syslog-ng Open Source Edition 3.25 - Administration Guide

Formatting messages, filenames, directories, and tablenames

The syslog-ng OSE application can dynamically create filenames, directories, or names of database tables using macros that help you organize your log messages. Macros refer to a property or a part of the log message, for example, the ${HOST} macro refers to the name or IP address of the client that sent the log message, while ${DAY} is the day of the month when syslog-ng has received the message. Using these macros in the path of the destination log files allows you for example, to collect the logs of every host into separate files for every day.

A set of macros can be defined as a template object and used in multiple destinations.

Another use of macros and templates is to customize the format of the syslog message, for example, to add elements of the message header to the message text.

• For details on using templates and macros, see Templates and macros.

• For a list and description of the macros available in syslog-ng OSE, see Macros of syslog-ng OSE.

• For details on using custom macros created with CSV parsers and pattern databases, see parser: Parse and segment structured messages and Using parser results in filters and templates, respectively.

Templates and macros

The syslog-ng OSE application allows you to define message templates, and reference them from every object that can use a template. Templates can include strings, macros (for example, date, the hostname, and so on), and template functions. For example, you can use templates to create standard message formats or filenames. For a list of macros available in syslog-ng Open Source Edition, see Macros of syslog-ng OSE. Fields from the structured data (SD) part of messages using the new IETF-syslog standard can also be used as macros.

template <template-name> {
    template("<template-expression>") <template-escape(yes)>;
};

Template objects have a single option called template-escape(), which is disabled by default (template-escape(no)). This behavior is useful when the messages are passed to an application that cannot handle escaped characters properly. Enabling template escaping (template-escape(yes)) causes syslog-ng to escape the ', ", and backslash characters from the messages.

If you do not want to enable the template-escape() option (which is rarely needed), you can define the template without the enclosing braces.

template <template-name> "<template-expression>";

You can also refer to an existing template from within a template. The result of the referred template will be pasted into the second template.

template first-template "sample-text";
template second-template "The result of the first-template is: $(template first-template)";

If you want to use a template only once, you can define the template inline, for example:

destination d_file {
    file ("/var/log/messages" template("${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MESSAGE}\n") );
};

Macros can be included by prefixing the macro name with a $ sign, just like in Bourne compatible shells. Although using braces around macro names is not mandatory, and the "$MESSAGE" and "${MESSAGE}" formats are equivalent, using the "${MESSAGE}" format is recommended for clarity.

To use a literal $ character in a template, you have to escape it. In syslog-ng OSE versions 3.4 and earlier, use a backslash (\$). In version 3.5 and later, use $$.

Default values for macros can also be specified by appending the :- characters and the default value of the macro. If a message does not contain the field referred to by the macro, or it is empty, the default value will be used when expanding the macro. For example, if a message does not contain a hostname, the following macro can specify a default hostname.

${HOST:-default_hostname}

By default, syslog-ng sends messages using the following template: ${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MSGHDR}${MESSAGE}\n. (The ${MSGHDR}${MESSAGE} part is written together because the ${MSGHDR} macro includes a trailing whitespace.)

template t_demo_filetemplate {
    template("${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MESSAGE}\n");
};
destination d_file {
    file("/var/log/messages" template(t_demo_filetemplate));
};

template t_demo_template-with-braces {
    template("${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MESSAGE}\n");
};
template t_demo_template-without-braces "${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MESSAGE}\n";

destination d_file {
    file ("/var/log/messages" template("${ISODATE} ${HOST} ${MESSAGE}\n") );
};

destination d_file {
        file("/var/log/${YEAR}.${MONTH}.${DAY}/${HOST}.log");
};

Date-related macros

The macros related to the date of the message (for example: ${ISODATE}, ${HOUR}, and so on) have three further variants each:

• S_ prefix, for example, ${S_DATE}: The ${S_DATE} macro represents the date found in the log message, that is, when the message was sent by the original application.

  Caution: To use the S_ macros, the keep-timestamp() option must be enabled (this is the default behavior of syslog-ng OSE).

• R_ prefix, for example, ${R_DATE}: ${R_DATE} is the date when syslog-ng OSE has received the message.

• C_ prefix, for example, ${C_DATE}: ${C_DATE} is the current date, that is when syslog-ng OSE processes the message and resolves the macro.

The ${DATE} macro equals the ${S_DATE} macro.

The values of the date-related macros are calculated using the original timezone information of the message. To convert it to a different timezone, use the time-zone() option. You can set the time-zone() option as a global option, or per destination. For sources, it applies only if the original message does not contain timezone information. Alternatively, you can modify the timezone of the message using timezone-specific rewrite rules. For details, see Rewrite the timezone of a message.

Converting the timezone changes the values of the following date-related macros (macros MSEC and USEC are not changed):

• AMPM

• DATE

• DAY

• FULLDATE

• HOUR

• HOUR12

• ISODATE

• ISOWEEK

• MIN

• MONTH

• MONTH_ABBREV

• MONTH_NAME

• MONTH_WEEK

• SEC

• STAMP

• TZ

• TZOFFSET

• UNIXTIME

• WEEK

• WEEK_DAY

• WEEK_DAY_ABBREV

• WEEK_DAY_NAME

• YEAR

• YEAR_DAY

Hard versus soft macros

Hard macros contain data that is directly derived from the log message, for example, the ${MONTH} macro derives its value from the timestamp. Hard macros are read-only. Soft macros (sometimes also called name-value pairs) are either built-in macros automatically generated from the log message (for example, ${HOST}), or custom user-created macros generated by using the syslog-ng pattern database or a CSV-parser. In contrast to hard macros, soft macros are writable and can be modified within syslog-ng OSE, for example, using rewrite rules.

Hard and soft macros are rather similar and often treated as equivalent. Macros are most commonly used in filters and templates, which does not modify the value of the macro, so both soft and hard macros can be used. However, it is not possible to change the values of hard macros in rewrite rules or via any other means.

The following macros in syslog-ng OSE are hard macros and cannot be modified: BSDTAG, CONTEXT_ID, DATE, DAY, FACILITY_NUM, FACILITY, FULLDATE, HOUR, ISODATE, ISOWEEK, LEVEL_NUM, LEVEL, MIN, MONTH_ABBREV, MONTH_NAME, MONTH, MONTH_WEEK, PRIORITY, PRI, RCPTID, SDATA, SEC, SEQNUM, SOURCEIP, STAMP, TAG, TAGS, TZOFFSET, TZ, UNIXTIME, WEEK_DAY_ABBREV, WEEK_DAY_NAME, WEEK_DAY, WEEK, YEAR_DAY, YEAR.

The following macros can be modified:FULLHOST_FROM, FULLHOST, HOST_FROM, HOST, LEGACY_MSGHDR, MESSAGE, MSG,MSGID, MSGONLY, PID, PROGRAM, SOURCE. Custom values created using rewrite rules or parsers can be modified as well, just like stored matches of regular expressions ($0 ... $255).

Note that you can modify the timezone of the message, and change the timezone-related macros that way. For details, see Rewrite the timezone of a message.