I am not a programmer and have no idea how much work
this idea would take to achieve, but I thought that
some kind of logbook luci-app would be excellent to have
I have searched the wiki and forum and the list of
software on my router, but cannot find anything
like this
It would allow administrators of a device to
create notes, reminders, and remarks, etc,
which are arranged into order of creation time and date.
perhaps having - username - summary - date and time created
as headings on the logbook page
and controls for deleting the logbook entries
also a very simple method of creating and storing the notes
with fields such as: author, title, text
and a save button
It's just an idea.
Also, please let me know if there is already something like that for
openwrt which I have overlooked
Is your idea about temporary or permanent storage?
If it is about permanent storage, most routers are equipped with pretty fragile permanent memory, every time you write to them, their life cycle ticks down. This isn't in the millions, just a couple of ten thousands.
Plenty, if you flash them every couple of months, not very much if you write every couple of seconds.
In temporary storage, you can write as often as you want, but everything will be lost on a power loss or reboot of the router.
Oh I hadn't thought of that. Yes, you're right there are a lot of circumstances under which
it would all get wiped out anyway. I was just thinking about it all being written to a text file
Some kind of scratchpad can probably be made to work, even for permanent storage, but you'd have to have an x86 type system with an ssd, or an external drive via usb, if your router has it. I think infrastructure management, think disconnect, reconnect, filesystem initialisation, filesystem recognition, automounting, also keep in mind file identity and concurrent changes, could be some formidable challenges.
Maybe you want to check out (no pun intended) some "git" plugin to redirect to your git server or some type of webdav solution (I haven't used that on openwrt, but it must be are available).
I have seen and used routers with such a facility, a long time ago admittedly. It was useful in situations where multiple people might be managing a router, and might want to inform such administrators of changes, concerns, ideas etc, to do with that router, but you are correct, why add such complexity or overhead when a pencil and a notebook in a desk drawer would achieve the same end?
I do see the point of NOT having such a facility and yet I did want to float the idea. To be honest I cant remember the routers I used with that. It may have been firebox II, or some of the sonicwall routers.
and they may have had large HDD's
I found it useful, but then again, in my days in mainframe environments a pen and paper sufficed
Interesting idea, I think. One option is simply to make use of luci-app-samba4 (see here) and save the text file on the samba share (readily accessible from a desktop machine). I think the concerns about writing to flash memory may be a little overstated here. I develop cake-autorate and other tools directly on the router and after lots of use checked the wear levelling stats and didn't encounter anything troubling. Naturally any time a router setting is tweaked and saved that modification is surely also written to the permanent storage. I presume what is more problematic is repeated, large writes, e.g. storing large, changing blocklists associated with adblocking utilities (not adblock-lean, since we only ever write to /tmp).
Just configure the System > Logging page to make a user-written entry. The device's admin already has an option to where to save. If you don't wan't it in the log, simply make another option to save/append the written entry to some other file.
Definitely missed that. So those notes would be "configured" as:
Name
Type
Required
Default
Description
notes
string
no
(none)
A multi-line, free-form text field about this system that can be used in any way the user wishes, e.g. to hold installation notes, or unit serial number and inventory number, location, etc.
I have seen that and used it - it's simple but a little too simple, however it would be sufficient.
Thanks everyone for so many good ideas. I will experiment with them. Incidentally, it was because
I used the system notes text box that I wondered if it could be made more expansive without being too expensive, resource wise. So I made this thread
Great replies TY
