What Stefan meant to say is that Elog does not implement sending email using encrypted SMTP over TLS.

In theory it could be implemented, but if you try to use it, you may find that most
destinations will reject you unless you have configured correct SPF records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

Even if you do everything right, joints like gmail may still reject you because
their AI decides you are a spammer, or just because they do not like you, and good
luck making them change their mind.

At TRIUMF, we configure elog to use unencrypted and unauthenticated SMTP
to smtp.triumf.ca, which has special rules to accept our email (no questions asked),
and our Microsoft email instance is configured to accept and forward email from
smpt.triumf.ca. Everything is done right, but we still see Fermilab's Microsoft
rejecting TRIUMF's Microsoft email once in a while.

K.O.

If

1. Elog is configured to use webserver authentication, and
2. the user reported by the webserver does not exist in the password file, and
3. the "Guest Menu commands" configuration is set in "elogd.cfg", and
4. a logbook is accessed,

then Elog returns with a redirect (302) to the logbook itself, causing the loop.

The fix here is to remove the "Guest Menu commands" configuration from "elogd.cfg".

Source code location: https://bitbucket.org/ritt/elog/src/30ada1df634529c8011c27275c52a05b01b7b3d6/src/elogd.cxx#lines-27599

Not sure if this is a bug or not; if it is not, kindly reclassify the category.

Following is a small example of what I will dub a 3-level, conditional logbook:

This example is hardly complete, but it is sufficient to demonstrate the issue I am running into.  This works until I select from the 2nd level (manufacturer); it won't display the dropdown for the model (I think my show attribute edit is supposed to display that).  Is there a restriction on how many levels of conditional I can have?  If there is, it would be disappointing because I am trying to do something similar to this example.

I hope there is something very simple I can do to correct this, or perhaps a completely different approach that accomplishes the same thing.  I'd like to stick with the multi-level selection process as I have done here.

I am running elog 3.1.5 on Devuan Chimaera (approx. Debian Bullseye, sans systemd) in a Virtualbox VM.

I am finding that '%s' passed to a $shell(...) command must be escaped when calling from Preset on reply, but not when calling Preset new.  Example:

[tickler]
Comment = Automated Tickler List Experiment
Attributes = Blurb, TickleDate
Type TickleDate = date
Required Attributes = Blurb
Preset TickleDate = $shell(date -d 'now + 30 days' '+%s')
Preset on reply TickleDate = $shell(date -d 'now + 30 days' '+%%s')
Date Format = %Y-%m-%d

Note that I have to escape the Preset on Reply's shell command argument with double percent signs, but not on Preset new.  The configuration I have provided here does work and correctly overrides the output per the Date Format spec.  This scenario should be easy to reproduce.

It could be I am doing something incorrectly, but it seems to me that there is no reason why the calls should need to be handled differently.  I can live with this for the moment, but I do hope it is fixed in a later release so that $shell calls have consistent syntax and semantics.

When I click on "collapse," even several times, I still see all the replies in each thread rather than just one entry representing each entire thread.

I am running elogd 3.1.5 on devuan chimaera (bullseye) which I built from source.  I had the same results with 3.1.4 and 3.1.3.

I tried to disable the quick filter just to see if that impacted the behavior, but it didn't.

If there are any other tests I can use to narrow the problem, please suggest them.  Without a working collapse feature, I cannot get a quick birdseye view of, say, all open threads.

I should add that this does not happen in every logbook.  I'm looking into what the distinction is that causes this in certain logbooks and not in others.

Figured it out:  I had "Sort Attributes" set on the logbooks that were failing to collapse correctly.  At least, I think that is the distinction.  

I think I can live with "Sort Attributes" disabled; I don't recall why I chose to set the "Sort Attributes" in the first place.  But I still think this is an issue.

I also notice that collapse does not work properly if I have anything selected in the quick filter.