodic synchronization between the laptop and the central elog server?

Thanks again for all you do -- Happy Holidays!

Frank

I would call the laptops the "master" being responsible for pushing data to the central server which you can call "slave"

Stefan

Thank you again -- very much appreciated!

I've got things working - sort of.  Ran into one strange problem that has me scratching my head.  I have two different laptops, each running a local instance of their own logbook.  Both are functional, but for some strange reason, one looks great, and the other is missing its graphic format.  I've attached a screen capture of that logbook, and a copy of the config file.  Do you see something that I've done wrong?

Thanks,

Frank

Sorry -- dumb mistake.  I moved the "theme" files to the resource folder.  Works like a champ...life is good!