syslog() source options

The syslog() driver has the following options.

ca-dir()

Type:	Directory name
Default:	none

Description: The name of a directory that contains a set of trusted CA certificates in PEM format. The CA certificate files have to be named after the 32-bit hash of the subject's name. This naming can be created using the c_rehash utility in openssl. For an example, see Configuring TLS on the syslog-ng OSE clients. The syslog-ng OSE application uses the CA certificates in this directory to validate the certificate of the peer.

This option can be used together with the optional ca-file() option.

NOTE: During a TLS handshake, syslog-ng OSE automatically sets the certificate_authorities field of the certificate request based on the ca-file() and ca-dir() options.

ca-file()

Type:	File name
Default:	empty

Description: Optional. The name of a file that contains a set of trusted CA certificates in PEM format. The syslog-ng OSE application uses the CA certificates in this file to validate the certificate of the peer.

Example format in configuration:

ca-file("/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt")

NOTE: The ca-file() option can be used together with the ca-dir() option, and it is relevant when peer-verify() is set to other than no or optional-untrusted.

NOTE: During a TLS handshake, syslog-ng OSE automatically sets the certificate_authorities field of the certificate request based on the ca-file() and ca-dir() options.

dynamic-window-size()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: The size of the dynamic control window used during flow-control. For details on flow-control, see Managing incoming and outgoing messages with flow-control.

encoding()

Type:	string
Default:

Description: Specifies the character set (encoding, for example, UTF-8) of messages using the legacy BSD-syslog protocol. To list the available character sets on a host, execute the iconv -l command. For details on how encoding affects the size of the message, see Message size and encoding.

flags()

Type:	assume-utf8, empty-lines, expect-hostname, kernel, no-hostname, no-multi-line, no-parse, sanitize-utf8, store-legacy-msghdr, store-raw-message, syslog-protocol, threaded, validate-utf8
Default:	empty set

Description: Specifies the log parsing options of the source.

assume-utf8: The assume-utf8 flag assumes that the incoming messages are UTF-8 encoded, but does not verify the encoding. If you explicitly want to validate the UTF-8 encoding of the incoming message, use the validate-utf8 flag.
empty-lines: Use the empty-lines flag to keep the empty lines of the messages. By default, syslog-ng OSE removes empty lines automatically.
expect-hostname: If the expect-hostname flag is enabled, syslog-ng OSE will assume that the log message contains a hostname and parse the message accordingly. This is the default behavior for TCP sources. Note that pipe sources use the no-hostname flag by default.
guess-timezone: Attempt to guess the timezone of the message if this information is not available in the message. Works when the incoming message stream is close to real time, and the timezone information is missing from the timestamp.
kernel: The kernel flag makes the source default to the LOG_KERN | LOG_NOTICE priority if not specified otherwise.
no-header: The no-header flag triggers syslog-ng OSE to parse only the PRI field of incoming messages, and put the rest of the message contents into ${MSG}.

Its functionality is similar to that of the no-parse flag, except the no-header flag does not skip the PRI field.

NOTE: Essentially, the no-header flag signals syslog-ng OSE that the syslog header is not present (or does not adhere to the conventions / RFCs), so the entire message (except from the PRI field) is put into ${MSG}.

Example: using the no-header flag with the syslog-parser() parser

The following example illustrates using the no-header flag with the syslog-parser() parser:
```
  parser p_syslog {
      syslog-parser(
      flags(no-header)
      );
  };
```
no-hostname: Enable the no-hostname flag if the log message does not include the hostname of the sender host. That way syslog-ng OSE assumes that the first part of the message header is PROGRAM instead of HOST. For example:
```
  source s_dell {
      network(
          port(2000)
          flags(no-hostname)
      );
  };
```
no-multi-line: The no-multi-line flag disables line-breaking in the messages: the entire message is converted to a single line. Note that this happens only if the underlying transport method actually supports multi-line messages. Currently the file() and pipe() drivers support multi-line messages.
no-parse: By default, syslog-ng OSE parses incoming messages as syslog messages. The no-parse flag completely disables syslog message parsing and processes the complete line as the message part of a syslog message. The syslog-ng OSE application will generate a new syslog header (timestamp, host, and so on) automatically and put the entire incoming message into the MESSAGE part of the syslog message (available using the ${MESSAGE} macro). This flag is useful for parsing messages not complying to the syslog format.

