Tired of losing your log file because you forgot to rename it after a particularly engrossing session of role-play? Then download the Gnomish Log Rotator (GLR) 5000, and say goodbye to overwritten logs forever!
GLR 5000 is a simple, brilliantly conceived utility that automatically rotates your Neverwinter Nights client and server log files, thus preventing them from being overwritten. GLR 5000 is the successor to the original Gnomish Log Rotator (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Other.Detail&id=155) and like the original is destined to revolutionize the computer gaming industry.
Posted by Pathos Street at 2010-06-20 08:48:51 Voted 9.00 on 06/20/10
The GLR doesn't seem to play well with UAC in Vista and Windows 7. It works very well otherwise.
Posted by Fratsic at 2009-11-04 08:47:52 Voted 9.00 on 11/04/09
Great tool, it makes saving logs as painless as it should. Absolutely required if you value your logs as I do.
Only one comment, and that is that I would like to see it start silently, without the dialog. Now I have to close it after every reboot of my pc, and since it is running Windows, that is more often than I want.
Mine doesn't work, it used to but ever since I moved over to windows 7 it doesn't. It just won't copy the log files. Everything else works, except the main thing :(
Posted by Rain In'Darsus at 2008-11-09 09:38:30 Voted 7.00 on 10/31/08
oh alright, do you know if it is a change they made or something you can edit out of the ini files?
1. I plan to include the ability to manually name log files in the next release.
2. The information in the log file itself is put there by NWN. GLR 5K has no control over this, nor did the previous version.
Posted by Rain In'Darsus at 2008-10-31 21:12:56 Voted 7.00 on 10/31/08
Hey there Undertowe. Probably remember me as Hellblazer from Layonara.com, having made a walk through of the Glr3.1 back then for the community I'm part of.
Just like to say I like the ease to get the glr 5k installed and working beside two things.
1: I strongly preferred the way to manually name the logs. With heavy rp it was a lot more easier to track back what happened if you could put a specific name pertaining to that rp on the log file.
2: in the logs themselves. The date and time is missing. I loved the way the old one used to save line by line with date and time inside the logs it self. It made it a lot easier to find the precise moment of what happened. Options to have D/T or just T, or none at all would be awesome.
The reason I'm asking this option is that a lot of communities asks proof of burdens to reimburse losses of xp, items or death tokens. without at least the time in the log it makes having the glr 5k unusable for us.
So in the next version or revision of the glr 5k, having those options will give me it a big plus and a happy recommendation of my part to all my community.
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-10-25 14:32:16 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
Zebranky, if you're comp crashed then its easier just to move your log yourself IMO. it' a rare occurrence for a comp to die while playing NWN, and if it is happening frequently, then there's something wrong with your machine
I'm not saying to rotate when GLR 5000 starts *rather than* when NWN terminates, I'm suggesting doing it *in addition to* when NWN terminates. This addresses what happens if your entire machine locks up/crash/reboot while playing NWN -- you still have a log file left over from that, but GLR 5000 never saw a clean exit, so it won't bother rotating. If you start GLR 5000 when Windows starts, it will see that log and take care of it.
I don't see how rotating the log when GLR 5000 starts, rather than when NWN terminates, is a better approach. If you did, wouldn't you have to start GLR 5000 (or manually tell it to rotate the log) every time you wanted to rotate the log? It seems to me that log rotation would then become a manual process subject to the user remembering to do so.
One might think that we could rotate the log when NWN is launched. That won't work with the current setup because GLR 5000 doesn't actually launch NNW. It merely detects if the process is running. At the point where it detected that NWN was launched, it would already be too late to rotate the last log - it's already been overwritten.
Also, let's assume that GLR 5000 crashes when it attempts to rotate a log after NWN terminates. Worst case scenario - the user doesn't notice the failure and the log gets overwritten the next time they launch NWN. Now, let's assume that GLR 5000 rotates a log when it, GLR 5000, is launched. What happens if it crashes? Pretty much the same thing - the user might not notice and later launch NWN, overwriting the log.
Pretty darn handy, but a couple thoughts:
- The way you described the logic, if your entire system should crash, the log won't get rotated, and it will get overwritten when you next start the game. How about rotating when GLR5000 starts?
