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🖥️ActiveHome Pro => ActiveHome Pro General => Topic started by: Noam on October 28, 2010, 03:39:10 PM

Title: Utility to read old cmdhst.xx log files
Post by: Noam on October 28, 2010, 03:39:10 PM
I know there are a few old threads about this, but I never saw an answer to this particular question.

Does anyone know of a way to read the cmdhst.xx files that AHP uses to store old activity logs, AFTER they have already been cleared from AHP?

I am trying to re-create an error situation I had a few weeks ago, but all I have are the cmdhst.xx files that were backed up from my PC each night.

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to take those, and reconstruct the activity log from them.

Thanks
Title: Re: Utility to read old cmdhst.xx log files
Post by: Dan Lawrence on October 28, 2010, 08:41:26 PM
They are basically unreadable.   Wordpad can open them, but the result is 100% gibberish. 
Title: Re: Utility to read old cmdhst.xx log files
Post by: Noam on October 29, 2010, 09:53:02 AM
Quote from: Dan Lawrence on October 28, 2010, 08:41:26 PM
They are basically unreadable.   Wordpad can open them, but the result is 100% gibberish. 

Thanks, I was able to figure that part out already ;-)
According to the answer I got back from AHP Dev, the files are in "a binary format of header + series of records and is pretty tightly integrated."

I was really hoping for a better answer. I understand that they didn't make it easy, but I just see it as a challenge (for some of the users who have good programming skills, and like a challenge - not for me ;-) ).

Anyone out there want to try and tackle this one?

I suggested to AHP Dev that perhaps in a future revision, they could modify the logging function so that the user had the option of dumping out to CSV, XML, or RSS - something that would be useful later on, and could be archived for future reference. That would also open up new options for real-time monitoring and alerts, as I could have a separate program watch the log file, and perform some action (send me an e-mail, start a program, or even send X10 signals) if it saw a certain string show up in the Activity log (like "Receive RF A Unknown"  - one of my current problems!)