If you are using the flags(no-parse) option, then syslog message parsing is completely disabled, and the entire incoming message is treated as the ${MESSAGE} part of a syslog message. In this case, syslog-ng OSE generates a new syslog header (timestamp, host, and so on) automatically. Note that even though flags(no-parse) disables message parsing, some flags can still be used, for example, the no-multi-line flag.
dont-store-legacy-msghdr: By default, syslog-ng OSE stores the original incoming header of the log message. This is useful if the original format of a non-syslog-compliant message must be retained (syslog-ng OSE automatically corrects minor header errors, for example, adds a whitespace before msg in the following message: Jan 22 10:06:11 host program:msg). If you do not want to store the original header of the message, enable the dont-store-legacy-msghdr flag.
sanitize-utf8: When using the sanitize-utf8 flag, syslog-ng OSE converts non-UTF-8 input to an escaped form, which is valid UTF-8.
store-raw-message: Save the original message as received from the client in the ${RAWMSG} macro. You can forward this raw message in its original form to another syslog-ng OSE node using the syslog-ng() destination, or to a SIEM system, ensuring that the SIEM can process it. Available only in 3.16 and later.
syslog-protocol: The syslog-protocol flag specifies that incoming messages are expected to be formatted according to the new IETF syslog protocol standard (RFC-5424), but without the frame header. Note that this flag is not needed for the syslog driver, which handles only messages that have a frame header.
threaded: The threaded flag enables multithreading for the destination. For details on multithreading, see Multithreading and scaling in syslog-ng OSE.

NOTE: The file destination uses multiple threads only if the destination filename contains macros.
validate-utf8: The validate-utf8 flag enables encoding-verification for messages formatted according to the new IETF syslog standard (for details, see IETF-syslog messages. If the BOM¹ character is missing, but the message is otherwise UTF-8 compliant, syslog-ng OSE automatically adds the BOM character to the message.

hook-commands()

Description: This option makes it possible to execute external programs when the relevant driver is initialized or torn down. The hook-commands() can be used with all source and destination drivers with the exception of the usertty() and internal() drivers.

NOTE: The syslog-ng OSE application must be able to start and restart the external program, and have the necessary permissions to do so. For example, if your host is running AppArmor or SELinux, you might have to modify your AppArmor or SELinux configuration to enable syslog-ng OSE to execute external applications.

Using the hook-commands() when syslog-ng OSE starts or stops

To execute an external program when syslog-ng OSE starts or stops, use the following options:

startup()

Type:	string
Default:	N/A

Description: Defines the external program that is executed as syslog-ng OSE starts.

shutdown()

Type:	string
Default:	N/A

Description: Defines the external program that is executed as syslog-ng OSE stops.

Using the hook-commands() when syslog-ng OSE reloads

To execute an external program when the syslog-ng OSE configuration is initiated or torn down, for example, on startup/shutdown or during a syslog-ng OSE reload, use the following options:

setup()

Type:	string
Default:	N/A

Description: Defines an external program that is executed when the syslog-ng OSE configuration is initiated, for example, on startup or during a syslog-ng OSE reload.

teardown()

Type:	string
Default:	N/A

Description: Defines an external program that is executed when the syslog-ng OSE configuration is stopped or torn down, for example, on shutdown or during a syslog-ng OSE reload.

Example: Using the hook-commands() with a network source

In the following example, the hook-commands() is used with the network() driver and it opens an iptables port automatically as syslog-ng OSE is started/stopped.

The assumption in this example is that the LOGCHAIN chain is part of a larger ruleset that routes traffic to it. Whenever the syslog-ng OSE created rule is there, packets can flow, otherwise the port is closed.

source {
    network(transport(udp)
        hook-commands(
          startup("iptables -I LOGCHAIN 1 -p udp --dport 514 -j ACCEPT")
          shutdown("iptables -D LOGCHAIN 1")
        )
      );
};

host-override()

Type:	string
Default:

Description: Replaces the HOST part of the message with the parameter string.

interface()

Type:	string
Default:	None

Description: Bind to the specified interface instead of an IP address. Available in 3.19 and later.

ip() or localip()

Type:	string
Default:	0.0.0.0

Description: The IP address to bind to. By default, syslog-ng OSE listens on every available interface. Note that this is not the address where messages are accepted from.

