Name
loggen — Generate syslog messages at a specified rate
Synopsis
loggen [options] target [port]
Description
NOTE: The loggen application is distributed with the syslog-ng PE system logging application, and is usually part of the syslog-ng PE package.
This manual page is only an abstract, for the complete documentation of syslog-ng PE, see the
The loggen application is tool to test and stress-test your syslog server and the connection to the server. It can send syslog messages to the server at a specified rate using a number of connection types and protocols, including TCP, UDP, and unix domain sockets. The messages can be generated automatically (repeating the PADDstring over and over), or read from a file or the standard input. The following is a sample generated message:
<38>2017-04-05T12:16:46 localhost prg00000[1234]: seq: 0000000000, thread: 0000, runid: 1491387406, stamp: 2017-04-05T12:16:46 PADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADDPADD
When loggen finishes sending the messages, it displays the following statistics:
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average rate: Average rate the messages were sent in messages/second.
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count: The total number of messages sent.
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time: The time required to send the messages in seconds.
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average message size: The average size of the sent messages in bytes.
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bandwidth: The average bandwidth used for sending the messages in kilobytes/second.
Options
-
--active-connections <number-of-connections>
Number of connections loggen will use to send messages to the destination. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. Default value: 1
The loggen utility waits until every connection is established before starting to send messages. See also the --idle-connections option.
-
--csv or -C
Send the statistics of the sent messages to stdout as CSV. This can be used for plotting the message rate.
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--dgram or -D
Use datagram socket (UDP or unix-dgram) to send the messages to the target. Requires the --inet option as well.
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dont-parse or -d
Do not parse the lines read from the input files, send them as received.
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--help or -h
Display a brief help message.
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--idle-connection <number-of-connections>
Number of idle connections loggen will establish to the destination. Note that loggen will not send any messages on idle connections, but the connection is kept open using keep-alive messages. This option is usable only when using TCP or TLS connections to the destination. See also the --active-connections option. Default value: 0
-
--inet or -i
Use the TCP (by default) or UDP (when used together with the --dgram option) protocol to send the messages to the target.
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--interval <seconds> or -I <seconds>
The number of seconds loggen will run. Default value: 10
NOTE: Note that when the --interval and --number are used together, loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached, whichever happens first.
-
--ipv6 or -6
Specify the destination using its IPv6 address. Note that the destination must have a real IPv6 address.
-
--loop-reading or -l
Read the file specified in --read-file option in loop: loggen will start reading from the beginning of the file when it reaches the end of the file.
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--number <number-of-messages> or -n <number-of-messages>
Number of messages to generate.
NOTE: Note that when the --interval and --number are used together, loggen will send messages until the period set in --interval expires or the amount of messages set in --number is reached, whichever happens first.
-
--no-framing or -F
Do not use the framing of the IETF-syslog protocol style, even if the --syslog-proto option is set.
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--quiet or -Q
Output statistics only when the execution of loggen is finished. If not set, the statistics are displayed every second.
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--permanent or -T
Keep sending logs indefinitely, without time limit.
-
--rate <message/second> or -r <message/second>
The number of messages generated per second for every active connection. Default value: 1000
If you want to change the message rate while loggen is running, send SIGUSR1 to double the message rate, or SIGUSR2 to halve it:
kill -USR1 <loggen-pid>kill -USR2 <loggen-pid> -
--read-file <filename> or -R <filename>
Read the messages from a file and send them to the target. See also the --skip-tokens option.
Specify - as the input file to read messages from the standard input (stdio). Note that when reading messages from the standard input, loggen can only use a single thread. The -R -parameters must be placed at end of command, like: loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -
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--sdata <data-to-send> or -p <data-to-send>
Send the argument of the --sdata option as the SDATA part of IETF-syslog (RFC5424 formatted) messages. Use it together with the --syslog-proto option. For example: --sdata "[test name=\"value\"]
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--size <message-size> or -s <message-size>
The size of a syslog message in bytes. Default value: 256. Minimum value: 127 bytes, maximum value: 8192 bytes.
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--skip-tokens <number>
Skip the specified number of space-separated tokens (words) at the beginning of every line. For example, if the messages in the file look like foo bar message, --skip-tokens 2 skips the foo bar part of the line, and sends only the message part. Works only when used together with the --read-file parameter. Default value: 0
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--stream or -S
Use a stream socket (TCP or unix-stream) to send the messages to the target.
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--syslog-proto or -P
Use the new IETF-syslog message format as specified in RFC5424. By default, loggen uses the legacy BSD-syslog message format (as described in RFC3164). See also the --no-framing option.
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--unix </path/to/socket> or -x </path/to/socket>
Use a UNIX domain socket to send the messages to the target.
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--use-ssl or -U
Use an SSL-encrypted channel to send the messages to the target. Note that it is not possible to check the certificate of the target, or to perform mutual authentication.
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--version or -V
Display version number of syslog-ng.
Examples
The following command generates 100 messages per second for ten minutes, and sends them to port 2010 of the localhost via TCP. Each message is 300 bytes long.
loggen --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010
The following command is similar to the one above, but uses the UDP protocol.
loggen --inet --dgram --size 300 --rate 100 --interval 600 127.0.0.1 2010
Send a single message on TCP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:
loggen --ipv6 --number 1 ::1 1061
Send a single message on UDP6 to the ::1 IPv6 address, port 1061:
loggen --ipv6 --dgram --number 1 ::1 1061
Send a single message using a unix domain-socket:
loggen --unix --stream --number 1 </path/to/socket>
Read messages from the standard input (stdio) and send them to the localhost:
loggen 127.0.0.1 1061 --read-file -
Files
/opt/syslog-ng/bin/loggen
See also
The syslog-ng.conf manual page
NOTE: For the detailed documentation of syslog-ng PE see
If you experience any problems or need help with syslog-ng PE, visit the syslog-ng mailing list.
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