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syslog-ng Premium Edition 7.0.24 - Administration Guide

Preface Introduction to syslog-ng The concepts of syslog-ng Installing syslog-ng PE The syslog-ng PE quick-start guide The syslog-ng PE configuration file Collecting log messages — sources and source drivers
How sources work default-network-drivers: Receive and parse common syslog messages internal: Collecting internal messages file: Collecting messages from text files google-pubsub: collecting messages from the Google Pub/Sub messaging service wildcard-file: Collecting messages from multiple text files linux-audit: Collecting messages from Linux audit logs mssql, oracle, sql: collecting messages from an SQL database network: Collecting messages using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) office365: Fetching logs from Office 365 osquery: Collect and parse osquery result logs pipe: Collecting messages from named pipes program: Receiving messages from external applications python: writing server-style Python sources python-fetcher: writing fetcher-style Python sources snmptrap: Read Net-SNMP traps 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 udp-balancer: Receiving UDP messages at very high rate unix-stream, unix-dgram: Collecting messages from UNIX domain sockets windowsevent: Collecting Windows event logs
Sending and storing log messages — destinations and destination drivers
elasticsearch2: Sending messages directly to Elasticsearch version 2.0 or higher (DEPRECATED) elasticsearch-http: Sending messages to Elasticsearch HTTP Event Collector file: Storing messages in plain-text files google_pubsub: Sending logs to the Google Cloud Pub/Sub messaging service hdfs: Storing messages on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) http: Posting messages over HTTP kafka: Publishing messages to Apache Kafka logstore: Storing messages in encrypted files mongodb: Storing messages in a MongoDB database network: Sending messages to a remote log server using the RFC3164 protocol (network() driver) pipe: Sending messages to named pipes program: Sending messages to external applications python: writing custom Python destinations sentinel: Sending logs to the Microsoft Azure Sentinel cloud snmp: Sending SNMP traps smtp: Generating SMTP messages (email) from logs splunk-hec: Sending messages to Splunk HTTP Event Collector sql: Storing messages in an SQL database stackdriver: Sending logs to the Google Stackdriver cloud syslog: Sending messages to a remote logserver using the IETF-syslog protocol syslog-ng(): Forward logs 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) unix-stream, unix-dgram: Sending messages to UNIX domain sockets usertty: Sending messages to a user terminal — usertty() destination Client-side failover
Routing messages: log paths, flags, and filters Global options of syslog-ng PE TLS-encrypted message transfer Advanced Log Transfer Protocol Reliability and minimizing the loss of log messages Manipulating messages parser: Parse and segment structured messages Processing message content with a pattern database Correlating log messages Enriching log messages with external data Monitoring statistics and metrics of syslog-ng Multithreading and scaling in syslog-ng PE Troubleshooting syslog-ng Best practices and examples The syslog-ng manual pages Glossary

Getting the list of disk-buffer files

This section describes getting the list of disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng Premium Edition(syslog-ng PE).

The syslog-ng PE application stores information (namely, the IP:PORT or DNS:PORT of the destinations, and the name of the disk-buffer file) about disk-buffer files in its persist file.

Example: command for listing the disk-buffer files in use

The following command will list the disk-buffer files in use:

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/persist-tool dump /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng.persist | awk -F '["=]' '/(qfile\(|\.queue)/ { gsub(/[ \t]+/, "", $5); gsub(/^[0-9A-Fa-f]{8}/, "", $5); "echo "$5"|xxd -r -p"|& getline QUEUE; printf("%s ==> %s\n",$1,QUEUE)}'

The example output will look like the following:

afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,10.21.10.20:601)  ==> /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf

NOTE: If you receive the following error message instead of the example output, install a vim-common package on your system:

xxd: command not found

Getting the status information of disk-buffer files

This section describes getting the status information of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng Premium Edition (syslog-ng PE).

Command syntax

The basic command syntax for getting the status information of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng PE looks like the following:

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool info DISK-BUFFER_FILE
Example commands

The following example commands describe how you can get the status information of two different types of disk-buffer files (namely, empty normal disk-buffer files, and non-empty reliable disk-buffer queue files).

Example commands for empty, normal disk-buffer files, and non-empty, reliable disk-buffer queue files

  • Empty, normal disk-buffer file (all *_length is zero)

    /opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool info /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.qf 

Disk-buffer state loaded; filename='/opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.qf', qout_length='0', qbacklog_length='0', qoverflow_length='0', qdisk_length='0'

  • Non-empty, reliable disk-buffer queue file

    /opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool info /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf

Reliable disk-buffer state loaded; filename='/opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf', queue_length='3519', size='1995952'
One-liner command to get the state of disk-buffer files in the default directory

You can use the following one-liner command to get the state of disk-buffer files in the default directory:

for qfile in /opt/syslog-ng/var/*.?(r)qf ; do /opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool info $qfile 2>&1 ; done

Printing the content of disk-buffer files

This section describes printing the content of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng Premium Edition(syslog-ng PE).

Command syntax

The command syntax for printing the content of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng PE looks like the following:

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool cat DISK-BUFFER_FILE
Short example output for printed content
Example: short output that shows the printed content of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng PE

The following short output example shows the printed content of the disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng PE:

/opt/syslog-ng/bin/dqtool cat /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf

Reliable disk-buffer state loaded; filename='/opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf', queue_length='2952', size='-437712'
Jul 31 12:33:48.226 10.21.10.10 <382019-07-31T12:33:36 localhost prg00000[1234]: seq: 0000000838, thread: 0000, runid: 1564569216, stamp: 2019-07-31T12:33:36 PADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADD
...

Orphan disk-buffer files

This section describes orphan disk-buffer files used in syslog-ng Premium Edition(syslog-ng PE).

In certain situations (for example, after modifying the disk-buffer configuration or losing the persist information), syslog-ng PE creates a new disk-buffer file instead of using the already existing one. In these situations, the already existing disk-buffer file becomes a so-called orphan disk-buffer file.

NOTE: The syslog-ng PE application does not store messages in orphan disk-buffer files or forward the messages stored in the disk-buffer file.

Discovering the new disk-buffer files (orphan disk-buffer files)

To discover orphan disk-buffer files, get the list of disk-buffer files from the persist file, then compare the list with the contents of the disk-buffer files' saving directory.

For more information about how you can get the list of disk-buffer files from the persist file, see Getting the list of disk-buffer files).

Example: difference between the list of disk-buffer files from the persist file and the content of the disk-buffer files' saving directory

The following examples show the difference between the list of disk-buffer files from the persist file and the content of the disk-buffer files' saving directory.

Disk-buffer file list from persist file: 

afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,10.21.10.112:514) = { "queue_file": "/opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00001.rqf" }

Disk-buffer files' saving directory content: 

# ls -l /opt/syslog-ng/var/*qf
-rw------- 1 root root 2986780 Jul 31 12:30 /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.qf
-rw------- 1 root root 2000080 Jul 31 12:31 /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00000.rqf
-rw------- 1 root root    4096 Aug  1 11:09 /opt/syslog-ng/var/syslog-ng-00001.rqf

The disk-buffer files syslog-ng-00000.qf and syslog-ng-00000.rqf don't exist in the persist file. These two files are the orphan disk-buffer files.

For more information about orphan disk-buffer files and how to process the messages in orphan disk-buffer files using a separate syslog-ng PE instance, see How to process messages from an orphan disk-buffer file using a separate syslog-ng PE instance.

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