The syslog-ng OSE application receives the timezone and daylight saving information from the operating system it is installed on. If the operating system handles daylight saving correctly, so does syslog-ng.

The syslog-ng OSE application supports messages originating from different timezones. The original syslog protocol (RFC3-3164) does not include timezone information, but syslog-ng OSE provides a solution by extending the syslog protocol to include the timezone in the log messages. The syslog-ng OSE application also enables administrators to supply timezone information for legacy devices which do not support the protocol extension.

How syslog-ng OSE assigns timezone to the message

When syslog-ng OSE receives a message, it assigns timezone information to the message using the following algorithm.

  1. The sender application (for example, the syslog-ng OSE client) or host specifies the timezone of the messages. If the incoming message includes a timezone it is associated with the message. Otherwise, the local timezone is assumed.

  2. Specify the time-zone() parameter for the source driver that reads the message. This timezone will be associated with the messages only if no timezone is specified within the message itself. Each source defaults to the value of the recv-time-zone() global option. It is not possible to override only the timezone information of the incoming message, but setting the keep-timestamp() option to no allows syslog-ng OSE to replace the full timestamp (timezone included) with the time the message was received.

    NOTE: When processing a message that does not contain timezone information, the syslog-ng OSE application will use the timezone and daylight-saving that was effective when the timestamp was generated.

    For example, the current time is 2011-03-11 (March 11, 2011) in the EU/Budapest timezone. When daylight-saving is active (summertime), the offset is +02:00. When daylight-saving is inactive (wintertime) the timezone offset is +01:00. If the timestamp of an incoming message is 2011-01-01, the timezone associated with the message will be +01:00, but the timestamp will be converted, because 2011-01-01 meant winter time when daylight saving is not active but the current timezone is +02:00.

  3. Specify the timezone in the destination driver using the time-zone() parameter. Each destination driver might have an associated timezone value: syslog-ng OSE converts message timestamps to this timezone before sending the message to its destination (file or network socket). Each destination defaults to the value of the send-time-zone() global option.

    NOTE: A message can be sent to multiple destination zones. The syslog-ng application converts the timezone information properly for every individual destination zone.

    CAUTION: If syslog-ng OSE sends the message is to the destination using the legacy-syslog protocol (RFC-3164) which does not support timezone information in its timestamps, the timezone information cannot be encapsulated into the sent timestamp, so syslog-ng OSE will convert the hour:min values based on the explicitly specified timezone.

  4. If the timezone is not specified, local timezone is used.

  5. When macro expansions are used in the destination filenames, the local timezone is used. (Also, if the timestamp of the received message does not contain the year of the message, syslog-ng OSE uses the local year.)

    NOTE: You can modify the timezone of the message using timezone-specific rewrite rules.
    For details, see Rewrite the timezone of a message.

A note on timezones and timestamps

If the clients run syslog-ng OSE, then use the ISO timestamp, because it includes timezone information. That way you do not need to adjust the recv-time-zone() parameter of syslog-ng.

If you want syslog-ng OSE to output timestamps in Unix (POSIX) time format, use the ${S_UNIXTIME} and ${R_UNIXTIME} macros. You do not need to change any of the timezone related parameters, because the timestamp information of incoming messages is converted to Unix time internally, and Unix time is a timezone-independent time representation. (Actually, Unix time measures the number of seconds elapsed since midnight of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) January 1, 1970, but does not count leap seconds.)

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