If you specify a multicast bind address and use the udp transport, syslog-ng OSE automatically joins the necessary multicast group. TCP does not support multicasting.

ip-protocol()

Type:	number
Default:	4

Description: Determines the internet protocol version of the given driver (network() or syslog()). The possible values are 4 and 6, corresponding to IPv4 and IPv6. The default value is ip-protocol(4).

Note that listening on a port using IPv6 automatically means that you are also listening on that port using IPv4. That is, if you want to have receive messages on an IP-address/port pair using both IPv4 and IPv6, create a source that uses the ip-protocol(6). You cannot have two sources with the same IP-address/port pair, but with different ip-protocol() settings (it causes an Address already in use error).

For example, the following source receives messages on TCP, using the network() driver, on every available interface of the host on both IPv4 and IPv6.

source s_network_tcp { network( transport("tcp") ip("::") ip-protocol(6) port(601) ); };

ip-tos()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: Specifies the Type-of-Service value of outgoing packets.

ip-ttl()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: Specifies the Time-To-Live value of outgoing packets.

keep-alive()

Type:	yes or no
Default:	yes

Description: Specifies whether connections to sources should be closed when syslog-ng OSE is forced to reload its configuration (upon the receipt of a SIGHUP signal). Note that this applies to the server (source) side of the syslog-ng OSE connections, client-side (destination) connections are always reopened after receiving a HUP signal unless the keep-alive option is enabled for the destination.

keep-hostname()

Type:	yes or no
Default:	no

Description: Enable or disable hostname rewriting.

If enabled (keep-hostname(yes)), syslog-ng OSE assumes that the incoming log message was sent by the host specified in the HOST field of the message.
If disabled (keep-hostname(no)), syslog-ng OSE rewrites the HOST field of the message, either to the IP address (if the use-dns() parameter is set to no), or to the hostname (if the use-dns() parameter is set to yes and the IP address can be resolved to a hostname) of the host sending the message to syslog-ng OSE. For details on using name resolution in syslog-ng OSE, see Using name resolution in syslog-ng.

NOTE: If the log message does not contain a hostname in its HOST field, syslog-ng OSE automatically adds a hostname to the message.

For messages received from the network, this hostname is the address of the host that sent the message (this means the address of the last hop if the message was transferred via a relay).
For messages received from the local host, syslog-ng OSE adds the name of the host.

This option can be specified globally, and per-source as well. The local setting of the source overrides the global option if available.

NOTE: When relaying messages, enable this option on the syslog-ng OSE server and also on every relay, otherwise syslog-ng OSE will treat incoming messages as if they were sent by the last relay.

keep-timestamp()

Accepted values:	yes \| no
Default:	yes

Description: Specifies whether syslog-ng OSE should accept the timestamp received from the sending application or client. If disabled, the time of reception will be used instead. This option can be specified globally, and per-source as well. The local setting of the source overrides the global option if available.

CAUTION: To use the S_ macros, the keep-timestamp() option must be enabled (this is the default behavior of syslog-ng OSE).

listen-backlog()

Type:	integer
Default:	256

Description: Available only for stream based transports (unix-stream, tcp, tls). In TCP, connections are treated incomplete until the three-way handshake is completed between the server and the client. Incomplete connection requests wait on the TCP port for the listener to accept the request. The listen-backlog() option sets the maximum number of incomplete connection requests. For example:

source s_network {
    network(
        ip("192.168.1.1")
        transport("tcp")
        listen-backlog(2048)
        );
};

log-fetch-limit()

Type:	number
Default:	100

Description: The maximum number of messages fetched from a source during a single poll loop. The destination queues might fill up before flow-control could stop reading if log-fetch-limit() is too high.

log-iw-size()

Type:	number
Default:

Description: The size of the initial window, this value is used during flow-control. Its value cannot be lower than 100, unless the dynamic-window-size() option is enabled. For details on flow-control, see Managing incoming and outgoing messages with flow-control.

log-msg-size()

Type:	number (bytes)
Default:	Use the global log-msg-size() option, which defaults to 65536 (64 KiB).

