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            Elog Configuration in Debian

    The Electronic Logbook (ELOG) provides a Web interface to manage notes. Its general purpose is to make it easy for people to put and access information online; in the form of short, time stamped text messages with optional HTML markup for presentation, and optional file attachments.

      ELOG is a remarkable implementation of a weblog in at least two respects :

its simplicity of use : you don't need to be a seasoned server operator and/or an experimented database administrator to run ELOG ; one executable file (under Unix or Windows), a simple configuration text file, and it works. No Web server or relational database required. It is also easy to translate the interface to the appropriate language for your users.

its versatility : through its single configuration file, ELOG can be made to display an infinity of variants of the weblog concept. There are options for what to display, how to display it, what commands are available and to whom, access control, etc. Moreover, a single server can host several weblogs, and each weblog can be totally different from the rest.
 

      The features of ELOG make it useful for several applications:

  • Personal Logbooks. Personal notes can be written into ELOG and can then be retrieved from anywhere with a Web browser. This makes it handy for PC supporters who have to go around in companies or laboratories and don't want to carry their paper logbook with them. The same holds true for people traveling around a lot. The logbook database consists of plain ASCII files which can copied easily between different computers to have local access, for example on a notebook with no network connection.
  • Shared Logbooks. Logbooks can be shared by several people, for reading and optionally for writing. This way workgroups can share and exchange information like in a (simplified) news group. This is supported by the Reply command in ELOG which creates "threads" of entries. Users can be notified by email when new entries are added to the logbook. Compared to that of a news server, the installation of ELOG is much simpler.
  • Small Databases. Since arbitrary attributes can be defined for a logbook, it can be used as a small database with search facilities.
  • Problem collections. A system can consist of two logbooks, in one of which users enter bugs or problems. If someone adds a problem, an email is automatically sent to the administrator, who can then copy the entry to the second logbook and add the solution to the problem. Users can then look up all fixed problems.
  • Shift Logbooks. If the Allow delete and Allow edit flags are off, an entry cannot be modified once it's been entered. This can be useful for shift logbooks for example in accelerator control rooms where each entry becomes a "document" with a time and author stamp. ELOG was originally developed as a shift logbook for the PiBeta and Muegamma particle experiments at PSI.
  • File collections. Since files can be attached to ELOG entries, the system can be used to store and retrieve files. This can be used to store configuration files, which need to be accessible by several people over the web, or to store images. Since ELOG features an elaborate query facility, entries can be searched for by specifying several categories.

   Install Elog in Debian

    # apt-get install elog

    After installation you need to do an important change to one file to work elog correctly

    Edit the file /etc/init.d/elog  and change the HOST filed address to your machine ipaddress and restart elog service.

    example as follows

     ### Problems with localhost

 #-h  in the case of a "multihomed" server,
 # host name or IP address of the interface ELOG should run on
 # HOST=x.x.x.x
 # HOST=Your Interface IP
  HOST=192.168.1.100

      After changing the HOST you need to restart the service using the following command

     # /etc/init.d/elog restart

     After this we need to test this using

     http://youripaddress:8080

     If you want to add more entries to elog you need to edit the configuration file located at /etc/elog/elogd.cfg file

     Global and individual logbook options for an ELOG server
 

     The configuration file elogd.cfg contains entries which define the structure of logbooks and the behaviour of elogd. The file has a simple ASCII format. Each logbook is defined by a [<name>] section where <name> is the name of the logbook. The [global] section is used for settings common to all logbooks. Each line contains a setting name, followed by an equal sign and the value for this setting. Lines starting with ";" are treated as comments.

Here is a simple example, which define two logbooks, "Linux" and "PC":

[global]
SMTP host = mailsend.your.domain

[Linux]
Theme = default
Comment = General linux tips and tricks
Attributes = Author, Type, Category, Subject
Options Type = Routine, Software Installation, Problem Fixed, Configuration, Other
Options Category = General, Hardware, Software, Network, Account, Other
Options Author = Stefan, Linus, unknown
Required Attributes = Author

[PC]
Comment = Database PC installations
Attributes = Location, OS, Owner
Options Location = Building1, Building2
Options OS = Linux, Windows ME, Windows 2000
Required Attributes = Location, Owner
Email All = name@address, othername@otheraddress
Use Mail Subject = Location
 

     Global Options for elog.cfg file

    The notation of the following options is such that items enclosed by "<" and ">" should be replaced by a specific string. If a value contains blanks (like a complete sentence), it should not be enclosed in quotation marks.

If a setting has a number of possible options, they are shown in the form option1|option2|..., meaning that one of the options (without any vertical bar) should be used. The following options are specific to the [global] section:


Port = <port>
Specifies the TCP port under which the server is listening. Default is 80. Can be superseeded via the '-p' command line flag.

Resource dir = <directory>
Specifies the root directory for ELOG resources like help files, themes, icons and user HTML files. Can be overwritten with the -s flag when starting elogd. If not specified, use the directory where the configuration file elogd.cfg resides. Changing this option requires a restart of the elogd server.

