Hi again!

I've another need that you probably already thought of :)

I'd like to be able to efficiently monitor a logbook for changes (new or edited posts) somehow. The most reasonable way I've found so far is to periodically poll a search that looks for posts after the time of the last poll. But that might note be very efficient, especially if the polling period gets short (or number of clients grows).

Is there some other feature that could be used for this? I was thinking maybe the ETag or Last-Modified HTTP header field could be used to show changes to a logbook by just reading the headers, but it would also require HEAD request support which does not seem to be there.

Cheers,

Johan

Use automatic email notifications or RSS feeds. Read the manual for that.

Stefan

I recommend monitoring directly on the server. Here is an example of a very simply Python script (https://github.com/tamasgal/elog-slack) which monitors the files very efficiently and immediately pushes notifications to Slack (slack.com). Just look at the code, it's pretty straight forward and very easy to adapt it to other (web) services.

Btw. here is an ELOG entry of it https://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Forum/68224

Yeah, I suppose something like that would be both faster and more efficient than polling ELOG itself. Fortunately the ELOG disk format looks easily parsed.

Thanks for the pointer!

I just noticed that there are multiple messages per file, so I have to adapt the parser. I'll update this thread when I'm done!

You guys know that there is the possibility to execute an arbitrary script on each submission of a new messge? Just use "Execute new = <script>". In the script you have access to all parameters of the message. That's maybe simple than to watch the file set.

Where is this feature documented?

In the documentation of course :-)

I'm probably too tired or I don't know, but of course I looked at the user's guide and the admin's guide but did not found anything about this ;-) Is there another documention which I missed somehow?

You look here: http://midas.psi.ch/elog/config.html and scroll down to "Execute New". I wonder how you ever could run elog without looking at that page.

OK thanks I'll check that out. I did not configure ELOG by myself, I only use it and wrote the Slack plugin ;-)

Aha, that's interesting too! I'll have to look more carefully through the documentation... :)

Yeah, I found the RSS feed feature, but I could not get ETags/Last-Modified header fields which meant that I'd have to read and parse the entire feed every time. Maybe I made a mistake and they do work, but if not, I think it would make sense to implement as it should save work for both the server and the client.

Dear all,

I just wanted to share a small script which I wrote to integrate our ELOG in Slack. This allows us to be notified immediately if there is a new logbook entry directly within the appropriate Slack channels. We're using ELOG V2.9.2-245 but if the log-file format has "Subject, Author, Type" in the header, it should work with any other version. I'm using Pyinotify for the file watch which relies on a Linux Kernel feature (merged in kernel 2.6.13) called inotify, so the script only works on Linux.

Here is the code: https://github.com/tamasgal/elog-slack

Cheers and thanks for ELOG!

Tom

Hi all,

I have a use case for ELOG where I need to be able to "prefill" some attributes in the "cmd=new" form, based on the URL.

To illustrate, imagine a link that takes the user directly to the form for creating a new post, with the "Subsystem" attribute already filled out to "Vacuum".

Is this possible already? I've tried naively using URL parameters (e.g. "&Subsystem=Vacuum") but that does not work. If it's not implemented, I think it would be a useful feature to have (and quite important for my particular use case). I could create a new post first using the "elog" tool, with the desired attributes set, but it makes more sense to defer the actual creation of the post to the user, i.e. he/she might change their mind before pressing "submit".

Thanks,

Johan Forsberg, MAX IV Laboratory, Sweden

Put a "p" in front of the attribute, like "&pSubsystem=Vacuum". This is kind of an undocumented feature just for the experts ;-)

Wow, than you both for the quick response! I agree it's quite a hidden gem, but the most important thing is that it works, thanks!

Whatever you choose as a default encoding you'll be stuck with. If you remove the "Required Attributes" it works again.

The workaround is very simple: do not use any attributes that do start with a digit :-)

Cheers, Andreas

Hi ELOG Community,

Please help me to configure my smtp server in Windows using gmail server

This is what in my config:

SMTP host = smtp.gmail.com

SMTP username = raymund.dawang@engagis.com (company email subscribing in gmail)
SMTP Password = xxxxxxx
 

And I was prompted by this error in elog: Error sending Email via <i>"smtp.gmail.com"</i>: 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. ir5sm11631778pbc.13 - gsmtp

Apprecite you help. Thanks.