Description: Maximum length of an incoming message in bytes. This length includes the entire message (the data structure and individual fields). The maximal value that can be set is 268435456 bytes (256 MiB).

For messages using the IETF-syslog message format, the maximal size of the value of an SDATA field is 64 KiB.

NOTE: In most cases, log-msg-size() does not need to be set higher than 10 MiB.

For details on how encoding affects the size of the message, see Message size and encoding.

You can use human-readable units when setting configuration options. For details, see Notes about the configuration syntax.

Uses the value of the global option if not specified.

max-connections()

Type:	number
Default:	10

Description: Specifies the maximum number of simultaneous connections.

Note that the total number of connections the default-network-drivers() source can use is 3*max-connections(), because this value applies to the network(tcp), syslog(tcp), and syslog(tls) connections individually.

pad-size()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: Specifies input padding. Some operating systems (such as HP-UX) pad all messages to block boundary. This option can be used to specify the block size. The syslog-ng OSE application will pad reads from the associated device to the number of bytes set in pad-size(). Mostly used on HP-UX where /dev/log is a named pipe and every write is padded to 2048 bytes. If pad-size() was given and the incoming message does not fit into pad-size(), syslog-ng OSE will not read anymore from this pipe and displays the following error message:

Padding was set, and couldn’t read enough bytes

port() or localport()

Type:	number
Default:	In case of TCP transport: 514
	In case of UDP transport: 514

Description: The port number to bind to.

program-override()

Type:	string
Default:

Description: Replaces the ${PROGRAM} part of the message with the parameter string. For example, to mark every message coming from the kernel, include the program-override("kernel") option in the source containing /proc/kmsg.

so-broadcast()

Type:	yes or no
Default:	no

Description: This option controls the SO_BROADCAST socket option required to make syslog-ng OSE send messages to a broadcast address. For details, see the socket(7) manual page.

so-keepalive()

Type:	yes or no
Default:	no

Description: Enables keep-alive messages, keeping the socket open. This only effects TCP and UNIX-stream sockets. For details, see the socket(7) manual page.

so-rcvbuf()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: Specifies the size of the socket receive buffer in bytes. For details, see the socket(7) manual page.

CAUTION: When receiving messages using the UDP protocol, increase the size of the UDP receive buffer on the receiver host
(that is, the syslog-ng OSE server or relay receiving the messages).

Note that on certain platforms, for example, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, even low message load (~200 messages per second) can result in message loss, unless the so-rcvbuf() option of the source is increased. In this cases, you will need to increase the net.core.rmem_max parameter of the host (for example, to 1024000), but do not modify net.core.rmem_default parameter.

As a general rule, increase the so-rcvbuf() so that the buffer size in kilobytes is higher than the rate of incoming messages per second.
For example, to receive 2000 messages per second, set the so-rcvbuf() at least to 2 097 152 bytes.

so-reuseport()

Type:	yes or no
Default:	no

Description: Enables SO_REUSEPORT on systems that support it. When enabled, the kernel allows multiple UDP sockets to be bound to the same port, and the kernel load-balances incoming UDP datagrams to the sockets. The sockets are distributed based on the hash of (srcip, dstip, srcport, dstport), so the same listener should be receiving packets from the same endpoint. For example:

source {
        udp(so-reuseport(1) port(2000) persist-name("udp1"));
        udp(so-reuseport(1) port(2000) persist-name("udp2"));
        udp(so-reuseport(1) port(2000) persist-name("udp3"));
        udp(so-reuseport(1) port(2000) persist-name("udp4"));
};

so-sndbuf()

Type:	number
Default:	0

Description: Specifies the size of the socket send buffer in bytes. For details, see the socket(7) manual page.

tags()

Type:	string
Default:

Description: Label the messages received from the source with custom tags. Tags must be unique, and enclosed between double quotes. When adding multiple tags, separate them with comma, for example, tags(“dmz”, “router”). This option is available only in syslog-ng OSE 3.1 and later.

time-zone()

Type:	name of the timezone, or the timezone offset
Default:

Description: The default timezone for messages read from the source. Applies only if no timezone is specified within the message itself.

