syslog-ng Open Source Edition 3.33 - Administration Guide

Table of Contents

dqtool — Display the contents of a disk-buffer file created with syslog-ng Open Source Edition. You can also use it to move disk-buffer files to another directory.

Name

dqtool — Display the contents of a disk-buffer file created with syslog-ng Open Source Edition

Synopsis

dqtool [command] [options]

Description

NOTE: The dqtool application is distributed with the syslog-ng Open Source Edition system logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng package. The latest version of the syslog-ng application is available at the syslog-ng page.

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng, see the syslog-ng Documentation page.

The dqtool application is a utility that can be used to display and format the messages stored in a disk-buffer file.

The assign command

assign [options] [file]

Use the assign command to assign a disk-queue file to a specific entry in the persist file. If the specified entry does not exist in the persist file, it will be automatically created. Note that this option modifies the persist file. Stop syslog-ng before using this command.

The assign command has the following options. You must also add the path to the disk-queue file as parameter, for example, /tmp/syslog-ng-00000.rqf. If you use only the name of the file, dqtool assumes it is in the current working directory.

--new_path or -n: The entry in the persist file you want to assign the disk-queue file to. For example: "afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,localhost:15554)"
--persist or -p: The path to the syslog-ng persist file. The assign command automatically updates or creates the specified entry in the persist file.

Examples:

Relocate a single queue file:

bin/dqtool assign --persist /var/syslog-ng.persist --new_path "afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,localhost:15554)" /tmp/syslog-ng-00000.rqf

The cat command

cat [options] [file]

Use the cat command to display the log messages stored in the disk-buffer (also called disk-queue) file, and also information from the header of the disk queue file. The messages are printed to the standard output (stdout), so it is possible to use grep and other tools to find particular log messages, e.g., dqtool cat /var/log/messages.lgs |grep 192.168.1.1.

The cat command has the following options:

--debug or -d: Print diagnostic and debugging messages to stderr.
--help or -h: Display a brief help message.
--template=<template> or -t: Format the messages using the specified template.
--verbose or -v: Print verbose messages to stderr.
--version or -V: Display version information.

Example:

        ./dqtool cat ../var/syslog-ng-00000.qf

The output looks like:

        Disk-buffer state loaded; filename='../var/syslog-ng-00000.qf', qout_length='65', qbacklog_length='0', qoverflow_length='9205', qdisk_length='0'
Mar  3 10:52:05 tristram localprg[1234]: seq: 0000011630, runid: 1267609923, stamp: 2010-03-03T10:52:05 PADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADD
Mar  3 10:52:05 tristram localprg[1234]: seq: 0000011631, runid: 1267609923, stamp: 2010-03-03T10:52:05 PADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADD

The relocate command

relocate [options] [files]

Use the relocate command to move or rename disk-buffer (also called disk-queue) files. Note that this option modifies the persist file. Stop syslog-ng before using this command.

The cat command has the following options:

--all or -a: Relocate every disk-buffer file that is listed in the syslog-ng persist file.
--new_path or -n: The directory where you want to move the disk-buffer files. For example: /var/disk-buffers
--persist or -p: The path to the syslog-ng persist file. The relocate command automatically updates the entries of the disk-buffer files in the persist file.

Examples:

Relocate a single queue file:

bin/dqtool relocate --new_path /tmp/dq --persist var/syslog-ng.persist /tmp/syslog-ng-00000.rqf

Relocate multiple queue files:

bin/dqtool relocate --new_path /tmp/dq --persist var/syslog-ng.persist /tmp/syslog-ng-00000.rqf /tmp/syslog-ng-00001.rqf

Relocate every queue file:

bin/dqtool relocate --new_path /tmp/dq --persist var/syslog-ng.persist --all

Files

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool

Author

This manual page was written by the One Identity Documentation Team.

Copyright

The authors grant permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this manual page under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 or newer (GPL v2+).

loggen.1

Table of Contents

loggen — Generate syslog messages at a specified rate

Name

loggen — Generate syslog messages at a specified rate

Synopsis

loggen [options]
target [port]

Description

NOTE: The loggen application is distributed with the syslog-ng system logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng package. The latest version of the syslog-ng application is available at the syslog-ng page.

