I know two ways to do this. Either way you do need some kind of sysadmin status.

Stefan, Andreas, close your eyes for the next sentence.

1.  Set the computer/server clock to 5th October, make the entry, set the clock back again.

2.  Make the entry as normal, then go into the logbook directory and find today's 130912a.log entry - now create a new 131005a.log file, and paste in the relivant entry into this - not forgetting to change the day and date at the top.  Save the file.  Ensure that 131005a.log has the correct permissions and ownership (compare with all the other files) - you do mean you're using linux, didn't you.  Cannot answer for what to do/happen with Windows.

Now I too have this issue - there is one entry I want to keep at the very top of the list until a certain date has passed.  The way that Stefan/Andreas may offer probably will work, but I've never tried it - which is that the entry goes into today's log file, but has a "entry date" category.  I don't know if that would keep the entry at the top of the list until the 5th October has passed.  As I don't want to have an "Entry date" category, I resort to one of the two methods above.

The fact that the ID numbers become out of sequence doesn't seem to affect the performance of ELOG at all in my perhaps rather more extensive experience than the developers would have wanted me to try.

 Some computer programs/OS work with the computer clock as is.  Some make adjustment for Daylight Saving.  Some - Windows comes to mind, actually adjust the computer clock back and forth as Daylight saving ends and begins respectively.  I know this because I have a dual boot computer (I use windoze for AutoCAD and one other Windows-only Java based utility[!]), and when British Summer Time starts, my Linux automatically moves the screen clock forward.  But when I subseqently boot into Windoze, it sets the computer clock forward one hour, so when I then boot back into Linux, the clock is one hour fast.

I therefore suggest again you check what your computer clock *really* is, not what the OS reports it as being, as often they think they're being clever and automatically put in Daylight Saving.

Another test - Stefan and Andreas will be shuddering hard tonight - will be to set your computer clock to December, and see if the effect is still there or has disappeared.

 I cannot answer for Windoze, BUT there is more to this if you use Linux.

(Sorry for re-entry, I spotted a cut-and-paste error from first time around)

If you want to make a new logbook in linux manually, you need to do the following:

0.  Stop the elogd daemon.

1.  Edit elogd.cfg as Stefan said.  This will be in two parts - at the top, and then a block of entries which is what you normally see when you go to the "config" section of any logbook.  Easiest to copy and paste an existing block, only remember to put in a new header in the square brackets at the top - the name of your new logbook.  While most of the elogd.cfg is the same as in the documentation, the additional headers etc are pretty self-explanatory, and you only see these because you're editing the file raw rather than through the elog interface.  Once restarted, you can then edit the config for the new logbook in the usual way.

2.  Create a new subdirectory in your logbooks directory *with the same name* as the name you added in when editing elogd.cfg.

3.  Give that subdirectory the correct ownership and permissions.

4.  Only then, start elogd again.

As a windows user, which of the above you need to do: create the subdirectory (I imagine so) and/or anything else (I don't know).  I don't use Windows - apart from AutoCAD and one other javascript based program that non-the-less has windows dependancies (!).

David.

 On this linux box, using Firefox 12, if tabs are in use, Ctrl-Pgup/Ctrl-Pgdn goes throught the tabs.  If you force tabs off, then it goes through the entries.

Bavigation buttons work fine.

Hi Barend,

I can reproduce your point. 

I've found various work-arounds, but possibly the best one is to remove "Audit Date" and "Deadline" from the Required Attributes line.  True you won't get a warning saying that they were not entered for the first entry (if you didn't enter them, that is), but all subsequent replies run as you would want.

Another way is if you *preview* your entry, you can then submit it and that works.  This seems to work by bring up a different page where you can edit all those Fixed Attributes.  (I'm not sure that Preview is meant to do that, but it does and it's a work-around).

Or, if you remove "Audit date" and "Deadline" from the Fixed Attributes Reply (as you did) seems to work in the same way.  But I see that you don't want the opportunity for these to be changed.

I note that if you get this error message and go back, the message that you may have written is erased (this is unusual, it doesn't do this if you have not supplied an attribute on the first entry, say).

So I suspect this is a bug, possibly not detected before; perhaps no-one had tried this combination.

[13 Nov]
As my threads have lots of replies, I end up with a forest of ">" characters which makes it difficult to read
earlier quoted entries (what with word-wrapping of the browser).
I thought to replace the ">"s by a simple date entry prepended to the start of each reply. - much as I have 
given at the top of this initial entry.

So this is what I put in the config file:

....
Time format = %a %d %b %y
Date format = %d %b
Prepend on reply = [$date] \n
...

The time is used in the string for the Thread display.

Only I don't get the date, with the date format, prepended to replies but the time, in the time format, as

[Wed 13 Nov 13]

Now this is hardly a disaster, but any ideas why the date formatting is being ignored?

 I don't know what happened here - I mean, I understand the ">" characters being added to the start of every line of a quoted previous entry, but now what then happened to the formatting.

By default in plain mode elog adds ">" to the start of every quoted line, just as quoting an email will do (some mailer programs).

If you're beyond your nteenth reply, word-wrapping of the browser etc makes past comments difficult to read.  Of course it would be equally difficult in in html mode as the boxes would get more and more nested.

Not sure if your link here about html is relivent to the use of the ">" to indicate a quoted reply or not, although that wasn't really my question - which was about date format in the config file.

> > [13 Nov]
> > As my threads have lots of replies, I end up with a forest of ">" characters which makes it difficult to read
> > earlier quoted entries (what with word-wrapping of the browser).
> > I thought to replace the ">"s by a simple date entry prepended to the start of each reply. - much as I have 
> > given at the top of this initial entry.
> > 
> > So this is what I put in the config file:
> > 
> > ....
> > Time format = %a %d %b %y
> > Date format = %d %b
> > Prepend on reply = [$date] \n
> > ...
> > 
> > The time is used in the string for the Thread display.
> > 
> > Only I don't get the date, with the date format, prepended to replies but the time, in the time format, as
> > 
> > [Wed 13 Nov 13]
> > 
> > Now this is hardly a disaster, but any ideas why the date formatting is being ignored?
> 
> Hi David,
> yes, a $date is substituted with the "Time format" in the function build_subst_list().
> I guess that is a bug, but it could break many existing logbooks to change it.
> I leave this to Stefan.
> 
> There is a simple solution for your problem: you can execute a shell command.
> 
> Prepend on reply = $shell(date '+[%d %b]') \n
> Reply string =
> 
> That snipped will do exactly what you want :-) (of course you need to have the "-x" option to start elogd.)
> 
> Kind Regards
> Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for this, I'll give the solution a go.  
I take the point that if it's a bug, other logbooks may be affected if it were fixed; but perhaps another
parameter - $thedate or something could be created instead?