The timezone can be specified by using the name, for example, time-zone(“Europe/Budapest”)), or as the timezone offset in +/-HH:MM format, for example, +01:00). On Linux and UNIX platforms, the valid timezone names are listed under the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

transport()

Type:	udp, tcp, tls, proxied-tcp, proxied-tls, proxied-tls-passthrough, text-with-nuls
Default:	tcp

Description: Specifies the protocol used to receive messages from the source.

For detailed information about how syslog-ng OSE supports the proxied-tcp, the proxied-tls, and the proxied-tls-passthrough parameters, see Proxy Protocol support. text-with-nuls: Allows embedded NUL characters in the message from a TCP source, that is, syslog-ng OSE will not delimiter the incoming messages on NUL characters, only on newline characters (contrary to tcp transport, which splits the incoming log on newline characters and NUL characters).

NOTE: The syslog-ng OSE application does not support embedded NUL characters everywhere, so it is recommended that you also use flags(no-multi-line) that causes NUL characters to be replaced by space.

CAUTION: When receiving messages using the UDP protocol, increase the size of the UDP receive buffer on the receiver host
(that is, the syslog-ng OSE server or relay receiving the messages).

Note that on certain platforms, for example, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, even low message load (~200 messages per second) can result in message loss, unless the so-rcvbuf() option of the source is increased. In this cases, you will need to increase the net.core.rmem_max parameter of the host (for example, to 1024000), but do not modify net.core.rmem_default parameter.

As a general rule, increase the so-rcvbuf() so that the buffer size in kilobytes is higher than the rate of incoming messages per second.
For example, to receive 2000 messages per second, set the so-rcvbuf() at least to 2 097 152 bytes.

trim-large-messages()

Accepted values:	yes \| no
Default:	Use the global trim-large-messages() option, which defaults to no.

Description: Determines what syslog-ng OSE does with incoming log messages that are received using the IETF-syslog protocol using the syslog() driver, and are longer than the value of log-msg-size(). Other drivers ignore the trim-large-messages() option.

If set to no, syslog-ng OSE drops the incoming log message.
If set to yes, syslog-ng OSE trims the incoming log message to the size set in log-msg-size(), and adds the trimmed tag to the message. The rest of the message is dropped. You can use the tag to filter on such messages.
```
  filter f_trimmed {
      tags("trimmed");
  };
```
If syslog-ng OSE trims a log message, it sends a debug-level log message to its internal() source.

As a result of trimming, a parser could fail to parse the trimmed message. For example, a trimmed JSON or XML message will not be valid JSON or XML.

Available in syslog-ng OSE version 3.21 and later.

Uses the value of the global option if not specified.

tls()

Type:	tls options
Default:	n/a

Description: This option sets various options related to TLS encryption, for example, key/certificate files and trusted CA locations. TLS can be used only with tcp-based transport protocols. For details, see TLS options.

use-dns()

Accepted values:	yes, no, persist_only
Default:	yes

Description: Enable or disable DNS usage. The persist_only option attempts to resolve hostnames locally from file (for example, from /etc/hosts). The syslog-ng OSE application blocks on DNS queries, so enabling DNS may lead to a Denial of Service attack. To prevent DoS, protect your syslog-ng OSE network endpoint with firewall rules, and make sure that all hosts which may get to syslog-ng OSE are resolvable. This option can be specified globally, and per-source as well. The local setting of the source overrides the global option if available.

NOTE: This option has no effect if the keep-hostname() option is enabled (keep-hostname(yes)) and the message contains a hostname.

use-fqdn()

Accepted values:	yes \| no
Default:	no

Description: Use this option to add a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) instead of a short hostname. You can specify this option either globally or per-source. The local setting of the source overrides the global option if available.

TIP: Set use-fqdn() to yes if you want to use the custom-domain() global option.

NOTE: This option has no effect if the keep-hostname() option is enabled (keep-hostname(yes)) and the message contains a hostname.

The byte order mark (BOM) is a Unicode character used to signal the byte-order of the message text. ↩