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng, see the syslog-ng Documentation page.

The loggen application is tool to test and stress-test your syslog server and the connection to the server. It can send syslog messages to the server at a specified rate, using a number of connection types and protocols, including TCP, UDP, and unix domain sockets. The messages can be generated automatically (repeating the PADDstring over and over), or read from a file or the standard input.

When loggen finishes sending the messages, it displays the following statistics:

average rate: Average rate the messages were sent in messages/second.
count: The total number of messages sent.
time: The time required to send the messages in seconds.
average message size: The average size of the sent messages in bytes.
bandwidth: The average bandwidth used for sending the messages in kilobytes/second.

Options

--active-connections <number-of-connections>

Number of connections loggen will use to send messages to the destination. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. Default value: 1

The loggen utility waits until every connection is established before starting to send messages. See also the --idle-connections option.

--csv or -C

Send the statistics of the sent messages to stdout as CSV. This can be used for plotting the message rate.

--dgram or -D

Use datagram socket (UDP or unix-dgram) to send the messages to the target. Requires the --inet option as well.

--dont-parse or -d

Do not parse the lines read from the input files, send them as received.

--help or -h

Display a brief help message.

--idle-connections <number-of-connections>

Number of idle connections loggen will establish to the destination. Note that loggen will not send any messages on idle connections, but the connection is kept open using keep-alive messages. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. See also the --active-connections option. Default value: 0

--inet or -i

Use the TCP (by default) or UDP (when used together with the --dgram option) protocol to send the messages to the target.

--interval <seconds> or -I <seconds>

The number of seconds loggen will run. Default value: 10

Note

Note that when the --interval and --number are used together, loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached, whichever happens first.

--ipv6 or -6

Specify the destination using its IPv6 address. Note that the destination must have a real IPv6 address.

--loop-reading or -l

Read the file specified in --read-file option in loop: loggen will start reading from the beginning of the file when it reaches the end of the file.

--number <number-of-messages> or -n <number-of-messages>

Number of messages to generate.

Note

--no-framing or -F

Do not use the framing of the IETF-syslog protocol style, even if the syslog-proto option is set.

--quiet or -Q

Output statistics only when the execution of loggen is finished. If not set, the statistics are displayed every second.

--permanent or -T

Keep sending logs indefinitely, without time limit.

--rate <message/second> or -r <message/second>

The number of messages generated per second for every active connection. Default value: 1000

If you want to change the message rate while loggen is running, send SIGUSR1 to double the message rate, or SIGUSR2 to halve it:

kill -USR1 <loggen-pid> kill -USR2 <loggen-pid>

--read-file <filename> or -R <filename>

Read the messages from a file and send them to the target. See also the --skip-tokens option.

Specify - as the input file to read messages from the standard input (stdio). Note that when reading messages from the standard input, loggen can only use a single thread. The -R - parameters must be placed at end of command, like: loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -

--sdata <data-to-send> or -p <data-to-send>

Send the argument of the --sdata option as the SDATA part of IETF-syslog (RFC5424 formatted) messages. Use it together with the --syslog-proto option. For example: --sdata "[test name=\"value\"]

--size <message-size> or -s <message-size>

The size of a syslog message in bytes. Default value: 256. Minimum value: 127 bytes, maximum value: 8192 bytes.

--skip-tokens <number>

Skip the specified number of space-separated tokens (words) at the beginning of every line. For example, if the messages in the file look like foo bar message, --skip-tokens 2 skips the foo bar part of the line, and sends only the message part. Works only when used together with the --read-file parameter. Default value: 0

--stream or -S

Use a stream socket (TCP or unix-stream) to send the messages to the target.

--syslog-proto or -P

Use the new IETF-syslog message format as specified in RFC5424. By default, loggen uses the legacy BSD-syslog message format (as described in RFC3164). See also the --no-framing option.

--unix </path/to/socket> or -x </path/to/socket>

Use a UNIX domain socket to send the messages to the target.

