Chat now with support
Chat with Support

syslog-ng Premium Edition 7.0.31 - 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 (Java implementation) (DEPRECATED) kafka-c(): Publishing messages to Apache Kafka using the librdkafka client (C implementation) 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 Transport 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

Running a failure script

You can create a failure script that is executed when syslog-ng PE terminates abnormally, that is, when it exits with a non-zero exit code. For example, you can use this script to send an automatic email notification.

Prerequisites

The failure script must be the following file: /opt/syslog-ng/sbin/syslog-ng-failure, and must be executable.

To create a sample failure script

  1. Create a file named /opt/syslog-ng/sbin/syslog-ng-failure with the following content:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    cat >>/tmp/test.txt <<EOF
    $(date)
    Name............$1
    Chroot dir......$2
    Pid file dir....$3
    Pid file........$4
    Cwd.............$5
    Caps............$6
    Reason..........$7
    Argbuf..........$8
    Restarting......$9
    
    EOF
  2. Make the file executable: chmod +x /opt/syslog-ng/sbin/syslog-ng-failure

  3. Run the following command in the /opt/syslog-ng/sbin directory: ./syslog-ng --process-mode=safe-background; sleep 0.5; ps aux | grep './syslog-ng' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -KILL; sleep 0.5; cat /tmp/test.txt

    The command starts syslog-ng PE in safe-background mode (which is needed to use the failure script) and then kills it. You should see that the relevant information is written into the /tmp/test.txt file, for example:

    Thu May 18 12:08:58 UTC 2017
    Name............syslog-ng
    Chroot dir......NULL
    Pid file dir....NULL
    Pid file........NULL
    Cwd.............NULL
    Caps............NULL
    Reason..........signalled
    Argbuf..........9
    Restarting......not-restarting
  4. You should also see messages similar to the following in system syslog. The exact message depends on the signal (or the reason why syslog-ng PE stopped):

    May 18 13:56:09 myhost supervise/syslog-ng[10820]: Daemon exited gracefully, not restarting; exitcode='0'
    May 18 13:57:01 myhost supervise/syslog-ng[10996]: Daemon exited due to a deadlock/signal/failure, restarting; exitcode='131'
    May 18 13:57:37 myhost supervise/syslog-ng[11480]: Daemon was killed, not restarting; exitcode='9'

    The failure script should run on every non-zero exit event.

Stopping syslog-ng

To avoid problems, always use the init scripts to stop syslog-ng (/etc/init.d/syslog-ng stop), instead of using the kill command. This is especially true on Solaris and HP-UX systems, here use /etc/init.d/syslog stop.

Reporting bugs and finding help

If you need help, want to open a support ticket, or report a bug, we recommend using the syslog-debun tool to collect information about your environment and syslog-ng PE version. For details, see The syslog-debun manual page. For support contacts, see About us.

Error messages

This section describes the most common error messages.

Destination queue full
Error message:
Destination queue full, dropping messages; queue_len='10000', 
log_fifo_size='10000', count='4', 
persist_name='afsocket_dd_qfile(stream,serverdown:514)' 
Description:

This message indicates message loss.

Flow-control must be enabled in the log path. When flow-control is enabled, syslog-ng will stop reading messages from the sources of the log statement if the destinations are not able to process the messages at the required speed.

If flow-control is enabled, syslog-ng will only drop messages if the destination queues/window sizes are improperly sized.

Solution:

Enable flow-control in the log path.

If flow-control is disabled, syslog-ng will drop messages if the destination queues are full. Note that syslog-ng will drop messages even if the server is alive. If the remote server accepts logs at a slower rate than the sender syslog-ng receives them, the sender syslog-ng will fill up the destination queue, then drop the newer messages. Sometimes this error occurs only at a specific time interval, for example, only between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM or between 16:00 PM and 17:00 PM when your users log in or log off and that generates a lot of messages within a short interval.

For more information, see Managing incoming and outgoing messages with flow-control.

Alert unknown CA
Error message:
SSL error while writing stream; tls_error='SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert unknown ca'
Description:

This message indicates that the other (remote) side could not verify the certificate sent by syslog-ng.

Solution:

Check the logs on the remote site and identify why the receiving syslog-ng could not find the CA certificate that signed this certificate.

PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line
Error message:
testuser@thor-x1:~/cert_no_start_line/certs$ openssl x509 -in cert.pem -text
								unable to load certificate
								140178126276248:error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start 
							line:pem_lib.c:701:Expecting: TRUSTED CERTIFICATE
Description:

The error message is displayed when using Transport Layer Security (TLS). The syslog-ng application uses OpenSSL for TLS and this message indicates that the certificate contains characters that OpenSSL cannot process.

The error occurs when the certificate comes from Windows and you want to use it on a Linux-based computer. On Windows, the end of line (EOL) character is different (\r\n) compared to Linux (\n).

To verify this, open the certificate in a text editor, for example, MCEdit. Notice the ^M characters as shown in the image below:

Figure 45: Example of OpenSSL character processing error

Solution:
  • On Windows, save the certificate using UTF-8, for example, using Notepad++.

    NOTE: Windows Notepad is not able to save the file in normal UTF-8, even if you select it.

    1. In Notepad++, from the menu, select Encoding.

    2. Change the value from UTF-8-BOM to UTF-8.

    3. Save.

  • On Linux, run dos2unix cert.pem. This will convert the file to a Linux-compatible style.

    Alternatively, replace the EOL characters in the file manually.

TID is already used
Error message:
TID is already used; proto='0x202c6c0', 
								TID='61b6456d2f02052780d0d8930cbd043857c2463fcb6014b748b1450595a682', 
								client='10.140.35.9'
							Syslog connection closed;
Description:

When a client using Advanced Log Transport Protocol (ALTP) connects to the server for the first time, it generates a persistent ID and sends it to the server during the handshake process. This is the TID.

If the client loses the connection to the server silently, for example, the UTP cable is pulled from the host or other network issues happen, the server is unable to detect the connection loss.

If the client tries to reconnect within a short time interval, it will send the same TID. However, the server allows only one connection with the same TID. As the server “thinks” that it already has a live connection with this TID, it drops the new connection due to the duplicated TID.

Solution:

This error is eliminated automatically because the ALTP server will close the connection if there were no new messages from the client within the timeout frame. Once the timeout period of the ALTP server has passed, the client will be able to reconnect to the server (when the time_reopen() of the client has elapsed).

If this error message appears regularly, it means that your network may be unstable, and sometimes the client loses the connection to the server in an abnormal way.

Related Documents

The document was helpful.

Select Rating

I easily found the information I needed.

Select Rating