syslog-ng Premium Edition 7.0.14 - Administration Guide

unix-stream, unix-dgram: Collecting messages from UNIX domain sockets

The unix-stream() and unix-dgram() drivers open an AF_UNIX socket and start listening on it for messages. The unix-stream() driver is primarily used on Linux and uses SOCK_STREAM semantics (connection oriented, no messages are lost), while unix-dgram() is used on BSDs and uses SOCK_DGRAM semantics: this may result in lost local messages if the system is overloaded.

To avoid denial of service attacks when using connection-oriented protocols, the number of simultaneously accepted connections should be limited. This can be achieved using the max-connections() parameter. The default value of this parameter is quite strict, you might have to increase it on a busy system.

Both unix-stream and unix-dgram have a single required argument that specifies the filename of the socket to create. For the list of available optional parameters, see unix-stream() and unix-dgram() source options

unix-stream(filename [options]);
unix-dgram(filename [options]);

source s_stream {
    unix-stream("/dev/log" max-connections(10));
};

source s_dgram {
    unix-dgram("/var/run/log");
};

windowsevent: Collecting Windows event logs

Event log messages collected by the Windows Event Collector for syslog-ng PE use this special source. To collect Windows event log messages, include this source in one of your source statements.

The Windows Event Collector tool for syslog-ng PE collects the log messages of Windows-based hosts in Unix datagram sockets, and then forwards them to a syslog-ng PE server over HTTPS (using TLS encryption and mutual authentication). syslog-ng PE reads the log messages using the windowsevent() source, and then parses the logs into key-value paris using the XML parser.

The XML parser uses the list-handling functionality to handle lists in the XML. Note that you cannot disable the list-handling functionality for the windowsevent() source.

For more information, see Windows Event Collector Administration Guide.

Declaration

source s_wec {
    windowsevent(
      prefix(".windowsevent.")
      unix-domain-socket("`syslog-ng-root`/var/run/wec.sock")
    );
};

Starting with version 7.0.13, the syslog-ng PE windowsevent() source can process XML arrays and make the elements of the arrays available as name-value pairs. For example, the following XML array becomes available as name-value pairs:

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <EventID>5059</EventID>
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="SubjectUserSid">S-1-5-18</Data>
    <Data Name="SubjectUserName">WIN-K1678A68SQ6$</Data>
  </EventData>

From the previous example, the following name-value pairs become available: ${Event.System.EventID} (5059), ${Event.EventData.SubjectUserSid} (S-1-5-18), ${Event.EventData.SubjectUserName} (WIN-K1678A68SQ6$).

windowsevent() source options

The windowsevent() driver has the following options:

prefix()

Description: The prefix that you wish to append to the key-value pairs.

If you want to send Windows event logs to SDATA, then set prefix(".SDATA."). This can be useful, for example, when you forward Windows event logs to a syslog-ng Store Box.

unix-domain-socket()

Description: The path to the Unix domain socket to read messages from.

Sending and storing log messages — destinations and destination drivers

A destination is where a log message is sent if the filtering rules match. Similarly to sources, destinations consist of one or more drivers, each defining where and how messages are sent.

To define a destination, add a destination statement to the syslog-ng configuration file using the following syntax.

destination <identifier> {
    destination-driver(params);
    destination-driver(params);
    ...
};

destination d_demo_tcp {
    network("10.1.2.3" port(1999));
};

destination d_tcp {
    network("target_host" port(1999));
};

The following table lists the destination drivers available in syslog-ng PE.