- Any thoughts of releasing the source code? :)
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-07-19 08:59:20 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
Anything within single quotes gets used literally. Anything outside of single quotes is treated as formatting and is replaced with the date/time information.
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-07-18 06:59:27 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
I understand what your saying mate, i just liked the ease of 3.1. For people like me hwho only play on one server having the option of having everything done for you is great.
Stormsguard, did you enter anything for "Log naming convention" or is it blank? If not blank, please let me know what you put there.
As for the direct connect feature, I'm not sure what else to say. I didn't anticipate that GLR 5000 would be faulted for not including functionality that is 1) completely peripheral to its purpose 2) better off being handled by the user manually if at all possible. That wasn't possible with the original GLR because of the way it worked, which interfered with launching NWN. It now is possible with GLR 5000, and we're better off. Without GLR "managing" direct connect you can do cool stuff like create multiple batch files, one for each server you play on. That's an improvement, no?
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-07-17 04:09:29 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
For those like me who don't puters, to make a batch file just copy Undertowe's instructions into note pad (changing th einstal root if it different) then save it as a .bat file, make sure you select all files from the file type, otherwise it'll save as a text file.
Also, Undertowe, for some reason it's saving the files it rotates without an extention, so it shows up as a .file file, rather than a .txt file.
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-07-17 03:43:58 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
You did good :)
Problem is not everyone knows how to make a batch file, me included. We rely on people like you who are the super geeks to fill our needs :)
It would be a nice feature to have as an option, so if people want their own batch files, they can. But those of us who don't know how to make one aren't left scratching our heads :D
Let me explain why I didn't include the ability to direct connect in GLR 5000, and why I probably never will.
GLR was always intended to do one thing, and one thing well - rotate logs. As you are probably aware, the original GLR generates a batch file (nwn.bat) which must be executed by the user. This batch file launches NWN and, after NWN terminates, launches GLR to rotate the log. From the beginning this approach left something to be desired. Some people like to create and manage their own batch files to accomplish various things. One of those things is being able to direct connect to a server, thereby bypassing the gamespy server browser. This is done by appending some command line arguments when executing NWN (e.g. nwmain.exe +connect 127.0.0.1 +password password). However, because the original GLR generates the batch file from which NWN is launched, any changes that a user makes to this batch file for their own purposes will be overwritten by GLR. That is, unless GLR supports what they are trying to do. Early versions of GLR didn't support direct connect, but I decided to add that feature because so many people use direct connect. If GLR didn't support it, users would not be able to direct connect and use GLR at the same time. Again, this conflict arose because of the particular approach that GLR used - generating the batch file used to launch NWN. GLR was never intended to be a NWN "launcher". That it did launch NWN was incidental to how it rotated logs.
GLR 5000 uses a completely different approach. Instead of launching NWN itself, it monitors the running processes on the machine and kick into action when the associated process (NWN, NWN2, etc.) terminates. By separating the concerns of launching NWN and rotating the logs, it allows the user to launch NWN in any way they see fit, and provides much more flexibility in general. Yes, it no longer manages direct connect, but it was never supposed to.
Having said all that, you can use direct connect along with GLR 5000 by creating a batch file with something like the following lines:
cd "C:\NeverwinterNights\NWN"
nwmain.exe +connect 127.0.0.1 +password password
or to connect using the DM client, replace the last line with:
where 127.0.0.1 is the IP address of the server and password is the password.
I hope I've done an adequate job explaining why the direct connect feature is missing from GLR 5000, and why it's no longer necessary for GLR to manage that concern, and why that's a good thing. I'd ask that you reconsider your vote of 4.5 since direct connect really shouldn't come under the purview of a log rotator, and we're much better off when it doesn't.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Posted by Stormsguard at 2008-07-13 10:09:31 Voted 10.00 on 10/25/08
It's a nice piece of software, and works fine for what it does. however it lacks an important function that it's predecessor has. The ability to direct connect to a server.
That's what i love about the old GLR and why i've gone back to it. Having it set so it can login directly to the gameserver without having to mess around in gamespy.
Add that function and it'll be a perfect piece of kit!!
Shadin, you haven't provided much detail so I can't tell exactly what is causing the crash, but in the configuration make sure "Location of NWN client log" points to an existing file and "Save logs to" points to an existing directory. If either of those paths are invalid it could cause a crash. In the meantime, I'll be adding better error-handling to prevent crashes.
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