Hello,

I just gave it a quick try to the command line client, to see if I can use it to access our institution service. 

[root@host ~]# cd /tmp/
[root@host ~]# mkdir elog
[root@host ~]# cd elog
[root@host ~]# wget https://elog.psi.ch/elog/download/RPMS/elog-3.1.4-2.el7.x86_64.rpm
[root@host ~]# rpm2cpio elog-3.1.4-2.el7.x86_64.rpm | cpio -idmv
[root@host ~]# cd usr/local/bin/
[root@host ~]# ./elog --help
[root@host ~]# ./elog -h <hostname> -l <logbook> -u <myusername> <mypassword> -w last
"Message successfully transmitted, ID=-1"

Is that the expected output? I was expecting to see info about the latest message in the server.

Cheers,

Jose

The <hostname> you have to actually replace with your real host name. Same for logbook, username and password. 

On my local test system I get (actual password hidden here with "...")

~$ elog -h localhost -p 8080 -l demo -u stefan ... -a Authort=SR -a Subject=test  test
Message successfully transmitted, ID=5
~$ 

Sorry for the late reply. I didn't get email notification about an answer to my question :)

Actually, I just wrote <hostname> and so on for privacy. In my attempt, they have real values. 

And yet, I got as result: "Message successfully transmitted, ID=-1".

Follow up question: do I really need to install everything even though I only want the client? Or is there somewhere a package just with the client code?

Thanks

Jose

Dear all,

First, many thanks for creating and sharing this great tool which is ELOG! Our users are very happy with it!

I have few questions about inserting images into the entries.

From time to time our users insert them directly in the editor what leads to encoding the whole image in the HTML log file and the images does not appear in the attachments list. Saving and further editing of such entries slows down the whole ELOG server which uses 100% of CPU.

I'm not sure how they do it Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V, drag & drop, etc.. What I know is that if they add it using the "Insert image" action in the editor there are no problems and the images are properly listed in the attachments.

I read in the docs:

uploading or downloading an attachement file is a single request, and causes the entire file to be loaded in server memory while the request is being processed.
This is not normally a problem for the sort of short, text-mode entries ELOG is designed to support. However, if a user starts to upload or download a large attachment file (or image) over a slow link, all other users on that ELOG server will have to wait for that transfert to finish before they can access any logbook on that server. This is why there is a low limit on the size of attachments, and why ELOG should not be used to distribute large files under intensive multi-user conditions.

but I think this is not our case. Here I talk about wrongly inserting a single image of 700KiB.

So, I'm asking:

1. Is the behavior that we observe something already detected? If yes, which are exactly the wrong ways of inserting the images?
2. Is it fixed in newer ELOG versions?
3. Is it possible to disable the wrong ways of inserting the images in order to avoid such problems?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

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.

All,

I am using elog as an observation log for amateur astronomy. I have a form configured, but I would like to know if it is possible to make certain fields persist across new entries.

What I mean is this:

When I make an new observation, I select a value for sky conditions (say.. "1"). When I make another observation, "1" is already selected.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks

As far as I know, it is not possible, if you make a "new" entry.
You could configure the elog, to always PRESET an atribute, but then it is always the same, not the last.

I think the "duplicate" entry function could provide you partly with the functionality you want, as it copies all old values into a new entry.

Regards,
Sebastian

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

Hey,

i'm trying to use curl to post new entries to our logbook as described here: https://elog.psi.ch/elogs/Forum/68597.
The Elog is installed via the Deban package on Buster.
I created a test logbook with attributes Author, Type, Category and Subject.

curl -u florian:foobaa -F cmd=Submit -F Author=Florian -F Type=Diary -F Category=General -F Subject="testing curl" -F Text="foo baa" http://localhost:8080/test
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html><head>
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
<title>ELOG Login</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="elog.css">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" />
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.png" type="image/png" />
</head>
<body OnLoad="document.form1.uname.focus();">
<form name=form1 method="POST" action="./" enctype="multipart/form-data">

<input type=hidden name=redir value="">
<table class="login_frame" cellspacing=0 align=center><tr><td class="login_title">Please login</td></tr>
<tr><td class="login_form">
<span class="overlay_wrapper">
<label for="uname" id="uname" class="overlabel">Username</label>
<input type="text" class="login_input" name="uname" value="" title="Username" onInput="document.getElementById('uname').style.display='none';">
</span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="login_form">
<span class="overlay_wrapper">
<label for="upassword" id="upassword" class="overlabel">Password</label>
<input type="password" class="login_input" name="upassword" onInput="document.getElementById('upassword').style.display='none';">
</span></td></tr>
<tr><td align=center class="login_form"><input type=checkbox checked name=remember value=1>
Keep me logged in on this computer
for the next 31 days or until I log out</td></tr>
<tr><td align=center class="login_form">
<a href="?cmd=Forgot">Forgot password?</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align=center class="login_form_bottom"><input type="submit" class="login_submit" value="Submit"></td></tr></table>
<center><a class="bottomlink" title="Goto ELOG home page" href="https://midas.psi.ch/elog/">ELOG V3.1.3-7933898</a></center></form></body></html>
 

As you can see, curl only prints the login page of the logbook and no new entry has been created. Any suggestions what might go worng here?

