syslog-ng Open Source Edition 3.25 - Administration Guide

Restrictions and limitations

• IMPORTANT: Hazard of data loss! If you use password-protected keys, you must provide the passphrase of the password-protected keys every time syslog-ng OSE is restarted (syslog-ng OSE keeps the passphrases over reloads). The sources and destinations that use these keys will not work until you provide the passwords. Other parts of the syslog-ng OSE configuration will be unaffected.

  This means that if you use a password-protected key in a destination, and you use this destination in a log path that has multiple destinations, neither destinations will receive log messages until you provide the password. In this cases, always use disk-based buffering to avoid data loss.

• The path and the filename of the private key cannot contain whitespaces.

• Depending on your platform, the number of passwords syslog-ng OSE can use at the same time might be limited (for example, on Ubuntu 16.04 you can store 16 passwords if you are running syslog-ng OSE as a non-root user). If you use lots of password-protected private keys in your syslog-ng OSE configuration, increase this limit using the following command: sudo ulimit -l unlimited

Providing the passwords

The syslog-ng-ctl credentials status command allows you to query the status of the private keys that syslog-ng OSE uses in the network() and syslog() drivers. The command returns the list of private keys used, and their status. For example:

syslog-ng-ctl credentials status
Secret store status:
/home/user/ssl_test/client-1/client-encrypted.key SUCCESS

If the status of a key is PENDING, you must provide the passphrase for the key, otherwise syslog-ng OSE cannot use it. The sources and destinations that use these keys will not work until you provide the passwords. Other parts of the syslog-ng OSE configuration will be unaffected. You must provide the passphrase of the password-protected keys every time syslog-ng OSE is restarted.

The following log message also notifies you of PENDING passphrases:

Waiting for password; keyfile='private.key'

You can add the passphrase to a password-protected private key file using the following command. syslog-ng OSE will display a prompt for you to enter the passphrase. We recommend that you use this method.

syslog-ng-ctl credentials add --id=<path-to-the-key>

Alternatively, you can include the passphrase in the --secret parameter:

syslog-ng-ctl credentials add --id=<path-to-the-key> --secret=<passphrase-of-the-key>

Or you can pipe the passphrase to the syslog-ng-ctl command, for example:

echo "<passphrase-of-the-key>" | syslog-ng-ctl credentials add --id=<path-to-the-key>

For details on the syslog-ng-ctl credentials command, see The syslog-ng control tool manual page.

allow-compress()

Description: Enable on-the-wire compression in TLS communication. Note that this option must be enabled both on the server and the client to have any effect. Enabling compression can significantly reduce the bandwidth required to transport the messages, but can slightly decrease the performance of syslog-ng OSE, reducing the number of transferred messages during a given period.

Available in version 3.19 and later.

crl-dir()

Description: Name of a directory that contains the Certificate Revocation Lists for trusted CAs. Similarly to ca-dir() files, use the 32-bit hash of the name of the issuing CAs as filenames. The extension of the files must be .r0.

ecdh-curve-list()

Description: A colon-separated list that specifies the curves that are permitted in the connection when using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

This option is only available when syslog-ng is compiled with OpenSSL version 1.0.2 or later. In the case of older versions, prime256v1 (NIST P-256) is used.

The following example curves work for all versions of OpenSSL that are equal to or later than version 1.0.2:

ecdh-curve-list("prime256v1:secp384r1")

peer-verify()

Description: Verification method of the peer, the four possible values is a combination of two properties of validation:

• Whether the peer is required to provide a certificate (required or optional prefix).

• Whether the certificate provided needs to be valid or not.

The following table summarizes the possible options and their results depending on the certificate of the peer.

For untrusted certificates only the existence of the certificate is checked, but it does not have to be valid — syslog-ng accepts the certificate even if it is expired, signed by an unknown CA, or its CN and the name of the machine mismatches.

Starting with syslog-ng OSE version 3.10, you can also use a simplified configuration method for the peer-verify option, simply setting it to yes or no. The following table summarizes the possible options and their results depending on the certificate of the peer.

pkcs12-file()

Description: The name of a PKCS #12 file that contains an unencrypted private key, an X.509 certificate, and an optional set of trusted CA certificates.

If this option is used in the configuration, the value of key-file() and cert-file() will be omitted.

You can use the ca-dir() option together with pkcs12-file(). However, this is optional because the PKCS #12 file may contain CA certificates as well.

Passphrase is currently not supported.

$ openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey server.key -in server.crt -certfile ca.crt -out server.p12

source s_tls {
    syslog(
        transport(tls)
        tls(
            pkcs12-file("/path/to/server.p12")
            ca-dir("/path/to/cadir") # optional
            peer-verify(yes)
        )
    );
};

sni()

Description: When set to yes in a destination that uses TLS encryption, this option enables Server Name Indication (also called Server Name Identification, SNI). The syslog-ng OSE sends the hostname or the IP address set in the destination to the server during the TLS handshake.

Available in syslog-ng OSE3.24 and newer.

destination demo_tls_destination_with_sni {
    network(
         "logserver.example.com" port(6514)
        transport("tls")
        tls(
            ca_dir("/etc/syslog-ng/ca.d")
            key-file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/clientkey.pem")
            cert-file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/clientcert.pem")
            sni(yes)
        )
    );
};

ssl-options()

Description: Sets the specified options of the SSL/TLS protocols. Currently, you can use it to disable specific protocol versions. Note that disabling a newer protocol version (for example, TLSv1.1) does not automatically disable older versions of the same protocol (for example, TLSv1.0). For example, use the following option to permit using only TLSv1.1 or newer:

ssl-options(no-sslv2, no-sslv3, no-tlsv1)

Using ssl-options(none) means that syslog-ng OSE does not specify any restrictions on the protocol used. However, in this case, the underlying OpenSSL library can restrict the available protocols, for example, certain OpenSSL versions automatically disable SSLv2.

This option is available in syslog-ng OSE3.7 and newer.

destination demo_tls_destination {
    network(
         "172.16.177.147" port(6514)
        transport("tls")
        tls(
            ca_dir("/etc/syslog-ng/ca.d")
            key-file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/clientkey.pem")
            cert-file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/clientcert.pem")
            ssl-options(no-sslv2, no-sslv3, no-tlsv1)
        )
    );
};

trusted-dn()

Description: To accept connections only from hosts using certain certificates signed by the trusted CAs, list the distinguished names of the accepted certificates in this parameter. For example, using trusted-dn("*, O=Example Inc, ST=Some-State, C=*") will accept only certificates issued for the Example Inc organization in Some-State state.

trusted-keys()

Description: To accept connections only from hosts using certain certificates having specific SHA-1 fingerprints, list the fingerprints of the accepted certificates in this parameter. for example, trusted-keys("SHA1:00:EF:ED:A4:CE:00:D1:14:A4:AB:43:00:EF:00:91:85:FF:89:28:8F", "SHA1:0C:42:00:3E:B2:60:36:64:00:E2:83:F0:80:46:AD:00:A8:9D:00:15").

To find the fingerprint of a certificate, you can use the following command: openssl x509 -in <certificate-filename> -sha1 -noout -fingerprint