syslog-ng Premium Edition 6.0.21 - Administration Guide

Description: Name of the columns storing the data in fieldname [dbtype] format. The [dbtype] parameter is optional, and specifies the type of the field. By default, syslog-ng PE creates text columns. Note that not every database engine can index text fields.

Description: Name of the database that stores the logs. Macros cannot be used in database name. Also, when using an Oracle database, you cannot use the same database() settings in more than one destination.

Description: This option enables putting outgoing messages into the disk buffer of the destination to avoid message loss in case of a system failure on the destination side. It has the following options:

Options reliable() and disk-buf-size() are required options.

destination d_demo {
    network(
            "127.0.0.1"
            port(3333)
            disk-buffer(
                mem-buf-size(10000)
                disk-buf-size(2000000)
                reliable(yes)
                dir("/tmp/disk-buffer")
            )
        );
};

destination d_demo {
    network(
            "127.0.0.1"
            port(3333)
            disk-buffer(
                mem-buf-length(10000)
                disk-buf-size(2000000)
                reliable(no)
                dir("/tmp/disk-buffer")
            )
        );
};

Description: Flags related to the sql() destination.

flags(dont-create-tables,explicit-commits)

Description: Specifies how many lines are sent to a destination at a time. The syslog-ng PE application waits for this number of lines to accumulate and sends them off in a single batch. Setting this number high increases throughput as fully filled frames are sent to the destination, but also increases message latency.

For optimal performance when sending messages to an syslog-ng PE server, make sure that the flush-lines() is smaller than the window size set using the log-iw-size() option in the source of your server.

Description: This is an obsolete option. Specifies the time syslog-ng waits for lines to accumulate in its output buffer. For details, see the flush-lines() option.

Description: The syslog-ng application can store fractions of a second in the timestamps according to the ISO8601 format. The frac-digits() parameter specifies the number of digits stored. The digits storing the fractions are padded by zeros if the original timestamp of the message specifies only seconds. Fractions can always be stored for the time the message was received. Note that syslog-ng can add the fractions to non-ISO8601 timestamps as well.

Description: Hostname of the database server. Note that Oracle destinations do not use this parameter, but retrieve the hostname from the /etc/tnsnames.ora file.

Description: The list of columns that are indexed by the database to speed up searching. To disable indexing for the destination, include the empty indexes() parameter in the destination, simply omitting the indexes parameter will cause syslog-ng to request indexing on the default columns.

The syslog-ng PE application will create the name of indexes automaticaly with the following method:

Description: Sets the timezone used when expanding filename and tablename templates.

The timezone can be specified as using the name of the (for example time-zone("Europe/Budapest")), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format (for example +01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

Description: The number of messages that the output queue can store.

Description: If the content of a column matches the string specified in the null() parameter, the contents of the column will be replaced with an SQL NULL value. If unset (by default), the option does not match on any string. For details, see the Example 7.39, “Using SQL NULL values”.

destination d_sql {
    sql(type(pgsql)
    host("logserver") username("syslog-ng") password("password")
    database("logs")
    table("messages_${HOST}_${R_YEAR}${R_MONTH}${R_DAY}")
    columns("datetime", "host", "program", "pid", "message")
    values("${R_DATE}", "${HOST}", "${PROGRAM}", "${PID}", "${MSGONLY}")
    indexes("datetime", "host", "program", "pid", "message")
    null(""));
};

destination d_sql {
    sql(type(pgsql)
    host("logserver") username("syslog-ng") password("password")
    database("logs")
    table("messages_${HOST}_${R_YEAR}${R_MONTH}${R_DAY}")
    columns("datetime", "host", "program", "pid", "message")
    values("${R_DATE}", "${HOST}", "${PROGRAM}", "${PID:-@@NULL@@}", "${MSGONLY}")
    indexes("datetime", "host", "program", "pid", "message")
    null("@@NULL@@"));
};

Description: Password of the database user.

Description: The port number to connect to.

Description: The number of insertion attempts. If syslog-ng PE could not insert a message into the database, it will repeat the attempt until the number of attempts reaches retries, then drops the connection to the database. For example, syslog-ng PE will try to insert a message maximum three times by default (once for first insertion and twice if the first insertion was failed).

Description: Specifies one or more SQL-like statement which is executed after syslog-ng PE has successfully connected to the database. For example:

session-statements("SET COLLATION_CONNECTION='utf8_general_ci'")

Description: Name of the database table to use (can include macros). When using macros, note that some databases limit the length of table names.

Description: Convert timestamps to the timezone specified by this option. If this option is not set, then the original timezone information in the message is used. Converting the timezone changes the values of all date-related macros derived from the timestamp, for example, HOUR. For the complete list of such macros, see the section called “Date-related macros”.

The timezone can be specified as using the name of the (for example time-zone("Europe/Budapest")), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format (for example +01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

Description: Specifies the type of the database, that is, the DBI database driver to use. Use the mssql option to send logs to an MSSQL database. For details, see the examples of the databases on the following sections.

Description: Name of the database user.

Description: The parts of the message to store in the fields specified in the columns() parameter.

It is possible to give a special value calling: default (without quotation marks).It means that the value will be used that is the default of the column type of this value.

columns("date datetime", "host varchar(32)", "row_id serial")
values("${R_DATE}", "${HOST}", default)