--use-ssl or -U

Use an SSL-encrypted channel to send the messages to the target. Note that it is not possible to check the certificate of the target, or to perform mutual authentication.

--version or -V

Display version number of syslog-ng.

Examples

The following command generates 100 messages per second for ten minutes, and sends them to port 2010 of the localhost via TCP. Each message is 300 bytes long.

        loggen --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

The following command is similar to the one above, but uses the UDP protocol.

        loggen --inet --dgram --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010

Send a single message on TCP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

        loggen --ipv6 --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message on UDP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:

        loggen --ipv6 --dgram --number 1 ::1 1061

Send a single message using a unix domain-socket:

        loggen --unix --stream --number 1 </path/to/socket>

Read messages from the standard input (stdio) and send them to the localhost:

        loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -

Files

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/loggen

Author

This manual page was written by the One Identity Documentation Team.

Copyright

The authors grant permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this manual page under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 or newer (GPL v2+).

pdbtool.1

Table of Contents

pdbtool — An application to test and convert syslog-ng pattern database rules

Name

pdbtool — An application to test and convert syslog-ng pattern database rules

Synopsis

pdbtool [command] [options]

Description

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng and pdbtool, see the syslog-ng Documentation page.

The syslog-ng application can match the contents of the log messages to a database of predefined message patterns (also called patterndb). By comparing the messages to the known patterns, syslog-ng is able to identify the exact type of the messages, tag the messages, and sort them into message classes. The message classes can be used to classify the type of the event described in the log message. The functionality of the pattern database is similar to that of the logcheck project, but the syslog-ng approach is faster, scales better, and is much easier to maintain compared to the regular expressions of logcheck.

The pdbtool application is a utility that can be used to:

test messages, or specific rules
convert an older pattern database to the latest database format
merge pattern databases into a single file
automatically create pattern databases from a large amount of log messages
dump the RADIX tree built from the pattern database (or a part of it) to explore how the pattern matching works.

The dictionary command

dictionary [options]

Lists every name-value pair that can be set by the rules of the pattern database.

--dump-tags or -T: List the tags instead of the names of the name-value pairs.
--pdb <path-to-file> or -p <path-to-file>: Name of the pattern database file to use.
--program <programname> or -P <programname>: List only the name-value pairs that can be set for the messages of the specified $PROGRAM application.

The dump command

dump [options]

Display the RADIX tree built from the patterns. This shows how are the patterns represented in syslog-ng and it might also help to track down pattern-matching problems. The dump utility can dump the tree used for matching the PROGRAM or the MESSAGE parts.

--debug or -d: Enable debug/diagnostic messages on stderr.
--pdb or -p: Name of the pattern database file to use.
--program or -P: Displays the RADIX tree built from the patterns belonging to the ${PROGRAM} application.
--program-tree or -T: Display the ${PROGRAM} tree.
--verbose or -v: Enable verbose messages on stderr.

Example and sample output:

        pdbtool dump -p patterndb.xml  -P 'sshd'

'p'
   'assword for'
     @QSTRING:@
       'from'
        @QSTRING:@
          'port '
            @NUMBER:@ rule_id='fc49054e-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
              ' ssh' rule_id='fc55cf86-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
                 '2' rule_id='fc4b7982-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
    'ublickey for'
      @QSTRING:@
        'from'
         @QSTRING:@
           'port '
             @NUMBER:@ rule_id='fc4d377c-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
               ' ssh' rule_id='fc5441ac-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'
                  '2' rule_id='fc44a9fe-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b'

The match command

match [options]

Use the match command to test the rules in a pattern database. The command tries to match the specified message against the patterns of the database, evaluates the parsers of the pattern, and also displays which part of the message was parsed successfully. The command returns with a 0 (success) or 1 (no match) return code and displays the following information:

the class assigned to the message (that is, system, violation, and so on),
the ID of the rule that matched the message, and
the values of the parsers (if there were parsers in the matching pattern).

