How syslog-ng PE interacts with Apache Kafka
When stopping the syslog-ng PE application, syslog-ng PE will not stop until all Java threads are finished, including the threads started by the Kafka Producer. There is no way (except for the kill -9 command) to stop syslog-ng PE before the Kafka Producer stops. To change this behavior set the properties of the Kafka Producer in its properties file, and reference the file in the properties-file option.
The syslog-ng PE kafka destination tries to reconnect to the brokers in a tight loop. This can look as spinning, because of a lot of similar debug messages. To decrease the amount of such messages, set a bigger timeout using the following properties:
retry.backoff.ms=1000 reconnect.backoff.ms=1000
For details on using property files, see properties-file(). For details on the properties that you can set in the property file, see the Apache Kafka documentation.
Kafka destination options
The kafka destination of syslog-ng PE can directly publish log messages to the Apache Kafka message bus, where subscribers can access them. The kafka destination has the following options.
Required options:
The following options are required: kafka-bootstrap-servers(), topic(). Note that to use kafka, you must add the following lines to the beginning of your syslog-ng PE configuration:
@module mod-java @include "scl.conf"
client-lib-dir()
| Type: | string |
| Default: | The syslog-ng PE module directory: /opt/syslog-ng/lib/syslog-ng/java-modules/ |
Description: The list of the paths where the required Java classes are located. For example, class-path("/opt/syslog-ng/lib/syslog-ng/java-modules/:/opt/my-java-libraries/libs/"). If you set this option multiple times in your syslog-ng PE configuration (for example, because you have multiple Java-based destinations), syslog-ng PE will merge every available paths to a single list.
For the kafka destination, include the path to the directory where you copied the required libraries (see Prerequisites), for example, client-lib-dir(/opt/syslog-ng/lib/syslog-ng/java-modules/KafkaDestination.jar:/usr/share/kafka/lib/*.jar).
kafka-bootstrap-servers()
| Type: | list of hostnames |
| Default: |
Description: Specifies the hostname or IP address of the Kafka server. When specifying an IP address, IPv4 (for example, 192.168.0.1) or IPv6 (for example, [::1]) can be used as well. Use a colon (:) after the address to specify the port number of the server. When specifying multiple addresses, use a comma to separate the addresses, for example, kafka-bootstrap-servers("127.0.0.1:2525,remote-server-hostname:6464")
frac-digits()
| Type: | number |
| Default: | 0 |
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.
jvm-options()
| Type: | list |
| Default: | N/A |
Description: Specify the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) settings of your Java destination from the syslog-ng PE configuration file.
For example:
jvm-options("-Xss1M -XX:+TraceClassLoading")
You can set this option only as a global option, by adding it to the options statement of the syslog-ng configuration file.
on-error()
| Accepted values: |
drop-message|drop-property|fallback-to-string| silently-drop-message|silently-drop-property|silently-fallback-to-string |
| Default: | Use the global setting (which defaults to drop-message) |
Description: Controls what happens when type-casting fails and syslog-ng PE cannot convert some data to the specified type. By default, syslog-ng PE drops the entire message and logs the error. Currently the value-pairs() option uses the settings of on-error().
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drop-message: Drop the entire message and log an error message to the internal() source. This is the default behavior of syslog-ng PE.
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drop-property: Omit the affected property (macro, template, or message-field) from the log message and log an error message to the internal() source.
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fallback-to-string: Convert the property to string and log an error message to the internal() source.
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silently-drop-message: Drop the entire message silently, without logging the error.
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silently-drop-property: Omit the affected property (macro, template, or message-field) silently, without logging the error.
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silently-fallback-to-string: Convert the property to string silently, without logging the error.
key()
| Type: | template |
| Default: | N/A |
Description: The key of the partition under which the message is published. You can use templates to change the topic dynamically based on the source or the content of the message, for example, key("${PROGRAM}").
log-fifo-size()
| Type: | number |
| Default: | Use global setting. |
Description: The number of messages that the output queue can store.
properties-file()
| Type: | string (absolute path) |
| Default: | N/A |
Description: The absolute path and filename of the Kafka properties file to load. For example, properties-file("/opt/syslog-ng/etc/kafka_dest.properties"). The syslog-ng PE application reads this file and passes the properties to the Kafka Producer. If a property is defined both in the syslog-ng PE configuration file (syslog-ng.conf) and in the properties file, then syslog-ng PE uses the definition from the syslog-ng PE configuration file.
The syslog-ng PE kafka destination supports all properties of the official Kafka producer. For details, see the Apache Kafka documentation.
The kafka-bootstrap-servers option is translated to the bootstrap.servers property.
For example, the following properties file defines the acknowledgement method and compression:
acks=all compression.type=snappy
retries()
| Type: | number (of attempts) |
| Default: | 3 |
Description: The number of times syslog-ng PE attempts to send a message to this destination. If syslog-ng PE could not send a message, it will try again until the number of attempts reaches retries, then drops the message.
sync-send()
| Type: | true | false |
| Default: | false |
Description: When sync-send is set to true, syslog-ng PE sends the message reliably: it sends a message to the Kafka server, then waits for a reply. In case of failure, syslog-ng PE repeats sending the message, as set in the retries() parameter. If sending the message fails for retries() times, syslog-ng PE drops the message.
