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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

No logs after specifying an unusual port number

Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a set of kernel and user-space tools enforcing strict access control policies. SELinux rules in Linux distributions cover all aspects of the syslog-ng configuration coming in the syslog-ng package available in the distribution. But as soon as an unusual port number or directory name is specified in the configuration, syslog-ng fails to work even with a completely legitimate configuration.

By default, SELinux only allows connections to the default syslog ports. When you have to use any other port for some reason, sending logs to that port will not work. For details on how to fix this issue, see sectionUsing a different portin the blog post titled Using syslog-ng with SELinux in enforcing mode.

Error messages

Destination queue full
Error message: 
Destination queue full, dropping messages; queue_len='10000', 
log_fifo_size='10000', count='4', 
persist_name='afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,serverdown:514)'
Description:

This message indicates message loss.

Flow-control must be enabled in the log path. When flow-control is enabled, syslog-ng will stop reading messages from the sources of the log statement if the destinations are not able to process the messages at the required speed.

If flow-control is enabled, syslog-ng will only drop messages if the destination queues/window sizes are improperly sized.

Solution:

Enable flow-control in the log path.

If flow-control is disabled, syslog-ng will drop messages if the destination queues are full. Note that syslog-ng will drop messages even if the server is alive. If the remote server accepts logs at a slower rate than the sender syslog-ng receives them, the sender syslog-ng will fill up the destination queue, then drop the newer messages. Sometimes this error occurs only at a specific time interval, for example, only between7:00AM and8:00AM or between16:00PM and17:00PM when your users log in or log off and that generates a lot of messages within a short interval.

For more information, see Managing incoming and outgoing messages with flow-control.
Alert unknown CA
Error message: 
SSL error while writing stream; tls_error='SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert unknown ca'
Description:

This message indicates that the other (remote) side could not verify the certificate sent by syslog-ng.

Solution:

Check the logs on the remote site and identify why the receiving syslog-ng could not find the CA certificate that signed this certificate.
PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line
Error message: 
testuser@thor-x1:~/cert_no_start_line/certs$ openssl x509 -in cert.pem -text
unable to load certificate
140178126276248:error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start 
line:pem_lib.c:701:Expecting: TRUSTED CERTIFICATE
Description:

The error message is displayed when using Transport Layer Security (TLS). The syslog-ng application uses OpenSSL for TLS and this message indicates that the certificate contains characters that OpenSSL cannot process.

The error occurs when the certificate comes from Windows and you want to use it on a Linux-based computer. On Windows, the end of line (EOL) character is different (\r\n) compared to Linux (\n).

To verify this, open the certificate in a text editor, for example, MCEdit. Notice the^Mcharacters as shown in the image below:

Figure 20: Example of OpenSSL character processing error

Solution:

  • On Windows, save the certificate using UTF-8, for example, using Notepad++.

    		 NOTE:

    Windows Notepad is not able to save the file in normal UTF-8, even if you select it.

    1. In Notepad++, from the menu, selectEncoding.

    2. Change the value fromUTF-8-BOMtoUTF-8.

    3. Save.

  • On Linux, run dos2unix cert.pem. This will convert the file to a Linux-compatible style.

    Alternatively, replace the EOL characters in the file manually.

Best practices and examples

This chapter discusses some special examples and recommendations.

General recommendations

This section provides general tips and recommendations on using syslog-ng. Some of the recommendations are detailed in the subsequent sections.

  • Do not base the separation of log messages into different files on the facility parameter. As several applications and processes can use the same facility, the facility does not identify the application that sent the message. By default, the facility parameter is not even included in the log message itself. In general, sorting the log messages into several different files can make finding specific log messages difficult. If you must create separate log files, use the application name.

  • Standard log messages include the local time of the sending host, without any time zone information. It is recommended to replace this timestamp with an ISODATE timestamp, because the ISODATE format includes the year and timezone as well. To convert all timestamps to the ISODATE format, include the following line in the syslog-ng configuration file:

    options {ts-format(iso) ; };

  • Resolving the IP addresses of the clients to domain names can decrease the performance of syslog-ng. For details, see Using name resolution in syslog-ng.

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