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syslog-ng Open Source Edition 3.16 - Administration Guide

Preface Introduction to syslog-ng The concepts of syslog-ng Installing syslog-ng The syslog-ng OSE quick-start guide The syslog-ng OSE configuration file source: Read, receive, and collect log messages
How sources work default-network-drivers: Receive and parse common syslog messages internal: Collecting internal messages file: Collecting messages from text files wildcard-file: Collecting messages from multiple text files network: Collecting messages using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) nodejs: Receiving JSON messages from nodejs applications mbox: Converting local e-mail messages to log messages osquery: Collect and parse osquery result logs pipe: Collecting messages from named pipes pacct: Collecting process accounting logs on Linux program: Receiving messages from external applications snmptrap: Read Net-SNMP traps sun-streams: Collecting messages on Sun Solaris 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— OBSOLETE unix-stream, unix-dgram: Collecting messages from UNIX domain sockets stdin: Collecting messages from the standard input stream
destination: Forward, send, and store log messages
amqp: Publishing messages using AMQP elasticsearch: Sending messages directly to Elasticsearch version 1.x elasticsearch2: Sending logs directly to Elasticsearch and Kibana 2.0 or higher file: Storing messages in plain-text files graphite: Sending metrics to Graphite Sending logs to Graylog hdfs: Storing messages on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) Posting messages over HTTP http: Posting messages over HTTP without Java kafka: Publishing messages to Apache Kafka loggly: Using Loggly logmatic: Using Logmatic.io mongodb: Storing messages in a MongoDB database network: Sending messages to a remote log server using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) osquery: Sending log messages to osquery's syslog table pipe: Sending messages to named pipes program: Sending messages to external applications pseudofile() redis: Storing name-value pairs in Redis riemann: Monitoring your data with Riemann smtp: Generating SMTP messages (e-mail) from logs Splunk: Sending log messages to Splunk sql: Storing messages in an SQL database stomp: Publishing messages using STOMP syslog: Sending messages to a remote logserver using the IETF-syslog protocol syslog-ng: Forwarding messages and tags 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) Telegram: Sending messages to Telegram unix-stream, unix-dgram: Sending messages to UNIX domain sockets usertty: Sending messages to a user terminal: usertty() destination Write your own custom destination in Java or Python
log: Filter and route log messages using log paths, flags, and filters Global options of syslog-ng OSE TLS-encrypted message transfer template and rewrite: Format, modify, and manipulate log messages parser: Parse and segment structured messages db-parser: Process message content with a pattern database (patterndb) Correlating log messages Enriching log messages with external data Statistics of syslog-ng Multithreading and scaling in syslog-ng OSE Troubleshooting syslog-ng Best practices and examples The syslog-ng manual pages Third-party contributions Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) License About us

Summary of changes

This section lists the changes of The syslog-ng Open Source Edition Administrator Guide.

Version 3.15 - 3.16

Changes in product:
  • A new destination driver, telegram(), has been added. The telegram() destination sends log messages to Telegram, which is a secure, cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app. For more information, see Telegram: Sending messages to Telegram.

  • A new template function, urlencode, has been added. You can use the urlencode template function together with the telegram() destination to send syslog messages to Telegram. For more information, see urlencode.

  • To ensure that a module is loaded, you can use the @requires statement. For more information, see Loading modules.
  • The add-contextual-data() has been extended with the ignore-case() option. For more information, see Options add-contextual-data().
  • The hook-commands() has been added, which makes it possible to execute external programs when they are initialized or torn down. The hook-commands() can be used for both source and destination drivers. For more information, see hook-commands()

Version 3.14 - 3.15

Changes in product:
  • It is now possible to use if {}, elif {}, and else {} blocks to configure conditional expressions. For details, see if-else-elif: Conditional expressions.

  • A new log path flag, drop-unmatched, has been added. The new flag causes messages to be dropped along a log path when they do not match a filter or are discarded by a parser. For details, see Log path flags.

  • Support for Elasticsearch's Shield has been removed.

  • Support for POSIX regular expressions has been removed.

Version 3.13 - 3.14

Changes in product:
  • You can use password-protected private keys in the network() and syslog() source and destination drivers. For details, see Password-protected keys.

  • To better control to which log messages you add contextual data, you can use filters as selectors. In this case, the first column of the CSV database file must contain the name of a filter. For each message, syslog-ng OSE evaluates the filters in the order they appear in the database file. If a filter matches the message, syslog-ng OSE adds the name-value pair related to the filter. For details, see Using filters as selector.

Version 3.12 - 3.13

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:
  • A new section describing common error messages has been added to the document. For more information, see Error messages .

  • Several corrections and editorial changes.

Version 3.11 - 3.12

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:
  • Added section about commercial version of syslog-ng. For more information, see Commercial version of syslog-ng.

  • Added warning about the requirement to delete the persist file once the dir() option of disk-buffer() has been modified or a new one has been added. For more information, see destination: Forward, send, and store log messages.

  • Clarified information about the Python parser's deinit() method. It runs not only at a syslog-ng graceful stop, but at a reload too. For details, see Methods of the python() parser.

  • Several corrections and editorial changes.

Version 3.10 - 3.11

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:

Version 3.9 - 3.10

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:

Version 3.8 - 3.9

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:
  • Corrections and editorial changes.

Version 3.7 - 3.8

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:

Version 3.6 - 3.7

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:

Version 3.5 - 3.6

Changes in product:
Changes in documentation:

Feedback

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, especially on what else this document should cover. General comments, errors found in the text, and any suggestions about how to improve the documentation is also welcome at documentation@balabit.com.

The source of this guide is available on GitHub. In case of the syslog-ng Open Source Edition guides, you can also:

Acknowledgments

One Identity would like to express its gratitude to the syslog-ng users and the syslog-ng community for their invaluable help and support.

Introduction to syslog-ng

This chapter introduces the syslog-ng Open Source Edition application in a non-technical manner, discussing how and why is it useful, and the benefits it offers to an existing IT infrastructure.

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