Elog does not directly support TLS encryption. See here for a wrokaround: elog:68039

Thanks Stefan,

I checked in my ELOG folder and can't find the stunnel.cfg. Is that only available in Linux? Can you please recommend a third party SMTP server for me use to successfully enable mail notif via Windows OS. Thanks much

Cheers,

Raymund

I believe there is a stunnel port for Windows, but that's more for the experienced users. I guess there is no simple solution.

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

I remeber when I used elog email notif feature in my previous workplace which is running in windows, I just put IP address on SMTP host = X.X.X.X at the config file and it run without any problem. I'm thinking they are using SMTP server. Can you please recommend any SMTP server and SMTP relayer site that I can use to be able to successfully send my email notification. I tried SendGrid SMTP cloud server but i have hard time and still failing. you might recommend SMTP server that you are using now in your elog site. Thank you so much.

Hi,

I'm having an issue with Elog 3.1.1 on windows 10 not displaying all log entries (after a certain date) in a logbook directory.

The logbook is saved in a Dropbox folder and the entries were created on a windows 8.1 PC with 3.1.1 also.

I created an entry in windows 10, this created a new log file (new day) with a duplicate ID, deleted the log file and then the windows 10 pc displayed all entries.

Is there any way to ensure Elogd picks up all log files ?

Thanks & Regards,

Mike

Besides the commen Andrea made I would like to add that you can convince elog to show all files if you simply restart it, then it will re-scan all files. But as Andreas said, if two elogd instances write to the same directory, you will get a mess with double IDs of entries.

Stefan

Thanks very much for your comments. I will take a look at the mirror server functionality.

I have only been running one elogd at a time, restarting elogd (on Windows 10) doesn't seem to pick up the changes made on Windows 8.1 PC (stopped elogd after changes made and log file updated)

Mike

Ah, I see another problem. The pre 3.1 version had all logbook files in one directory, and the 3.1 puts the files in one subdirectoy per year. On transition from 3.0 to 3.1, an automatic conversion is made, but only once. If you later add files into the root logbook directory, they will not be seen. So you have to move them manually into the right subdirectory.

Hi, I have noticed that if an entry is not submitted it is saved in a sub-folder (name is current ID number) eg http://localhost:8090/mike/23, while draft it doesn't appear in list page but you can browse directly to it.

When you update an entry on one server instance, if you then browse to the entry ID on the 2nd server instance it is draft. If you edit then submit the entry then appears in list page on 2nd server instance.

Thanks again.

Drafts are not shown in the list page, but you can browse directly to them, if you know their idea. They are also shown if you hit "new". Then a box comes up "You have unfished drafts, do you want to edit them?". This is the new draft feature introduced recently and a feature of elog.

But I guess you have a more general problem. You run two elogd severs, and you transfer information between the two servers via Dropbox. Elog is not made for that. Elog is a web server, so you don't have to transfer data via a could service (except maybe for backup). You can access your one and only elog instance from everywhere. Everything else will give you trouble.

Understood, Thanks very much for your help.

I tried to paste an Image from Clipboard into the CKEditor 4.5.1. Unfortunatelly, that doesn't work. I used Firefox, version 42. When I  looked in the javascript error console, it reported that "TypeError: b is undefined, ckeditor.js:1139:112". The variable  d.config.filebrowserImageUploadUrl could not be found.

I set the variable in the file ckeditor-config.js in the folder scripts, but that didn't solve the problem. As far as I can tell, Pasting Image from Clipboard does not work in this forum neither, but I don't know whether this is in purpose.

Pasting via the button "Paste from Word" works as it inserts a 64base formated image, but that's not what I'm searching for. Also normal upload of files works fine and puts the file in the correct folder (logbook/year/)

That seems a CKEditor problem. Can you see if it works on their site (ckeditor.com). The current version is 4.5.4. Maybe they fixed it. You can upgrade CKEditor yourself in elog by just copying the new verson over the old /elog/scripts/ckeditor directory.

Updating CKeditor did work, thanks for the tip.

Is there any way to configure elog so that attribute fields can be edited 
on more than line like the 'text' field? 

(This would be useful so that attributes could contain larger portions of 
text including line breaks)

thanks

Paul

> Is there any way to configure elog so that attribute fields can be edited 
> on more than line like the 'text' field? 
> 
> (This would be useful so that attributes could contain larger portions of 
> text including line breaks)

No, but this request is already on the wishlist
(http://midas.psi.ch/elog/wishlist.html) since some time. I added your vote.