This method ensures reliable message transfer, but is very slow.
When sync-send is set to false, syslog-ng PE sends messages asynchronously, and receives the response asynchronously. In case of a problem, syslog-ng PE cannot resend the messages.
This method is fast, but the transfer is not reliable. Several thousands of messages can be lost before syslog-ng PE recognizes the error.
template()
| Type: | template or template function |
| Default: | $ISODATE $HOST $MSGHDR$MSG\n |
Description: The message as published to Apache Kafka. You can use templates and template functions (for example, format-json()) to format the message, for example, template("$(format-json --scope rfc5424 --exclude DATE --key ISODATE)").
For details on formatting messages in JSON format, see format-json.
throttle()
| Type: | number |
| Default: | 0 |
Description: Sets the maximum number of messages sent to the destination per second. Use this output-rate-limiting functionality only when using disk-buffer as well to avoid the risk of losing messages. Specifying 0 or a lower value sets the output limit to unlimited.
topic()
| Type: | template |
| Default: | N/A |
Description: The Kafka topic under which the message is published. You can use templates to change the topic dynamically based on the source or the content of the message, for example, topic("${HOST}").
time-zone()
| Type: | name of the timezone, or the timezone offset |
| Default: | unspecified |
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 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.
ts-format()
| Type: | rfc3164, bsd, rfc3339, iso |
| Default: | rfc3164 |
Description: Override the global timestamp format (set in the global ts-format() parameter) for the specific destination. For details, see ts-format().
logstore: Storing messages in encrypted files
The syslog-ng PE application can store log messages securely in encrypted, compressed and timestamped binary files. Timestamps can be requested from an external Timestamping Authority (TSA).
Logstore files consist of individual chunks, every chunk can be encrypted, compressed, and timestamped separately. Chunks contain compressed log messages and header information needed for retrieving messages from the logstore file.
The syslog-ng PE application generates an SHA-1 hash for every chunk to verify the integrity of the chunk. The hashes of the chunks are chained together to prevent injecting chunks into the logstore file. The syslog-ng PE application can encrypt the logstore using various algorithms, using the aes128 encryption algorithm in CBC mode and the hmac-sha1 hashing (HMAC) algorithm as default. For other algorithms, see cipher() and digest().
The destination filename may include macros which get expanded when the message is written, thus a simple logstore() driver may create several files. For more information on available macros see Macros of syslog-ng PE.
If the expanded filename refers to a directory which does not exist, it will be created depending on the create-dirs() setting (both global and a per destination option).
The logstore() has a single required parameter that specifies the filename that stores the log messages. For the list of available optional parameters, see logstore() destination options.
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Caution:
Hazard of data loss! If your log files are on an NFS-mounted network file system, see NFS file system for log files. |
Declaration:
logstore(filename options());
Example: Using the logstore() driver
A simple example saving and compressing log messages.
destination d_logstore { logstore("/var/log/messages.lgs" compress(5) ); };
A more detailed example that encrypts messages, modifies the parameters for closing chunks, and sets file privileges.
destination d_logstore {
logstore("/var/log/messages-logstore.lgs"
encrypt-certificate("/opt/syslog-ng/etc/syslog-ng/keys/10-100-20-40/public-certificate-of-the-server.pem")
owner("example")
group("example")
perm(0777)
);
};
The URL to the Timestamping Authority and if needed, the OID of the timestamping policy can be set as global options, or also per logstore destination. The following example specifies the URL and the OID as global options:
options {
timestamp-url("http://10.50.50.50:8080/");
timestamp-policy("0.4.0.2023.1.1");
};|
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NOTE:
When using the logstore() destination, update the configuration of your log rotation program to rotate these files. Otherwise, the log files can become very large. |
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Caution:
Since the state of each created file must be tracked by syslog-ng, it consumes some memory for each file. If no new messages are written to a file within 60 seconds (controlled by the time-reap() global option), it is closed, and its state is freed. Exploiting this, a DoS attack can be mounted against the system. If the number of possible destination files and its needed memory is more than the amount available on the syslog-ng server. The most suspicious macro is ${PROGRAM}, where the number of possible variations is rather high. Do not use the ${PROGRAM} macro in insecure environments. |
Displaying the contents of logstore files
To display the contents of a logstore file, use the lgstool (formerly called logcat) command supplied with syslog-ng, for example, lgstool cat /var/log/messages.lgs. Log messages available in the journal file of the logstore (but not yet written to the logstore file itself) are displayed as well.
To display the contents of encrypted log files, specify the private key of the certificate used to encrypt the file, for example lgstool cat -k private.key /var/log/messages.lgs. The contents of the file are sent to the standard output, so it is possible to use grep and other tools to find particular log messages, for example, lgstool cat /var/log/messages.lgs |grep 192.168.1.1. For further details, see The logstore tool manual page.
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TIP:
The lgstool utility is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems at the Downloads page. |
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Caution:
For files that are in use by syslog-ng, the last chunk that is open cannot be read. |