How are we supposed to give you a hint when you don't post your configuration?

Here are the relevant excepts from the documentation:

Subst <attribute> = <string>
When submitting logbook entries, attribute values can be substituted by some text. This text can contain arbitrary fixed text and following values:

• $<attribute>: The entered value of the attribute itself
• $host: The host name where elogd is running
• $remote_host: The host name of the host from with the entry was submitted
• $short_name: The login name (if password file is present)
• $long_name: The full name from the password file for the current user
• $user_email: The email address from the password file for the current user
• $logbook: The name of the current logbook
• $date: The current date, formatted via "Date format"
• $utcdate: The current UTC date (GMT) and time, formatted via "Date format"
• $version: The version of the ELOG server in the form x.y.z
• $revision: The Subversion reversion of the ELOG server as an integer number
• $shell(<command>): <command> gets passed to the operating system shell and the result is taken for substitution.

Execute new | edit | delete = <command>
It is possible to execute a shell command on the server side after a new message has been submitted, edited or deleted. This feature has been used in the past for SMS notifications over a telephone system and for synchrnonization of the ELOG database with an external SQL database. The <command> can contain substitutions similar to the Subst command. In addition the list of all attachments can be referred to via $<attachments>. The text body of the entry can be referred to with $text. It should be noted that only the first 1500 characters of the text can be used, in order not to exceed the limits of the shell. Following (Unix) command writes a notification into some file:

Execute new = echo "New message wiht ID $message id of type $type from $long_name on $remote_host" >> /tmp/elog.log

It should be noted that this feature can impose a security problem. If someone can edit the elogd.cfg through the Config command of elogd, that person can put malicious code into elogd.cfg and execute it. This is even more severe if elogd runs with root privileges. To avoid such problems, the execute facility is disabled in elogd by default and has to be enabled explicitly with the "-x" command line flag. The administrator has to ensure then of course that only trusted people can edit elogd.cfg.

Have fun!

Andreas

I found the most limiting factor of ELOG to be the file access. ELOG stores all entries in files and therefore has a lot of disk access.

We found that an AFS directory for ELOG is unusable. We tried to store our logbooks on NFS, and it was barely usable but slow. Now we use a local disk on the server, that works fine.

If you want to speed up ELOG the best approach is a dedicated server with a local SSD storage.

Yes, you can see that in the logging file, if you turn on logging. You might want to read the manual https://elog.psi.ch/elog/config.html. Here's the relevant excerpt:

• Logfile = <file>
  This option specifies a filename which logs all login/logout activities and successful user connections for logbooks with user level access. The the logging level (see below) is larger than 1, also read and write accesses can be logged.
• Logging level = 1 | 2 | 3
  Specifies the logging level. The higher this value, the more information is logged. Default is 2:
  • 1: Log only logins and logouts
  • 2: Log also write accesses
  • 3: Log also read accesses

That would be a nice feature...

If you are good in parsing HTML you can achieve this feature: when you create a new entry "<elog-URL>?cmd=new", you'll get HTML source code that provides you with all possible attribute choices.

Disclaimer: this only works if you don't use Conditional attributes.

• you need to copy your logbooks into the "logbooks" directory.
• you need to copy your elog.cfg logbook config file to the new elog folder and reference it at start-up (something like "elogd -c /usr/local/elog/elogd.cfg ...")

Some people modify other stuff (CSS, java scripts) but if you had you would know what you did.

If the old ELOG was a 2.x version and the new is 3.x, then on the first start-up all logbook data files are copied into sub-folders for each year.
This is only done (automatically) during the first start-up, afterwards you can not use a 2.x version anymore (you won't want that anyway).

Instead of using three different options you could use the same:

Options Eyepiece = Pentax{a}, TeleVue{b}, Meade{c}

{a} Options Form = 5mm, 20mm, 30mm
{b} Options Form = 7mm Nagler, 10mm Radian, 24mm Panoptic
{c} Options Form = 8.8mm UWA, 14mm UWA, 26mm QX

It makes more sense.
But it is as well possible to supress attributed in the edit from. See

• Show Attributes = <list>
  Attributes present in this list are shown in the single entry page. Omitting attributes can make sense for attributes which are automatically derived from other attributes via the Change <attribute> command.
• Show Attributes Edit = <list>
  The same as Show Attributes, but for the entry form.

You just have a different <list> for each conditional case {a} {b} {c}.

You could transform your entries into the ELOG file format (either XML or CSV) and then use the import function. That would upload the correct dates from your entries.

If you use the "Orig Date" trick you've proposed, you'll see that datetime fields are stored as seconds of the epoch (since 1.1.1970). Not so easy to copy and paste them, but you can convert them with a script.

Cheers, Andreas