Logbook dir = <directory>
Specifies the root directory for logbooks. Can be overwritten with the -d flag when starting elogd. If not specified, use the directory where the configuration file elogd.cfg resides. Each logbook data is stored in a separate directory under this root directory specified by the Subdir option. Changing this option requires a restart of the elogd server.

Language = <name>
The language setting determines the language of the elogd output. Not affected by this setting are the configuration file options and the commands specified with the optional Menu commands and List menu commands, which have to be specified in English and are translated automatically by elogd. The attribute names are unaffected by the language setting and have to be translated manually.

If a language name is given (currently "german", "french", "spanish", "dutch", "brazilian" are supported out-of-the-box), the system searches for a file named eloglang.<name> containing string translations from English into that language. If you create a new translation file, please send it back to the author to be included in future distributions.

The online help for elogd is contained in the file eloghelp_xx.html where xx are the first two letters of the language (like "en", "ge" and "fr"). For new languages, a new file of that type must be created as well.

charset = <name>
Specifies the charset of the pages produced by elogd. Can be used to switch to Russian or Asian fonts.

Logbook Tabs = [0|1]
This flag controls the display of "tabs" on top of the logbook page which allow to quickly switch between logbooks. Default is 1

Main Tab = <string>
If this option is present, an additional first tab is displayed which takes you back to the main logbook selection page. The string is used for the contents of the tab.

Welcome Title = <html code>
This optional HTML code gets displayed in the title of the logbook selection page. It can contain images via <img src="welcome.gif">. These images must be stored in the resource directory or in the theme directory.

The following line is an example Welcome Title:


Welcome title = <img src="welcome.jpg"><p><font size=5 color=white>Welcome to our Elog</font>

This displays an image and a text below.

Page title = <string>
The string specified here is used for the title of individual logbook pages. It is also used by most browsers for bookmark names. <string> can contain substitutions like $<attribute> where <attribute> gets replaced by the attribute string from each message. The option Page title in the [global] section is used for the logbook selection page.

List page title = <string>
The same for the summary or find result page. This may include substitutions as well, although attribute substitutions make no sense here, since the summary page may contain many messages with different attributes.

Selection page = <file>
When this option is present, a user defined file is displayed instead of the logbook selection page. This file must be stored in the resource directory. Alternatively, an absolute path can be used if the file name starts with a "/" (Unix) or "\" or "x:" (Windows).

It can be completely customized in order to contain logos etc. As a template, the standard selection page produced by elogd can be used.

Guest Selection page = <file>
The same for installations which have a global password file. This means that the logbook selection page is also password protected. It might be however that some logbooks have guest access, in which case guest access to the selection page should be allowed as well (maybe with only a subset of the available logbooks). In that case this options can be used, to show a list of logbooks with guest access.

Protect Selection page = 0 | 1
Normally, one can see the logbook selection page without having to log in. If one wants to require a login for the selection page, this switch can be set to 1. Default is 0. It is necessary to put the Password file = ... into the [global] section of the config file for this to work.

Expand Selection page = 0 | 1
If this option is not present or set to one, the logbook selection page is expanded (all logbooks are shown if groups of logbooks are present). If this option is zero, only the group names are displayed. If one clicks on a group, its logbooks are shown. Using this option set to zero only makes sense if one has a large number of logbooks which would not fit on a single browser window, so collapsing makes sense. Default is 1.

SMTP host = <host.domain>
This defines the SMTP host needed to send automatic email notifications. The host name you can get from your email program or your local system administrator.

SMTP username = <username>
Some SMTP server require username/passowrd authentication. This option specifies the SMTP user name, while the option SMTP password can be created or modified via the -t switch when starting elogd. This is necessary since the password is encrypted. To set your SMPT password, enter on the command line:
elogd -t <your password>


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

URL = <http[s]://host.domain[:port]/[subdir/]>
If one of the three cases is true:

elogd runs with stunnel
elogd runs under a proxy
The automatic email notifications contains the wrong URL
then the URL under which elogd is running has to be specified manually with this statement. The URL has to contain the port number if not the standard port 80 is used, it has to specify https:// if used under stunnel, and it has to contain the directory if used under a proxy like

URL = http://host.domain:8080/ if running on port 8080
URL = https://host.domain/ if running under stunnel
URL = http://host.domain/subdir/ if running under a proxy

Usr = <name>
Grp = <name>
The user and group to run the elogd daemon under when started by root.

Resolve host names = 0|1
Resolve remote host names if set to 1. If set to 0, which is the default, only IP numbers are stored in any log file. If the hosts allow/deny options are used with host names, this setting must be set to 1. If turned on, the DNS server is contacted on each HTTP request to elog, which can slow down the server considerably for slow DNS servers.
 

      This is the simple configuration for elog if you want more details and configuration options check below links

      Elog home page click here

      Elog administrator guide click here

      Elog User Guide Click here 

      If you want to see elog demo click here