Regards,
Florian

After going through the code of the Python API (https://github.com/paulscherrerinstitute/py_elog/blob/master/elog/logbook.py) I tried the following:
$ python3
>>> from passlib.hash import sha256_crypt
>>> sha256_crypt.hash( 'foobaa', salt='', rounds=5000)[4:]
'waa2sT6eBt.qk0wsucX/nxU5GcqffqlEx6ja5Lg1OR5'
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.now().timestamp()
1599039390.964989
$ curl -F cmd=Submit -F exp=labor -F unm=florian -F upwd='waa2sT6eBt.qk0wsucX/nxU5GcqffqlEx6ja5Lg1OR5' -F Encoding=plain -F When=1599039390.964989 -F Author=curl -F Subject="curl test" -F Category=General -F Type=Diary -F Text="foo baa" http://localhost:8080/test/

This worked. It seems to me, that the "-u" option from Curl is not working for elog.

Cheers,
Florian

This is correct. The elogd daemon needs username and password in parameters "unm" and "upwd". The password must be SHA256 encoded, so best is to grab it from the password file. This way one does not have to send clear text passwords over the network.

Hello,

We used the Elog RPM binary installation method to install Elog. Our security scanners are complaining that Elog discloses the version information when you hit a missing page (404 error).  How can I hide this version info? Is there a snippet of code somewhere that I can comment out?

Any help is appreciated.

-Rich

I removed the version info from the 404 error, but you have to recompile elogd from sources. The fix will be included in the next RPM, but that can usually take a few weeks.

A new RPM has been released at https://elog.psi.ch/elog/download/RPMS/elog-3.1.4-2.el7.x86_64.rpm containing that fix.

Hello.

I installed the latest elog (3.1.4-2) in CentOS 7, and it is working well without SSL.
When I enalbled SSL option (SSL = 1) in the "elogd.cfg", and tried to start the elogd, the message below was shown and failed to run.

SSL support not compiled into elogd

If I switched the elog to older one (3.1.4-1), I could successeed to run the elogd with SSL option.
Is there any other option required in the latest elog to run with SSL? Or is this bug in the latest version?

Thank you,
Hisataka YOSHIDA

When you compile elog from the soruces, you need the OpenSSL library to be installed. The CMake build process will then find it and include it in the compile process. When you use the "make" build process, you have to make sure that SSL is enabled there:

USE_SSL = 1

To install the OpenSSL library, you can do on most systems something like "sudo yum install openssl-dev" or "sudo apt-get install openssl-dev"

/Stefan

Dear Stefan,

Thank you for your comment. I successfuly compiled the latest elog from source code, and now elogd could work with SSL.

In fact, I reported the case of installation with rpm file. Maybe, the latest elog rpm doesn't support SSL, I guess.
The installtion with rpm file is easier to build the common environment, so I hope the next rpm will support the SSL.

best regards,
Hisataka YOSHIDA

Today I succeeded with the help of L.JR to produce a new RPM which contains SSL, KRB5, PAM and LDAP support. It's uploaded to https://elog.psi.ch/elog/download/RPMS/elog-3.1.4-2.el7.x86_64.rpm

Hi All,

I would like to have "Permis de verouillage et d'étiquetage 016685-68AF-0031" when I select it.

I don't found where can I make this change

thank you.

This has nothing to do with the ELOG package, but only with your local configuration of that specific logbook.
You should contact your local ELOG administrator.

Or you might want to rephrase you question: do you want to have this text added in the text field when selecting the field specifier?
How that can be done depends on your specific configuration. Since you are apparently already using a form in the text field, it might be tricky.

Thanks, but I'm the Admin of local ELOG.

usually I can make a lot of changes on my files .CFG But this time no way.

when I select one of the choice i've a text who appear with the right text (code), but only with this choice "Permis de verouillage et d'étiquetage 016685-68AF-0031"

the text appeared is false.

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

Hi,

I'm trying to use the Sort Attributes option to sort all entries by a user specified date.  The issue I'm running into, is that although I can get it to work, it seems to only display the last 6 entries that I'm sorting by.  If I click "All" to show all the entries, it's sorted perfectly. I'm using:

Sort Attributes = Due Date

Reverse sort = 0

Is there something I'm missing to get this working.  Reading through the manual nothing jumped out at me.

It is described in the manual at https://elog.psi.ch/elog/config.html#general

Entries per page = <number>

Funnily the default is "20". I have no idea why you see 6 entries.

Thank you, Andreas!  Not sure why I kept overlooking it in the manual.  As for the number of entries when I sort, I'm not sure.  I'll set it up to display a larger number and see what happens.