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syslog-ng Premium Edition 7.0.29 - Administration Guide

Preface Introduction to syslog-ng The concepts of syslog-ng Installing syslog-ng PE The syslog-ng PE quick-start guide The syslog-ng PE configuration file Collecting log messages — sources and source drivers
How sources work default-network-drivers: Receive and parse common syslog messages internal: Collecting internal messages file: Collecting messages from text files google-pubsub: collecting messages from the Google Pub/Sub messaging service wildcard-file: Collecting messages from multiple text files linux-audit: Collecting messages from Linux audit logs mssql, oracle, sql: collecting messages from an SQL database network: Collecting messages using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) office365: Fetching logs from Office 365 osquery: Collect and parse osquery result logs pipe: Collecting messages from named pipes program: Receiving messages from external applications python: writing server-style Python sources python-fetcher: writing fetcher-style Python sources snmptrap: Read Net-SNMP traps syslog: Collecting messages using the IETF syslog protocol (syslog() driver) system: Collecting the system-specific log messages of a platform systemd-journal: Collecting messages from the systemd-journal system log storage systemd-syslog: Collecting systemd messages using a socket tcp, tcp6, udp, udp6: Collecting messages from remote hosts using the BSD syslog protocol udp-balancer: Receiving UDP messages at very high rate unix-stream, unix-dgram: Collecting messages from UNIX domain sockets windowsevent: Collecting Windows event logs
Sending and storing log messages — destinations and destination drivers
elasticsearch2: Sending messages directly to Elasticsearch version 2.0 or higher (DEPRECATED) elasticsearch-http: Sending messages to Elasticsearch HTTP Event Collector file: Storing messages in plain-text files google_pubsub(): Sending logs to the Google Cloud Pub/Sub messaging service hdfs: Storing messages on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) http: Posting messages over HTTP without Java kafka(): Publishing messages to Apache Kafka (Java implementation) (DEPRECATED) kafka-c(): Publishing messages to Apache Kafka using the librdkafka client (C implementation) logstore: Storing messages in encrypted files mongodb: Storing messages in a MongoDB database network: Sending messages to a remote log server using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) pipe: Sending messages to named pipes program: Sending messages to external applications python: writing custom Python destinations sentinel(): Sending logs to the Microsoft Azure Sentinel cloud snmp: Sending SNMP traps smtp: Generating SMTP messages (email) from logs splunk-hec: Sending messages to Splunk HTTP Event Collector sql(): Storing messages in an SQL database stackdriver: Sending logs to the Google Stackdriver cloud syslog: Sending messages to a remote logserver using the IETF-syslog protocol syslog-ng(): Forward logs to another syslog-ng node tcp, tcp6, udp, udp6: Sending messages to a remote log server using the legacy BSD-syslog protocol (tcp(), udp() drivers) unix-stream, unix-dgram: Sending messages to UNIX domain sockets usertty: Sending messages to a user terminal — usertty() destination Client-side failover
Routing messages: log paths, flags, and filters Global options of syslog-ng PE TLS-encrypted message transfer Advanced Log Transfer Protocol Reliability and minimizing the loss of log messages Manipulating messages parser: Parse and segment structured messages Processing message content with a pattern database Correlating log messages Enriching log messages with external data Monitoring statistics and metrics of syslog-ng Multithreading and scaling in syslog-ng PE Troubleshooting syslog-ng Best practices and examples The syslog-ng manual pages Glossary

kafka-c(): Publishing messages to Apache Kafka using the librdkafka client (C implementation)

As of syslog-ng PE version 7.0.26, the kafka-c() destination can directly publish log messages to the Apache Kafka message bus using the librdkafka client. The new, C-based implementation has several advantages in comparison with the Java-based implementation, such as scalability, more efficient memory usage, and simpler setup.

The following figure illustrates how the kafka-c() destination works with syslog-ng PE.

Figure 28: How the kafka-c() destination works with syslog-ng PE

kafka-c(): Prerequisites and limitations

This section describes the prerequisites and restrictions for using the kafka-c() destination, and important information about the declaring the destination.

Prerequisites and restrictions

Declaration
  kafka-c(
    bootstrap-servers("1.2.3.4:9092,192.168.0.2:9092")
    topic("topic-name")
  );
Example: Sending log data to Apache Kafka

The following example defines a kafka-c() destination in the new C implementation, using only the required parameters.

@include "scl.conf"

  destination d_kafka {
    kafka-c(
      bootstrap-servers("1.2.3.4:9092,192.168.0.2:9092")
      topic("topic-name")
    );
  };

kafka-c(): Shifting from the Java implementation to the C implementation

If you were using the Java-based kafka() destination and want to use the C-based kafka-c() destination, the following changes to the configuration file and considerations are necessary.

  • The client_lib_dir() option has been deprecated. Remove it from the configuration file.

  • The kafka-bootstrap-servers() option has been renamed as bootstrap-servers().

  • The option() option has been removed and replaced by the config() option, which has a different syntax.

  • Instead of the properties-file() option, you can use the config() option (using a config(key => value) format) to fine-tune your configuration.

    NOTE: If you used the properties-file() option before, you can import the configuration parameters you were using earlier, with minor modifications in syntax into the config() option.

    Syntactical differences between the properties-file() option and the config() option

    The following examples illustrate the syntactical differences of using configuration parameters in the properties-file() option and the config() option:

    • properties-file() 

      content of "file.properties":
acks=all 
compression.type=snappy

    • config() 

      config (
  "acks" => "all" 
  "compression.type" => "snappy"
)

  • The template() option has been renamed as message().

  • If you use templates with the topic() option, configuring the fallback-topic() option is also required.

For more information about these options, see Options of the kafka-c() destination.

kafka-c(): Flow control in syslog-ng PE and the Kafka client

A syslog-ng Premium Edition (syslog-ng PE) destination recognizes a message as sent when the message has been sent to the Kafka client, not when the Kafka server confirms its delivery.

If the Kafka client collects too many unsent messages, it will not accept any more messages from syslog-ng PE. The syslog-ng PE application detects this and stops sending messages to the Kafka client. Also, syslog-ng PE's flow control starts functioning in the direction of the sources (for example, syslog-ng PE will not read from the sources in that specific logpath).

 Caution:

Hazard of data loss!

If sync-send() is set to "no", the messages passed to the Kafka client can be lost.

To avoid data loss, One Identity recommends that you set sync-send() to "yes", as this setting delivers messages to the Kafka client more reliably.

For more information, see the description of the sync-send() option.

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