Thoughts on Logs

[vampus8]

First off, I just want to give a huge thanks to Kels for this fabulous program. I've been using it for a year and a half now and it's yet to disappoint. Well done!

I've been overhauling my unattended disk over the holidays and find myself spending a lot of time trudging through log files to nail down errors. As I do, two small tweaks seem like they'd be helpful.

First, it'd be much easier to read the log files if the timestamp and result for each command line were on the same line in the text file. This is easy enough to change, just edit line 117 of installer_log.js.

Old Version:

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:08:43 AM
   Program: Ad-Aware 2007
   UID: ADAWARE
   Order: 003280
   Category: Free Applications
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:01 AM
   cmd1 Success (returned code 0): ""C:\DuD 2.0 RC3\Software\Ad-Aware\aaw2007.exe" TRANSFORMS="C:\DuD 2.0 RC3\Software\Ad-Aware\NoLic.mst" /qb"
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM
   cmd2 Success (returned code 1): "cmd /c copy "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware 2007\Ad-Aware 2007.lnk" "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\start menu\programs\""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM
   cmd3 Success (returned code 0): "cmd /c del "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Ad-Watch 2007.lnk""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM
   cmd4 Success (returned code 0): "cmd /c rmdir /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\start menu\programs\Lavasoft\""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM
   Finished installation.

New log files look like this:

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:08:43 AM
   Program: Ad-Aware 2007
   UID: ADAWARE
   Order: 003280
   Category: Free Applications
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:01 AM   cmd1 Success (returned code 0): ""C:\DuD 2.0 RC3\Software\Ad-Aware\aaw2007.exe" TRANSFORMS="C:\DuD 2.0 RC3\Software\Ad-Aware\NoLic.mst" /qb"
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM   cmd2 Success (returned code 1): "cmd /c copy "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware 2007\Ad-Aware 2007.lnk" "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\start menu\programs\""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM   cmd3 Success (returned code 0): "cmd /c del "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Ad-Watch 2007.lnk""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM   cmd4 Success (returned code 0): "cmd /c rmdir /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\start menu\programs\Lavasoft\""
   Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:09:02 AM   Finished installation.

The advantage is that you can easily scan through the return codes for errors in the new version.

The second change would be to start timestamping log file names, something like "WPI_Log_YYYY.MM.DD_HH.MM.SS.txt". Then new log files wouldn't overwrite old log files so you could track a bug across multiple install attempts. I'm not sure how to do this one.

Again, fabulous program and thanks to everyone who's worked so hard to make it possible.

Best,

Kevin

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Ok sounds good to me I will add it in.