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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

Flow control, reliable disk-buffer option, ALTP

How it works

NOTE: The example presented here is set in a client-relay-server scenario.

  1. The sender sends messages in batches (set via batch-size()).
  2. The relay writes messages to the disk-buffer file.

  3. Once messages have been written to the disk-buffer file, the relay returns an acknowledgment to the client.

  4. The relay sends messages to the server in batches (set via batch-size()).

  5. When the server has successfully received and processed the messages in the batch, it sends an acknowledgment of the processed messages to the relay.

    It is only at this point that the relay removes log messages from the disk-buffer file because this is when logs are considered "delivered" to the server.

    After receiving the acknowledgment, the sender sends another batch of messages.

This configuration gives you the greatest degree of protection against log message loss. ALTP provides acknowledgment about the successful processing of log messages at the level of the application layer. Even if the reception of log messages has been acknowledged by TCP at the transport layer, log messages are considered delivered only when the syslog-ng PE application has received an acknowledgment from the other syslog-ng PE instance about the successful delivery of log messages.

This mechanism guarantees that log messages are not lost between the client and the relay, or between the relay and the server, or on the relay itself. To minimize the risk of message loss on the client or the server, use flow control and reliable disk-buffer.

Figure 38: Flow control, reliable disk-buffer, ALTP

How to set key parameters

Set flags(flow-control) in the log path.

Configure the disk-buffer option. For details, see Example: Example configuration of the reliable disk-buffer.

Example: Example configuration of the reliable disk-buffer
disk-buffer(
	mem-buf-size(10485760) # storing 10 MB messages in memory and on disk
	disk-buf-size(2147483648) # storing 2 GB of messages only on disk
	reliable(yes)
)

Enable ALTP by setting transport(rltp). For details, see ALTP options.

Benefits

This configuration minimizes the loss of log messages in the following situations:

  • Unreachable destination server(s): Only as many incoming log messages are read as can be "delivered". When flow control is used in combination with reliable disk buffering and ALTP, those messages are considered delivered by the very first source driver that have been written to the disk buffer. syslog-ng PE will not read new messages until the previous batch has been written to the disk buffer.
  • TCP error: With a TCP connection, when messages are sent from the destination drivers to the destination servers, messages are written to the TCP socket. The TCP socket sends an acknowledgment to the destination drivers once it has successfully processed messages. However, while the acknowledge messages sent by the TCP socket implement flow control at the transport layer, ALTP introduces flow control at the application layer. This means that log messages are only considered delivered when the ALTP acknowledge message is returned at the level of the syslog-ng application. That is to say, when a TCP error occurs, messages that have been written to the disk-buffer file do not get lost.
  • Message loss outside of syslog-ng PE: One of the advantages of this configuration over when the disk-buffer option is not used at all is that when the log-iw-size() control window is full, the flow-control mechanism stops reading logs from the sources much later. This is because when it is not possible to send logs directly to the destinations, they are written to the disk. It is only after the disk-buffer file has been filled to its full capacity that the sources are stopped. This allows you to minimize the loss of log messages during peak hours or when the network is temporarily down.

  • Message loss when syslog-ng PE is stopped or restarted: When syslog-ng is stopped or restarted, the contents of the disk-buffer file do not get lost, greatly increasing reliability.

    Also note that the memory buffer is only used as a cache in this configuration. Any data stored in the memory has already been written to the disk-buffer file, which, again, results in more reliability.

    NOTE: In rare cases, the buffers stored on the disk can become corrupted, in which case syslog-ng PE may not able to process all the logs stored in the disk-buffer file.

  • When syslog-ng PE is not able to operate normally (for example, when syslog-ng PE crashes due to some unforeseen event): No messages get lost because the disk-buffer option is persistent and when the disk-buffer file is full, syslog-ng PE stops reading messages from the sources. When syslog-ng PE is restarted after a crash, it automatically recovers any unsent messages from the disk-buffer file and the output buffer. After the restart, syslog-ng PE sends the saved messages to the destination.
Drawbacks

This configuration results in the slowest processing time out of all the options described in this chapter.

Deciding which loss prevention mechanism to apply

Choosing the ideal configuration for your environment may not always be a straightforward decision. Depending on your use case, it is worth considering which outcome is more desirable (with the following points representing the two opposite ends of the spectrum):

  • an application that does not slow down or stop - at the price of losing logs
  • no log messages get lost - at the price of a slower application or an application that stops (temporarily)

TIP: If your application sends its logs through a blocking I/O socket and you prefer not to slow down or stop the application when log messages are arriving in volumes greater than syslog-ng PE is able to process, then consider turning flow control off on the client side. This way, you will not be using the whole application-client-server chain at full capacity, and yet still be able to spot the loss of application log messages at the beginning of the chain already, in the internal logs of the client.

Manipulating messages

This chapter explains the methods that you can use to customize, reformat, and modify log messages using syslog-ng Premium Edition.

Customizing message format using macros and templates

The following sections describe how to customize the names of logfiles, and also how to use templates, macros, and template functions.

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