The match command has the following options:

--color-out or -c: Color the terminal output to highlight the part of the message that was successfully parsed.
--debug or -d: Enable debug/diagnostic messages on stderr.
--debug-csv or -C: Print the debugging information returned by the --debug-pattern option as comma-separated values.
--debug-pattern or -D: Print debugging information about the pattern matching. See also the --debug-csv option.
--file=<filename-with-path> or -f: Process the messages of the specified log file with the pattern database. This option allows to classify messages offline, and to apply the pattern database to already existing logfiles. To read the messages from the standard input (stdin), specify a hyphen (-) character instead of a filename.
--filter=<filter-expression> or -F: Print only messages matching the specified syslog-ng filter expression.
--message or -M: The text of the log message to match (only the ${MESSAGE} part without the syslog headers).
--pdb or -p: Name of the pattern database file to use.
--program or -P: Name of the program to use, as contained in the ${PROGRAM} part of the syslog message.
--template=<template-expression> or -T: A syslog-ng template expression that is used to format the output messages.
--verbose or -v: Enable verbose messages on stderr.

Example: The following command checks if the patterndb.xml file recognizes the Accepted publickey for myuser from 127.0.0.1 port 59357 ssh6 message:

        pdbtool match -p patterndb.xml -P sshd -M "Accepted publickey for myuser from 127.0.0.1 port 59357 ssh6"

The following example applies the sshd.pdb pattern database file to the log messages stored in the /var/log/messages file, and displays only the messages that received a useracct tag.

pdbtool match -p sshd.pdb \
  –file /var/log/messages \
  –filter ‘tags(“usracct”);’

The merge command

merge [options]

Use the merge command to combine separate pattern database files into a single file (pattern databases are usually stored in separate files per applications to simplify maintenance). If a file uses an older database format, it is automatically updated to the latest format (V3). See the syslog-ng Documentation page for details on the different pattern database versions.

--debug or -d: Enable debug/diagnostic messages on stderr.
--directory or -D: The directory that contains the pattern database XML files to be merged.
--glob or -G: Specify filenames to be merged using a glob pattern, for example, using wildcards. For details on glob patterns, see man glob. This pattern is applied only to the filenames, and not on directory names.
--pdb or -p: Name of the output pattern database file.
--recursive or -r: Merge files from subdirectories as well.
--sort or -s: Sort files into alphabetic order during the merge (first sort by filename, then by directory name).
--verbose or -v: Enable verbose messages on stderr.

Example:

        pdbtool merge --recursive --directory /home/me/mypatterns/  --pdb /var/lib/syslog-ng/patterndb.xml

Currently it is not possible to convert a file without merging, so if you only want to convert an older pattern database file to the latest format, you have to copy it into an empty directory.

The patternize command

patternize [options]

Automatically create a pattern database from a log file containing a large number of log messages. The resulting pattern database is printed to the standard output (stdout). The pdbtool patternize command uses a data clustering technique to find similar log messages and replacing the differing parts with @ESTRING:: @ parsers. For details on pattern databases and message parsers, see the syslog-ng Documentation page. The patternize command is available only in syslog-ng OSE version 3.2 and later.

--debug or -d

Enable debug/diagnostic messages on stderr.

--file=<path> or -f

The logfile containing the log messages to create patterns from. To receive the log messages from the standard input (stdin), use -.

--iterate-outliers or -o

Recursively iterate on the log lines to cover as many log messages with patterns as possible.

--named-parsers or -n

The number of example log messages to include in the pattern database for every pattern. Default value: 1

--no-parse or -p

Do not parse the input file, treat every line as the message part of a log message.

--samples=<number-of-samples>

Include a generated name in the parsers, for example, .dict.string1, .dict.string2, and so on.

--support=<number> or -S

A pattern is added to the output pattern database if at least the specified percentage of log messages from the input logfile match the pattern. For example, if the input logfile contains 1000 log messages and the --support=3.0 option is used, a pattern is created only if the pattern matches at least 3 percent of the log messages (that is, 30 log messages). If patternize does not create enough patterns, try to decrease the support value.

Default value: 4.0

--verbose or -v

Enable verbose messages on stderr.

Example:

        pdbtool patternize --support=2.5 --file=/var/log/messages

The test command

test [options]

Use the test command to validate a pattern database XML file. Note that you must have the xmllint application installed. The test command is available only in syslog-ng OSE version 3.2 and later.

