Ryan Blakeslee wrote:

Andreas Luedeke wrote: David Pilgram wrote: Stefan Ritt wrote: Ryan Blakeslee wrote: Hello, I am currently using ELOG as a daily logbook for work performed for customers.  This is a critical tool and process for 1. Showing customers work history 2. having a searchable knowledge base for future reference.   Currently, I will create a new log entry, assign the customer using a custom ROPTION in my elog.conf.  This process all works fine, mostly, except I run into the following obstacles (that are all human related.) 1. Many days, there are no log entries to be created for a PARTICULAR customer, and other days there are no long entries to be created for ANY customer. 2. Many days when there is a log entry to be created, it's created by me much later then when the work was performed.  For example, I do a bunch of work Tuesday and Wednesday, but I don't have time to enter all my entries until Thursday.   2A. In this case, I have to manually go back and edit the log entries with text-editor to adjust the times, dates, and such. 2B. In this case, I have log files with a file-name of THURSDAY (042513a.log) for work entries done on Tues and Wed, so I have to go back and rename the log files for consistency sake (mv 042513a.log 042313a.log).  ** I know this is not a requirement of the program, but I like to have the log filenames consistent with the dates contained in them.   All these I admit are human error -- but as a small business owner, I just can't always get to the log entries every day.   To overcome this, the manual solution would: at the beginning of each day, create a new log entry -- regardless of work to be performed and updated later.  This would serve as sort of a place holder. However, I can't commit myself to always create a log entry for every day either.  Again, human error.   Is what I would like to be able to do is create a new log entry, every single day, automatically.  I would then have a growing log dir of daily log entries (files) for ever day of the week, most blank but some would then contain data that I enter later-- either at the end- of-day or on a day I have downtime and can commit to administrative work. My thought is I could probably schedule a cron job do to this, but i'm not completely sure how I would go about auto-populating the incremental ID's, dates, etc.  Second, I don't know if there is a way to do this within ELOG itself, or if there is a built-in mechanism that already covers this.   Has anyone run into this, or solved this problem, or can someone kindly point me in the right direction or how I can implement the daily auto creation of logs?   Thank you very much in advance! Actually I would not worry with the 042313a.log files. In a future version of elog they might be replaced by a database or so. I see two options: Add an attribute of date/time type. You do that with "Type <attribute> = datetime". Then you can assign a certain date or time to each entry you do. That means you can tag an entry with the date of yesterday or so. If you make that date then the main database key (via "List display") it basically replaces your "internal" date. You can do automatic entries with the "elog" utility coming with the distribution and described here. This you can even run from a cron job. If you submit a new entry from elog, you get automatically the incremented IDs etc. You can use some default values for the attributes, which you can change later.  Purists look away now. I have the same issues regarding "catching up" of entries.  So what I do is use the date command to reset the computer's time back to the time that the entry [i]should[/i] have been made.  Say I need to put an entry for last Thursday (today is Saturday 27th), Firstly I set the clock back by date 04252200 (I use a time of 22:00 or later as code for a retro-made entry, the date being the important point for me). Then any entry will have the correct time (sic) and date entry within the file, and the file the expected format of 130425a.log After Thursday's batch of entries, I then simply reset the clock for the next entry/ies or indeed back to real time. Mind you, my log files have the format yymmdda.log, whereas you state yours are mmddyya.log, which strikes me as a very high degree of flexibility!   --- Nice to meet someone else who gets down to the bare ascii and knows how to edit the xxxxxxa.log files! Just my two cent: I would strongly recomment NOT to go back and forth with the system time. In some cases this can cause you severe problems with your control system.   Stefans suggestion works fine for our operations logbook: I've just introduced an attribute "When" and sort my entries according to this attribute. The line in the config: Start page = ?rsort=When takes care that this sorting is the default.   The advantage of this approach is in addition, that you keep track of both dates: the date when the work had been performed and the date when you've actually entered the information. Sometimes that turns out to be useful to me to figure out what I did and when ;-)   As to editing the bare ascii: I do this a lot, even with sed scripts. But there is a disclaimer: you can crash elogd with corrupted entries and you may have a hard time figuring out why it crashes. For example accidentally deleting a digit in a cross reference can create a loop that causes elogd to get non-responsive without error: try to find that! I would strongly advise not to build any user application build on editing the ascii files. Just use it for system administration.   Andreas -- He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.                 -- Lao Tsu     Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Detect language Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish ⇄ Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish Detect language » English     Hello Andreas, Stephan and David,   Thank you so much for the very insightful feedback -- it's very much appreciated!   I took all of the tips and created a solution that encompasses most of the feedback, and I think it solves my problem nicely while adhering  to my desire to keep log filenames in order as well as limiting the risk with moving/renaming, etc.   1. First, I have created a cron job that runs daily at 12:01AM, which runs the following command (This will create a new entry as a place-holder at 12:01AM every day)    CODE: elog -h localhost -p 8080 -l Daily -a Customer=CRON -a Subject="Daily Log - System Generated" -a Hours=New -a TravelHrs="0" -a Author=CRON -a Type="System Generated" -a Status="New" -a "Locale=localhost" -v "Auto-generated log entry."     2. Second, I added the "When" attribute, per Andreas' suggestion.   3. Last, I added the recommended sort command to my .cfg which will exclude the auto-generated logs from showing up and cluttering my view; essentially making them invisible.  I sort by type to exclude the system generated types.   Now, -- to go back in time and enter my "catch-up" data, I'll use the 'Find' in my menu, and find by type = system generated.  That will pull up all the auto-generated entries.  I'll then open whatever day(s) log(s) and edit them, chose the "when" to be the actual day the log entry is for, and enter the data.   I think this is a perfect solution - thanks so much!  PS - Nice to meet you too David -glad to know someone else out there thinks like I do!  :-)

