It is not usual for me to pester people with tips around elog, but this
one was so helpful for me that I would like to share it.

The Mozilla based browsers, such as Netscape or Firefox
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) offer the possibility of
so-called "keymarks" or "bookmark keywords". This are bookmarks to which a
keywork can be added, making them a very powerful search tool for elog. This
can be explained most easily in an example:

Add following bookmark to your Browser:

Name: ELOG search
Location: http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/forum/?mode=full&sall=1&subtext=%s
Keyword: el

I attached a screendump of how this looks under Firefox. Now you can type

el <keyword>

in your URL address bar, and the elog forum is automatically searched for
that keyword (see second attachment), since the "%s" in the URL is
automatically replaced with your keyword. This works of course also with
your personal logbooks. The switch "sall=1" causes elog to search for the
string in the main text body and in all attributes.

The URL bar can be activated with CTRL-L, so the key sequence

CTRL-L el <keyword>

is all you need to search a ELOG logbook, even without touching the mouse.

The elog daemon uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to format its output, such
as font family, size and color. Some people started to develop new themes
(skins) and posted them at the contributions logbook (such as
http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Contributions/7).

From my onw experience, I know that this can be a difficult job, since it
means to change the "default.css" file and reloading a page over and over
again. I recently discovered a way to do this much easier: The Mozilla based
browsers (such as firefox, http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) have an
extension called EditCSS (http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#editcss)
which shows the CSS file on the left side of the browser and the web page on
the right side. Changes in the CSS editor are immediately reflected in the
browser window. This way one can change certain entries in the CSS file and
immediately see its consequences. Development of new skins should therefore
become much more easier.

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-

Many Thank's to Stefan for his work!!! He's doing a great job and is offering a better 
service than most comercial programs! Thank you very much Stefan!!! 
 
The new elogd.exe is now runniung 24h on my Windows 2003 Server without any problems. I made 
a little "stress" test too and there wasn't any problems at all. Also threaded view is 
working stable now. 
 
Is seems, that the new eleogd.exe uses a litle bit less of system rescources especially in 
theraded view mode. 
 
System specification for test: Pentium 4 2,4GHz, ASUS Motherboard, 480 MB RAM, SWAP File 1,1 
GB, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 5.2 including all paches until 15.3.04, IIS 6.0, 
Mercure Mail Server 4, McAffee Virus Scan & Firewall, ELOG 2.5.1 with new eleogd.exe runnig 
as service (system righs) with FireDaemon Lite 1.6GE. 
 
Please note that this problem has been occured under windows (reported for XP, 2000, 2003 
Server) only. Windows NT 4.0 is working well without the new eleodg.exe as well. 
 
 
> This problem has been fixed now, it was a programming bug. New version under 
>  
> http://midas.psi.ch/elog/download/windows/elogd.exe 
 
 

> Run into the same error on a windows XP & 2000 machine. Totally shuts down the elogd.exe 
> when THREADED is selected. Have not tried your modified version after reading the posted 
> results. Will run with summary view until fixed. Wish I could help but I'm not a 
> programmer. Let me know if you want to test any new elogd.exe's.

This problem has been fixed now, it was a programming bug. New version under

http://midas.psi.ch/elog/download/windows/elogd.exe

Run into the same error on a windows XP & 2000 machine. Totally shuts down the elogd.exe 
when THREADED is selected. Have not tried your modified version after reading the posted 
results. Will run with summary view until fixed. Wish I could help but I'm not a 
programmer. Let me know if you want to test any new elogd.exe's.

> Is there any possibility to start elogd as a service under NT/2000/XP 
> having local service as its user? Yes, I've read the documentation. Maybe 
> things have changed.

What do you mean by "local service as its user"? If you install elogd as a 
service with FireDaemon or via SRVANY.EXE, you use the "Services" section 
under Computer Management ("Verwalten") to configure the elogd service. 
Although the documentation says that one should use the "This account" with 
the appropriate password, it is possible to use the "Local System account" 
as well. But I'm not 100% sure what implications this has for the ownership 
of the logbook database files, but it should be ok in most cases.

Is there any possibility to start elogd as a service under NT/2000/XP 
having local service as its user? Yes, I've read the documentation. Maybe 
things have changed.
/Torsten/