Depending on your exact needs about relaying log messages, there are many scenarios and syslog-ng OSE options that influence how the log message will look like on the logserver.

Some of the most common cases are summarized in the following example:

Consider the following example: client-host > syslog-ng-relay > syslog-ng-server, where the IP address of client-host is 192.168.1.2. The client-host device sends a syslog message to syslog-ng-relay. Depending on the settings of syslog-ng-relay, the following can happen.

  • By default, the keep-hostname() option is disabled, so syslog-ng-relay writes the IP address of the sender host (in this case, 192.168.1.2) to the HOST field of the syslog message, discarding any IP address or hostname that was originally in the message.

  • If the keep-hostname() option is enabled on syslog-ng-relay, but name resolution is disabled (the use-dns() option is set to no), syslog-ng-relay uses the HOST field of the message as-is, which is probably 192.168.1.2.

  • To resolve the 192.168.1.2 IP address to a hostname on syslog-ng-relay using a DNS server, use the keep-hostname(no) and use-dns(yes) options. If the DNS server is properly configured and reverse DNS lookup is available for the 192.168.1.2 address, syslog-ng OSE will rewrite the HOST field of the log message to client-host.

    NOTE: It is also possible to resolve IP addresses locally, without relying on the DNS server. For details on local name resolution, see Resolving hostnames locally.

  • The above points apply to the syslog-ng OSE server (syslog-ng-server) as well, so if syslog-ng-relay is configured properly, use the keep-hostname(yes) option on syslog-ng-server to retain the proper HOST field. Setting keep-hostname(no) on syslog-ng-server would result in syslog-ng OSE rewriting the HOST field to the address of the host that sent the message to syslog-ng-server, which is syslog-ng-relay in this case.

  • If you cannot or do not want to resolve the 192.168.1.2 IP address on syslog-ng-relay, but want to store your log messages on syslog-ng-server using the IP address of the original host (that is, client-host), you can enable the spoof-source() option on syslog-ng-relay. However, spoof-source() works only under the following conditions:

    • The syslog-ng OSE binary has been compiled with the --enable-spoof-source option.

    • The log messages are sent using the highly unreliable UDP transport protocol. (Extremely unrecommended.)

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