logging / chat history feature

[mr.mosch@…]

I'm looking for a chat history feature, so that bitlbee can playback my chat history.

This may improve the bee experience!

[wilmer]

Play back your chat history? Can you explain that a bit better?

You mean that BitlBee, when someone starts a chat with you, gives you some context (say, the last ten lines from/to that person)?

[anonymous]

You mean that BitlBee, when someone starts a chat with you, gives you some context (say, the last ten lines from/to that person)?

that is exactly what i mean. It would also be nice to have a full log of conversations on the servers disk.

i got multiple clients connecting to the bitlbee server, home pc, laptop, office pc, cellphone and all clients have their own logs - so i can not really search my logs.

[wilmer]

Ah yeah, I have something like that set up in my irssi right now, it's pretty neat.

So I assume you run your own BitlBee then, right? I'm pretty sure people wouldn't want a public BitlBee server to keep track of chat history.

But how would you search through logs.. by logging into the BitlBee server I guess?

[mr.mosch@…]

So I assume you run your own BitlBee then, right? I'm pretty sure people wouldn't want a public BitlBee server to keep track of chat history.

A solution could be: The feature must be enabled at the control channel, default to disabled. Maybe you could add some encryption.

But how would you search through logs.. by logging into the BitlBee server I guess?

Or asking BitlBee to show me all conversation with person xyz.

[wilmer]

So if you ask BitlBee to show you all conversations with xyz ... it will possibly end up sending you hundreds of kilobytes of logs?

That's what I'm worried about ... showing a quick 10-line backlog when a new conversation pops up seems nice. But digging through full IRC logs through an IRC connection feels to me like eating yogurt through a straw. It's definitely possible but it takes a lot of patience and there are simply better ways to do it. :>

[anonymous]

yeah, you are right, would be stupid. And the 10 line backlog does also make no sense in some enviroments / setups. Maybe as optional feature

[wilmer]

Keeping track of logs in plain textfiles is not a terrible idea, but reading them through IRC would be hard. If the logs are just local textfiles on a box you can log into, it's all fine.

However, have you looked at using an IRC proxy or so with logging functionality? The problem with doing this in BitlBee is, it logs just BitlBee stuff. What about your other IRC networks/channels?

[anonymous]

I am currently using ZNC IRC Bouncer to realize the logging. But it is a complex setup and not very simple to use.

Im trying to setup a system that can be used by everyone, rookies and pros ;)

[anonymous]

logging to the same format as pidgin on the server side could be useful; again this would have to be a knob disabled by default but the only reason i don't want to use bitlbee at this point is because i have 10 years of logs from gaim/pidgin and i really don't want to suddenly stop ;)

i see a new libpurple option for the bitlbee port in openbsd, would it be possible to adapt that knob to use the exact logging facility existing in libpurple? i haven't looked into how far libpurple plays in with bitlbee these days, i did read the faq about how much gaim there was in the program but thought perhaps the faq is a few years old :D cheers,

(by the same format as pidgin that inclines a folder structure under logs such as: msnuser@…/ MyAolName/ YahooNickHere/ 98023421/

each of those would thus contain a folder for each buddy's name, and inside that a log for each conversation) it has been discussed that since they moved from one log file per user to individual files it is eating up far too many inodes... perhaps they should also have options for sqlite or actual sql servers for logs. ramble on.

-ryan

[anonymous]

is there any progress? will this feature get implemented in the future?

[anonymous]

Just a datapoint: Im using my clients loggin atm, but want to move over to use znc logging in conjunction with dovecot imap. then i can access my logs with an imap client.

[yatt]

+1 for pidgin-like logging. The imap idea is interesting but presumably more complicated.

I'm not so bothered about being able to access it in bitlbee as I will have access to the local file system. You could make them accessible via file transfer or maybe have some search methods with a "your search would return 50,000 lines, are you sure you want to continue?" type message.

[Benzi-Junior]

Replying to wilmer:

So I assume you run your own BitlBee then, right? I'm pretty sure people wouldn't want a public BitlBee server to keep track of chat history.

One solution would be to add functionality to get message history from services that will store them anyways (GoogleTalk,Facebook,Titter,Skype,WhatsApp,Discord all provide that functionality)

This is also very useful when starting to use bitlbee or if your server has gone down for any reason.