Hi Ryan,

Glad you've got your solution.   Sadly, won't work for me, as my 'catching up' is often as replies to some existing threads, rather than just the need to have the day's work under the day's date.  But useful to know for the future.

As for the computer time switching, I am aware of the issues, it's a stand-alone linux box, I've found elog to be surprisingly tolerant, everything's backed up.  The introduction of a 'When' attribute had better be on new logbooks or introduced at end of year (esp during quiet time) so that existing books don't fail to find what I'm looking for in searches.

As for ascii coding the yymmdda.log file, and the infinate loops, been there, got the tee-shirt.  In all bar one case I've found and corrected the problem, although in one case I became convinced it had to be a 'hidden' character because deleteing and retyping the entry letter by letter cured the issue.

Yes, adding a new attribute in a logbook is not straight forward.

But it is doable: that is one of the things that I write SED scripts for. You just need to add the attribute in all old entries, and in this specific case you can use the entry time to initialise the "when" attribute.

Of course I would only do that on a copy of my data and run a separate elogd server on that data to see if anything is screwed up :-)

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Detect language » English

 

 

Hello,

I've had much success and use with ELOG.  However there is one thing that I wish I could figure out in order to 
make ELOG work exactly as I need it.

When I either create a new ELOG entry, or, have one created via an automated scrip run by CRON, the paragraph 
width is preset. 

I've read the notes and experimented with setting the text size, but it seems that if I either adjust it via the 
config file, or, change the size by dragging the message box itself, then I end up with an ELOG entry that has an 
irregular message size to it than all the others.  Consistency and uniformity is very important to me for how I 
use ELOG.

It would be idea, if the log entries did not contain <CR>'s or justified lines.  In other words, I would like to 
be able to have my ELOG entry fill the width of the screen, be it a wide screen or standard portrait scree, and 
at whatever resolution and text size I have my browser set to.

