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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

Pattern parsers of syslog-ng OSE

The following parsers are available in syslog-ng OSE.

@ANYSTRING@

Parses everything to the end of the message, you can use it to collect everything that is not parsed specifically to a single macro. In that sense its behavior is similar to the greedy() option of the CSV parser.

@DOUBLE@

An obsolete alias of the @FLOAT@ parser.

@EMAIL@

This parser matches an e-mail address. The parameter is a set of characters to strip from the beginning and the end of the e-mail address. That way e-mail addresses enclosed between other characters can be matched easily (for example, <user@example.com> or "user@example.com". Characters that are valid for a hostname are not stripped from the end of the hostname. This includes a trailing period if present.

For example, the @EMAIL:email:"[<]>@ parser will match any of the following e-mail addresses: <user@example.com>, [user@example.com], "user@example.com", and set the value of the email macro to user@example.com.

@ESTRING@

This parser has a required parameter that acts as the stopcharacter: the parser parses everything until it finds the stopcharacter. For example, to stop by the next " (double quote) character, use @ESTRING::"@. You can use the colon (:) as stopcharacter as well, for example: @ESTRING:::@. You can also specify a stopstring instead of a single character, for example, @ESTRING::stop_here.@. The @ character cannot be a stopcharacter, nor can line-breaks or tabs.

@FLOAT@

A floating-point number that may contain a dot (.) character. (Up to syslog-ng 3.1, the name of this parser was @DOUBLE@.)

@HOSTNAME@

Parses a generic hostname. The hostname may contain only alphanumeric characters (A-Z,a-z,0-9), hypen (-), or dot (.).

@IPv4@

Parses an IPv4 IP address (numbers separated with a maximum of 3 dots).

@IPv6@

Parses any valid IPv6 IP address.

@IPvANY@

Parses any IP address.

@LLADDR@

Parses a Link Layer Address in the xx:xx:xx:... form, where each xx is a 2 digit HEX number (an octet). The parameter specifies the maximum number of octets to match and defaults to 20. The MACADDR parser is a special wrapper using the LLADDR parser. For example, the following parser parses maximally 10 octets, and stores the results in the link-level-address macro:

@LLADDR:link-level-address:10@
@MACADDR@

Parses the standard format of a MAC-48 address, consisting of is six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by colons. For example, 00:50:fc:e3:cd:37.

@NLSTRING@

This parser parses everything until the next new-line character (more precisely, until the next Unix-style LF or Windows-style CRLF character). For single-line messages, NLSTRING is equivalent with ANYSTRING. For multi-line messages, NLSTRING parses to the end of the current line, while ANYSTRING parses to the end of the message. Using NLSTRING is useful when parsing multi-line messages, for example, Windows logs. For example, the following pattern parses information from Windows security auditing logs.

<pattern>Example-PC\Example: Security Microsoft Windows security auditing.: [Success Audit] A new process has been created.

    Subject:
    Security ID: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.SubjectUserSid@
    Account Name: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.SubjectUserName@
    Account Domain: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.SubjectDomainName@
    Logon ID: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.SubjectLogonId@

    Process Information:
    New Process ID: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.NewProcessId@
    New Process Name: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.NewProcessName@
    Token Elevation Type: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.TokenElevationType@
    Creator Process ID: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.ProcessId@
    Process Command Line: @LNSTRING:.winaudit.CommandLine@

    Token Elevation Type indicates the type of token that was assigned to the new process in accordance with User Account Control policy.</pattern>
@NUMBER@

A sequence of decimal (0-9) numbers (for example, 1, 0687, and so on). Note that if the number starts with the 0x characters, it is parsed as a hexadecimal number, but only if at least one valid character follows 0x. A leading hyphen (\xe2\x80\x93) is accepted for non-hexadecimal numbers, but other separator characters (for example, dot or comma) are not. To parse floating-point numbers, use the @FLOAT@ parser.

@PCRE@

Use Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions (as implemented by the PCRE library), after the identification of the potential patterns has happened by the radix implementation.

Syntax: @PCRE:name:regexp@

@QSTRING@

Parse a string between the quote characters specified as parameter. Note that the quote character can be different at the beginning and the end of the quote, for example: @QSTRING::"@ parses everything between two quotation marks ("), while @QSTRING:&lt;&gt;@ parses from an opening bracket to the closing bracket. The @ character cannot be a quote character, nor can line-breaks or tabs.

@SET@

Parse any combination of the specified characters until another character is found. For example, specifying a whitespace character parses any number of whitespaces, and can be used to process paddings (for example, log messages of the Squid application have whitespace padding after the username).

For example, the @SET:: "@ parser will parse any combination of whitespaces and double-quotes.

Available in syslog-ng OSE 3.4 and later.

@STRING@

A sequence of alphanumeric characters (0-9, A-z), not including any whitespace. Optionally, other accepted characters can be listed as parameters (for example, to parse a complete sentence, add the whitespace as parameter, like: @STRING:: @). Note that the @ character cannot be a parameter, nor can line-breaks or tabs.

What's new in the syslog-ng pattern database format V5

The V5 database format has the following differences compared to the V4 format:

  • The <ruleset> element can now store multiple reference URLs using the new <rule_urls> element. For details, see Element: ruleset.

  • In an <action>, you can now initialize a new context. As a result, the <message> element is not required. For details, see Element: create-context.

  • The inherit-properties attribute is deprecated, use the inherit-mode attribute instead. For details, see Element: action.

The syslog-ng pattern database format

Pattern databases are XML files that contain rules describing the message patterns. For sample pattern databases, see Downloading sample pattern databases.

The following scheme describes the V5 format of the pattern database. This format is backwards-compatible with the earlier formats.

For a sample database containing only a single pattern, see Example: A pattern database containing a single rule.

TIP:

Use the pdbtool utility that is bundled with syslog-ng to test message patterns and convert existing databases to the latest format. For details, see The pdbtool manual page.

To automatically create an initial pattern database from an existing log file, use the pdbtool patternize command. For details, see The pdbtool manual page.

Example: A pattern database containing a single rule

The following pattern database contains a single rule that matches a log message of the ssh application. A sample log message looks like:

Accepted password for sampleuser from 10.50.0.247 port 42156 ssh2

The following is a simple pattern database containing a matching rule.

<patterndb version='5' pub_date='2010-10-17'>
    <ruleset name='ssh' id='123456678'>
        <pattern>ssh</pattern>
            <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>
    </ruleset>
</patterndb>

Note that the rule uses macros that refer to parts of the message, for example, you can use the ${SSH_USERNAME} macro refer to the username used in the connection.

The following is the same example, but with a test message and test values for the parsers.

<patterndb version='4' pub_date='2010-10-17'>
    <ruleset name='ssh' id='123456678'>
        <pattern>ssh</pattern>
            <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>
                    <examples>
                        <example>
                            <test_message>Accepted password for sampleuser from 10.50.0.247 port 42156 ssh2</test_message>
                            <test_values>
                                <test_value name="SSH.AUTH_METHOD">password</test_value>
                                <test_value name="SSH_USERNAME">sampleuser</test_value>
                                <test_value name="SSH_CLIENT_ADDRESS">10.50.0.247</test_value>
                                <test_value name="SSH_PORT_NUMBER">42156</test_value>
                            </test_values>
                       </example>
                    </examples>
                </rule>
            </rules>
    </ruleset>
</patterndb>

Element: patterndb

Location

/patterndb

Description

The container element of the pattern database.

Attributes
  • version: The schema version of the pattern database. The current version is 4.

  • pubdate: The publication date of the XML file.

Children
Example
<patterndb version='4' pub_date='2010-10-25'>
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