> > Is there any way to configure elog so that attribute fields can be edited 
> > on more than line like the 'text' field? 
> > 
> > (This would be useful so that attributes could contain larger portions of 
> > text including line breaks)
> 
> No, but this request is already on the wishlist
> (http://midas.psi.ch/elog/wishlist.html) since some time. I added your vote.

Stefan,

Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
in the future?

many thanks

Paul

> Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
> they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
> in the future?

In order to have multi-line attributes, the whole format of the logbooks has to be
changed. I plan to use XML for the logbook format in the future. We would not have
any more one file per day, but one big file per logbook. I have already some XML
functionality in elog, but this one requires a major rewrite of the whole code. On
the other hand, searching etc. will become much faster afterwards. I plan to start
this development soon, but it might take quite some time, so don't expect it
before summer or fall.

Best regards,

  Stefan

> > Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
> > they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
> > in the future?
> 
> In order to have multi-line attributes, the whole format of the logbooks has to be
> changed. I plan to use XML for the logbook format in the future. We would not have
> any more one file per day, but one big file per logbook. I have already some XML
> functionality in elog, but this one requires a major rewrite of the whole code. On
> the other hand, searching etc. will become much faster afterwards. I plan to start
> this development soon, but it might take quite some time, so don't expect it
> before summer or fall.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
>   Stefan

Thanks for your help, thats useful to know.

Paul

> > > Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
> > > they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
> > > in the future?
> > 
> > In order to have multi-line attributes, the whole format of the logbooks has to be
> > changed. I plan to use XML for the logbook format in the future. We would not have
> > any more one file per day, but one big file per logbook. I have already some XML
> > functionality in elog, but this one requires a major rewrite of the whole code. On
> > the other hand, searching etc. will become much faster afterwards. I plan to start
> > this development soon, but it might take quite some time, so don't expect it
> > before summer or fall.
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > 
> >   Stefan
> 
> Thanks for your help, thats useful to know.
> 
> Paul

Hi Stefan,

any update on the multi-line request?

cheers,

Paolo

> > > > Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
> > > > they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
> > > > in the future?
> > > 
> > > In order to have multi-line attributes, the whole format of the logbooks has to be
> > > changed. I plan to use XML for the logbook format in the future. We would not have
> > > any more one file per day, but one big file per logbook. I have already some XML
> > > functionality in elog, but this one requires a major rewrite of the whole code. On
> > > the other hand, searching etc. will become much faster afterwards. I plan to start
> > > this development soon, but it might take quite some time, so don't expect it
> > > before summer or fall.
> > > 
> > > Best regards,
> > > 
> > >   Stefan
> > 
> > Thanks for your help, thats useful to know.
> > 
> > Paul
> 
> Hi Stefan,
> 
> any update on the multi-line request?

Nope. Too many other things to do during my "day job".

Stefan

> > > > > Was just wondering about the status of the multi-line attributes in Elog, are 
> > > > > they implemented in elog yet? If not is that something you are planning to do 
> > > > > in the future?
> > > > 
> > > > In order to have multi-line attributes, the whole format of the logbooks has to be
> > > > changed. I plan to use XML for the logbook format in the future. We would not have
> > > > any more one file per day, but one big file per logbook. I have already some XML
> > > > functionality in elog, but this one requires a major rewrite of the whole code. On
> > > > the other hand, searching etc. will become much faster afterwards. I plan to start
> > > > this development soon, but it might take quite some time, so don't expect it
> > > > before summer or fall.
> > > > 
> > > > Best regards,
> > > > 
> > > >   Stefan
> > > 
> > > Thanks for your help, thats useful to know.
> > > 
> > > Paul
> > 
> > Hi Stefan,
> > 
> > any update on the multi-line request?
> 
> Nope. Too many other things to do during my "day job".
> 
> Stefan

Thank you, your eLog is already a very good instrument!

> > Is there any way to configure elog so that attribute fields can be edited 
> > on more than line like the 'text' field? 
> > 
> > (This would be useful so that attributes could contain larger portions of 
> > text including line breaks)
> 
> No, but this request is already on the wishlist
> (http://midas.psi.ch/elog/wishlist.html) since some time. I added your vote.

Hi Stefan, could you add my vote for this feature too please?

Many thx