--color-out or -c: Enable coloring in terminal output.
--debug or -d: Enable debug/diagnostic messages on stderr.
--debug or -D: Print debugging information on non-matching patterns.
--rule-id or -r: Test only the patterndb rule (specified by its rule id) against its example.
--validate: Validate a pattern database XML file.
--verbose or -v: Enable verbose messages on stderr.

Example:

        pdbtool test --validate /home/me/mypatterndb.pdb

Files

/opt/syslog-ng/

/opt/syslog-ng/etc/syslog-ng.conf

Author

This manual page was written by the One Identity Documentation Team.

Copyright

The authors grant permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this manual page under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 or newer (GPL v2+).

persist-tool.1

Name

persist-tool — Display the content of the persist file

Synopsis

persist-tool [command] [options]

Description

NOTE: The persist-tool application is distributed with the system logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng package. The latest version of the syslog-ng application is available at https://syslog-ng.com..

This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng, see https://syslog-ng.com..

The persist-tool application is a utility that can be used to dump the content of the persist file, and manipulate its content.

Warning

Persist-tool is a special tool for syslog-ng experts. Do use the tool unless you know exactly what you are doing. Misconfiguring it will result in irrecoverable damage to the persist file, without any warning.

Note

Limitations:

Wildcard characters are not supported in file/directory names.

The dump command

dump [options] [persist_file]

Use the dump command to print the current content of the persist file in JSON format to the console.

The dump command has the following options:

--help or -?: Display a brief help message.

Example:

persist-tool dump /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng.persist

The output looks like:

run_id = { "value": "00 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00 " }
host_id = { "value": "00 00 00 00 5F 49 2F 01 " }

The add command

add [options] [input_file]

Use the add command to add or modify a specified state-entry in the persist file. The state-entry should be in the same format as the dump command displays it. If the given state-entry already exists, it will be updated. Otherwise, a new value will be added. If the given persist state is invalid, it will be skipped.

To use the add command: use persist-tool dump to print the content of the current persist file, and redirect it to a file. Edit the content of this file. Use persist-tool add with this file to modify the persist.

The add command has the following options:

--help or -?: Display a brief help message.
--output-dir=<directory> or -o: Required parameter. The directory where the persist file is located at. The name of the persist file stored in this directory must be syslog-ng.persist.
--persist-name=<filename> or -p: Optional parameter. The name of the persist file to generate. Default value: syslog-ng.persist.

Example:

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/persist-tool add dump_persist -o .

The valid output looks like:

log_reader_curpos(Application)      OK
affile_sd_curpos(/var/aaa.txt)        OK

The invalid output looks like:

log_reader_curpos(Application)      OK
wrong
        FAILED (error: Invalid entry syntax)
affile_sd_curpos(/var/aaa.txt)        OK

Files

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/persist-tool

Note

For the detailed documentation of syslog-ng OSE see The syslog-ng OSE Administrator Guide

If you experience any problems or need help with syslog-ng, visit the syslog-ng mailing list.

For news and notifications about of syslog-ng, visit the syslog-ng blogs.

Author

This manual page was written by the One Identity Documentation Team.

Copyright

Copyright 2000-2019 One Identity. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (by-nc-nd) 3.0 license. For details, see https://creativecommons.org//. The latest version is always available at https://www.syslog-ng.com.

Please select your product:

To serve you better, please complete the Purpose of your Chat:

Recommended Solutions for Your Problem

syslog-ng Open Source Edition 3.33 - Administration Guide

dqtool.1

Name

Synopsis

Description

The assign command

The cat command

The relocate command

Files

See also

Author

Copyright

loggen.1

Name

Synopsis

Description

Options

Examples

Files

See also

Author

Copyright

pdbtool.1

Name

Synopsis

Description

The dictionary command

The dump command

The match command

The merge command

The patternize command

The test command

Files

See also

Author

Copyright

persist-tool.1

Name

Synopsis

Description

Warning

Note

The dump command

The add command

Files

See also

Note

Author

Copyright