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syslog-ng Premium Edition 7.0.31 - 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 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 Transport 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

Element: patterns

Location

/patterndb/ruleset/patterns

Description

A container element. A <patterns> element may contain any number of <pattern> elements.

Attributes

N/A

Children

  • pattern: The name of the application — syslog-ng matches this value to the ${PROGRAM} header of the syslog message to find the rulesets applicable to the syslog message.

    Specifying multiple patterns is useful if two or more applications have different names (that is, different ${PROGRAM} fields), but otherwise send identical log messages.

    It is not necessary to use multiple patterns if only the end of the ${PROGRAM} fields is different, use only the beginning of the ${PROGRAM} field as the pattern. For example, the Postfix email server sends messages using different process names, but all of them begin with the postfix string.

    You can also use parsers in the program pattern if needed, and use the parsed results later. For example: <pattern>postfix\@ESTRING:.postfix.component:[@</pattern>

    NOTE: If the <pattern> element of a ruleset is not specified, syslog-ng PE will use this ruleset as a fallback ruleset: it will apply the ruleset to messages that have an empty PROGRAM header, or if none of the program patterns matched the PROGRAM header of the incoming message.

Example
<patterns>
    <pattern>firstapplication</pattern>
    <pattern>otherapplication</pattern>
</patterns>

Using parsers in the program pattern:

<pattern>postfix\@ESTRING:.postfix.component:[@</pattern>

Element: rules

Location

/patterndb/ruleset/rules

Description

A container element for the rules of the ruleset.

Attributes

N/A

Children
Example
<rules>
    <rule provider='me' id='182437592347598' class='system'>
        <patterns>
            <pattern>Accepted @QSTRING:SSH.AUTH_METHOD: @ for@QSTRING:SSH_USERNAME: @from\ @QSTRING:SSH_CLIENT_ADDRESS: @port @NUMBER:SSH_PORT_NUMBER:@ ssh2</pattern>
        </patterns>
    </rule>
</rules>

Element: rule

Location

/patterndb/ruleset/rules/rule

Description

An element containing message patterns and how a message that matches these patterns is classified.

NOTE: If the following characters appear in the message, they must be escaped in the rule as follows:

  • @: Use @@, for example, user@@example.com

  • <: Use &lt;

  • >: Use &gt;

  • &: Use &amp;

The <rules> element may contain any number of <rule> elements.

Attributes

  • provider: The provider of the rule. This is used to distinguish between who supplied the rule, that is, if it has been created by One Identity, or added to the XML by a local user.

  • id: The globally unique ID of the rule.

  • class: The class of the rule — syslog-ng assigns this class to the messages matching a pattern of this rule.

  • context-id: OPTIONAL — An identifier to group related log messages when using the pattern database to correlate events. The ID can be a descriptive string describing the events related to the log message (for example, ssh-sessions for log messages related to SSH traffic), but can also contain macros to generate IDs dynamically. When using macros in IDs, see also the context-scope attribute. Starting with syslog-ng PE version 7.0, if a message is added to a context, syslog-ng PE automatically adds the identifier of the context to the .classifier.context_id macro of the message. For details on correlating messages, see Correlating log messages using pattern databases.

    NOTE: The syslog-ng PE application determines the context of the message after the pattern matching is completed. This means that macros and name-value pairs created by the matching pattern database rule can be used as context-id macros.

  • context-timeout: OPTIONAL — The number of seconds the context is stored. Note that for high-traffic log servers, storing open contexts for long time can require significant amount of memory. For details on correlating messages, see Correlating log messages using pattern databases.

  • context-scope: OPTIONAL — Specifies which messages belong to the same context. This attribute is used to determine the context of the message if the context-id does not specify any macros. Usually, context-scope acts a filter for the context, with context-id refining the filtering if needed. The following values are available:

    • process: Only messages that are generated by the same process of a client belong to the same context, that is, messages that have identical ${HOST}, ${PROGRAM} and ${PID} values. This is the default behavior of syslog-ng PE if context-scope is not specified.

    • program: Messages that are generated by the same application of a client belong to the same context, that is, messages that have identical ${HOST} and ${PROGRAM} values.

    • host: Every message generated by a client belongs to the same context, only the ${HOST} value of the messages must be identical.

    • global: Every message belongs to the same context.

    NOTE: Using the context-scope attribute is significantly faster than using macros in the context-id attribute.

    For details on correlating messages, see Correlating log messages using pattern databases.

Children
Example
<rule provider='example' id='f57196aa-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' class='violation'>

The following example specifies attributes for correlating messages as well. For details on correlating messages, see Correlating log messages using pattern databases.

<rule provider='example' id='f57196aa-75fd-11dd-9bba-001e6806451b' class='violation' context-id='same-session' context-scope='process' context-timeout='360'>

Element: patterns

Location

/patterndb/ruleset/rules/rule/patterns

Description

An element containing the patterns of the rule. If a <patterns> element contains multiple <pattern> elements, the class of the <rule> is assigned to every syslog message matching any of the patterns.

Attributes

N/A

Children

  • pattern: A pattern describing a log message. This element is also called message pattern. For example:

    <pattern>+ ??? root-</pattern>

    NOTE: Support for XML entities is limited, you can use only the following entities: &amp; &lt; &gt; &quot; &apos;. User-defined entities are not supported.

  • description: OPTIONAL — A description of the pattern or the log message matching the pattern.

  • urls

  • values

  • examples

Example
<patterns>
    <pattern>Accepted @QSTRING:SSH.AUTH_METHOD: @ for@QSTRING:SSH_USERNAME: @from\ @QSTRING:SSH_CLIENT_ADDRESS: @port @NUMBER:SSH_PORT_NUMBER:@ ssh2</pattern>
</patterns>
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