By not filling the entire width (and also by not having it auto adjust depending on screen size, resolution, 
etc.) there are large portions of the screen real estate that is lost and you end up with very long, scrolling 
log entries versus entries that file the entire width and therefor take less vertical screen space.

With all that said -- Does anyone else have this issue?  And, is there anything I can do to correct this?  This 
would make me a very happy user if it could be done.

Thank you in advance!

> Hello,
> 
> I've had much success and use with ELOG.  However there is one thing that I wish I could figure out in order to 
> make ELOG work exactly as I need it.
> 
> When I either create a new ELOG entry, or, have one created via an automated scrip run by CRON, the paragraph 
> width is preset. 
> 
> I've read the notes and experimented with setting the text size, but it seems that if I either adjust it via the 
> config file, or, change the size by dragging the message box itself, then I end up with an ELOG entry that has an 
> irregular message size to it than all the others.  Consistency and uniformity is very important to me for how I 
> use ELOG.
> 
> It would be idea, if the log entries did not contain <CR>'s or justified lines.  In other words, I would like to 
> be able to have my ELOG entry fill the width of the screen, be it a wide screen or standard portrait scree, and 
> at whatever resolution and text size I have my browser set to.
> 
> By not filling the entire width (and also by not having it auto adjust depending on screen size, resolution, 
> etc.) there are large portions of the screen real estate that is lost and you end up with very long, scrolling 
> log entries versus entries that file the entire width and therefor take less vertical screen space.
> 
> With all that said -- Does anyone else have this issue?  And, is there anything I can do to correct this?  This 
> would make me a very happy user if it could be done.
> 
> Thank you in advance!
Hi Ryan,

Do you quote the previous entries in later entries, with the '>' character (as above)?  I ask this because that will
make what you are requesting much more complicated, soon making those previous entries very difficult to read
indeed.

For me, readabiliy of previous quoted entries is important - along with the indenting '>' character to denote each
entry - your request would be an issue for me simply because of how many times an entry may get re-quoted in later
replies - over 40 is not uncommon.  As such, I tend to keep my lines short when writing an entry, being aware
that it could soon have a large number of '>' characters preceeding it.

[Sep 03 07:30]
Not an aside as such, but I have tried to experiment with this quoting business, to remove the '>' character (easy
enough) but have each quoted reply headed with a simple date/timestamp *within* this text box, such as I headed this
paragraph.  It hasn't worked as I expected, and I'm not sure why - maybe it might even be a bug!  But if that
could be cracked, then your suggestion would be a boon to me as well.
 

> > > 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!

I am trying to use the Elog Utility to import a few thousand entries. So 
far I have run into a few problems.

a) Cannot get elog utility to speak to elogd on port 8080. Even though I 
use the -p 8080 option with elog. I was able to get it to work when I 
moved my server to port 80.

b) I cannot get elog to work with and attributes or logbooks that contain 
spaces. Please refer the the following example:

elog -v -h scotland.ccs.yorku.ca -p 80 -a "Station Number"="CC001" -a "Mac 
Address"="000874fdc895" -a "Hostname"="cc001.cnscommons.yorku.ca" -a "IP 
Address"="10.6.10.52" -a "Manufacturer"="Dell" -a "Model Line"="Optiplex" -
a "Model Number"="GX270" -a "Monitor Manufacturer"="Dell" -a "Monitor 
Model"="E151FP" -a "Memory"="512MB" -a "CPU Speed"="2.6GHz" -a "Hard 
Drive"="40GB" -a "Service Count"="-" -l WSC2 -u charles xxxxx "DD/MM/YY: 
Change Description"

This line executes fine. Except only Hostname, Manufacturer, Memory and 
text are populated in the record. All the rest of the fields are blank.

c) the only way I was able to get the transaction to work was by reducing 
the size of the log book to a single word (ie WSC2).

Do I have to reduce all my attributes to single words? Or am I missing 
something simple to use as a delimiter for entry??

Thanks in advance

-Charles-